Miriam Walker-Khan is the journalist and community leader who’s single-handedly giving South Asian women more visibility, safety and equity in football.

In the UK, around 9% of the population are British South Asian but people from this community still face challenges in sport in relation to representation and equal access. In media, the most commonly seen narratives focus on trauma and struggle rather than strength and success.

As founder of Brown Girl Sport, Miriam is challenging these stereotypes and providing positive representation to South Asian girls and women via storytelling, events and access to opportunities. New football culture should be built on inclusivity and solidarity, but we won’t get there without individuals like Miriam paving the way.

Miriam Walker-Khan features in the first-ever VERSUS 50 – a new list with Chivas Regal that celebrates the individuals rising up to shape new football culture. We spoke to Miriam about her mission, the lessons she’s learned, and how the spirit of Chivas Regal's "I Rise, We Rise" mantra underpins her work.

How do you take inspiration from others?

I’m most inspired by people who use their platform to speak out – I still think that’s quite rare. You sometimes see people do it in a reactive way, but I’m most inspired by those who go out of their way to take risks and want to change the world through sport.

How do you hope to inspire others?

I want to inspire others just by being in this space. I don’t want to be a typical sports journalist, I want to be disruptive and tell stories that haven’t been told before. For years I struggled with the fact that I didn’t look or feel like a lot of my colleagues, but now we’re in place where I celebrate that and bring others along with me.

How do you see football’s role in wider culture?

Football has a power to unite people unlike anything else. It can teach people to learn about our differences because it’s a truly global game that has genuine diversity on-pitch. I’ve met so many people through football and that’s the most beautiful thing about it.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give the next generation so they can score big?

Stay authentic, be unapologetically you, and be compassionate to others but also yourself.

What’s the biggest change we need to see in football?

I think football needs to stop exploiting people and give more back to the communities it’s supposed to represent.

What do you love most about football culture right now?

I love that in the world of social media, people are able to platform themselves and create their own communities. We’ve never seen that in sport before and it opens the game up to so much creativity and new perspectives. It makes the game far more interesting and representative.

Miriam Walker-Khan features in the first-ever VERSUS 50 with Chivas Regal. Find the full list here.

VERSUS: Who are you and what do you do?

Miriam: I am Miriam Walker-Khan, I’m Diversity and Inclusion reporter at Sky Sports News and the founder of Brown Girl Sport, which is an online community and platform that celebrates South Asian women and girls in sport. I founded it because I was bored of us being left out of conversations about sport – I felt our successes weren’t being celebrated and our stories weren’t being told.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced so far?

I’ve recently finished reporting at the Olympics for four straight weeks and everyday I received about 10 DMs from people asking me to pronounce my “Ts”, telling me I couldn’t speak properly. I grew up with lots of brothers and that actually helps me with online trolls as there’s nothing they could say to me that’s worse than what my brothers did as kids!

Where do you get your motivation from?

I get my motivation from other people in the industry that have come before who have been voices for change. I respect people who want to disrupt things and that inspires me to tell their stories.

What is the one thing you did that changed the game for you?

Definitely setting up Brown Girl Sport, it blew up a bit in a way that I never would have imagined. Now, seeing that community become a real life physical group of people is the craziest thing. We go to football games and we have events where these girls and women have a chance to be in spaces they haven’t been in historically.

What’s the one thing you still want to achieve?

Personally, I’d love to make more documentaries. For Brown Girl Sport, I want us to keep creating physical spaces for South Asian women and girls in sport because it still feels like a juxtaposition in football. I want us to get the game to a place where it feels like it’s made for us.