When Siiri Fagerlund was a teenager, she walked away from competitive swimming. Partly, it was a question of priorities. School mattered to her, and balancing elite sport with everything else became increasingly difficult. But there was another reason too: the sporting environment no longer felt right.
“I needed more support and more understanding,” she recalls. Years later, sport would draw her back. This time not as an athlete, but as a leader.
Today, Siiri is the Executive Director of Helsingin Luistelijat, Finland’s largest figure skating club. Before entering the world of sports management, she spent eight years building a career in communications.
Her return to sport began after moving to a new city and joining a local masters swimming group. There, she experienced something very different from her teenage years: a supportive coach, a strong sense of belonging and a community that quickly became part of her everyday life.
“That kind of kick-started me getting more and more involved in swimming again,” says Siiri. What started as a hobby soon led to coaching, volunteer leadership roles and eventually a career change.
An outsider’s perspective
Today, creating better environment for athletes is at the heart of her work. “I want sport to become more athlete focused.” For Siiri, that means giving young athletes time to develop, protecting the enjoyment of sport and helping coaches better understand the needs of young people.
Her own experiences continue to shape that mission. In both swimming and figure skating, she has seen the pressures that can lead to burnout, injuries and athletes leaving sport too early.
“I came into figure skating from the outside, and because of that people listen. I am allowed to ask difficult questions,” she says. Being an outsider has given her a perspective that insiders sometimes lack. Rather than accepting established practices simply because they have always existed, she is willing to challenge assumptions and ask whether they truly serve athletes.
The same willingness to question norms has shaped her experience as a leader. Working in both the corporate and sports worlds, she has encountered expectations about how women should behave: be capable, but not too visible; ambitious, but not too outspoken.
One comment, intended as a compliment, has stayed with her. “You’ve got some balls,” someone once told her. The remark was meant to acknowledge her decisiveness, resilience and willingness to take responsibility. Yet for Siiri, it also revealed how deeply leadership qualities are still associated with masculinity.
“I understood what they meant,” she says. “But I’d rather we simply recognised those qualities for what they are: leadership.”
For her, effective leadership is not about gender. It is about having the courage to make decisions, ask difficult questions and stand by your values. Those qualities belong to good leaders, regardless of whether they are women or men.
Building a more sustainable sporting culture
When asked what she hopes for the future of sport, Siiri’s answer returns to the idea that brought her back in the first place: enjoyment, belonging and the freedom to follow different paths. “Have fun and allow space for different paths.”
For Siiri, elite sport and lifelong participation are not opposites. They are part of the same ecosystem. “When we nurture passion at every level, we create stronger athletes, more committed coaches and more sustainable communities.”
It is a philosophy shaped by her own journey: from a young athlete who felt she needed more support to a leader working to ensure that the next generation receives exactly that.