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In Exchange is a series of stories about people in the sport for development community learning, building and growing together. These stories explore how mentorship and shared exchange can shape leadership, ideas and impact.
Kicking off with an Innovation Hub Enterprise365 pairing, where structure, reflection and shared experience helped shape one social enterprise’s growth.
Rekha Dey wasn’t sure what she would get out of mentorship.
Running a social enterprise in India meant managing growing workloads with limited resources. Revenue wasn’t increasing at the same pace, and expanding her team wasn’t an option. “Performing well within limited resources was the biggest challenge,” she said.
It wasn’t until her third conversation with Fiona Pelham that something shifted.
“That was when the bell rang,” Rekha said.
Fiona, CEO of Positive Impact, a global nonprofit that provides education, engagement and collaboration to create a more sustainable event sector, didn’t come in with answers. Instead, she asked Rekha to take a step back. ‘What actually needed to get done in the next four weeks? What could wait?’
It sounds simple. But for Rekha, it changed how she approached her work.
Rekha, Managing Partner & Sports for Development Specialist at Tanjun Associate LLP is part of Enterprise365, a strand of the Olympism365 Innovation Hub, a collaboration between the International Olympic Committee, Women Win and Beyond Sport. As part of its activities, the Enterprise365 strand pairs social enterprise leaders using sport to advance social change with mentors who support them in strengthening strategy, sustainability and leadership.
Through Tanjun’s Sport for Earth work, Rekha uses sport to support climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods, including through bamboo-made sports equipment and youth-led climate action initiatives.
That focus on sustainability created a natural point of connection with Fiona’s own work, grounding the mentorship in shared questions about how purpose-driven organizations can build models that sustain impact over time.
For Rekha, those questions of structure and sustainability were closely tied to a challenge many in the sector face: how to strengthen impact while building something that can endure.
Over time, the mentorship conversations helped Rekha bring more focus to everything she was managing. Instead of reacting to whatever came up, she started connecting day-to-day tasks to bigger goals.
But the shift wasn’t about being told what to do.
“She encouraged me to refine and iterate on my own ideas rather than doing things for me,” Rekha said.
Fiona saw her role the same way.
“I saw my role as a mentor as helping Rekha find her answers within her context, rather than bringing fixed ideas based on my past experience,” she said.
That meant the work stayed grounded in Rekha’s reality, not someone else’s version of what should work.
Some of the biggest changes were practical.
Together, they built a simple Excel work plan. It helped Rekha break projects into smaller steps, track progress week to week, and stay focused on what actually mattered.
“It transformed how I approached my work,” she said.
Fiona could see the difference.
“Rekha definitely increased her confidence because she had a clearer structure and focus,” she said. “It showed in how she spoke about her work and the progress she was making.”
The relationship was clearly defined as a mentor and mentee. But at times, it felt more like a conversation between people doing similar work.
“There were always small opportunities for peer exchange,” Fiona said. “We’re both working in environments focused on impact and change-making, so I could empathize with some of the challenges Rekha shared and feel less alone in that work.”
Like most things, it wasn’t always easy to fit in. Meetings had to be rescheduled around field work and day-to-day demands.
But the changes stuck.
Rekha still uses the systems they built together. More than that, she’s thinking differently about how she works—what to focus on, how to plan, and how to lead as her organization grows.
Invest in the Olympism365 Innovation Hub
Cultivate an ecosystem of innovators and social enterprises across the sport, social impact and tech sectors through the Olympism365 Innovation Hub. Launched with seed funding provided by the IOC, Beyond Sport and Women Win are seeking partners to drive further innovation.
If you are interested in investing in the Olympism365 Innovation Hub and our innovators, contact us at [email protected]
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