Deena Blacking and Christine O’Connell talk to host Elizabeth Emery about The Cyclists’ Alliance Go Fund Me, sponsorship, the growth of women’s cycling, worries about the development pathway to the top level of the sport, media coverage, TCA’s role is in the world of women’s cycling, sponsorship, and how to be a superfan.

Christine spent over 20 years working in strategy and corporate development, including senior roles at Thomson Reuters and in strategy consulting. She now focuses on her cycling based charity campaign, One More City, a global charity initiative built around long distance cycling challenges, raising funds for research into secondary, or metastatic, breast cancer. Christine has been living with secondary breast cancer since 2018, and cycling is an important part of how she manages the disease and continues to live a full life. 

Christine is Vice President of The Cyclists’ Alliance, the organization representing female professional cyclists, and Vice Chairman of the Queen’s Institute of Community Nursing. 

Deena  is a cycling coach and consultant in sport. She has worked with national and international sports organizations for the last ten years. Prior to this, she worked as a lawyer in human rights law in the UK. 

Deena has been involved with The Cyclists' Alliance since 2020. She initially supported the work of The Cyclists' Alliance using her legal skills to support riders, and later took on responsibility for the annual survey, then the mentor program, and now the overall day to day of the organization in her role as Interim Managing Director.

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