Sky Sports head of directors and directors’ assistants Sara Chenery has spent over 30 years with the broadcaster.“The difference now, certainly over the last 10 years, is that we have evolved to make sure that there’s development time, a line management strategy, and everything else to make sure that people are developing and growing all the time.”Sky Sports’ head of directors and directors’ assistants Sara Chenery wasn’t the beneficiary of such a system when she joined the industry over 30 years ago. She had to rely on the luck of her dad, who was a chauffer for several Sky execs, hearing that a secretary was needed at the broadcaster. From there, she took the opportunity to look after the guests at an outside broadcast when the production were short, and she told Broadcast Sport, “I think that was the first time I saw a production gallery, and I thought, ‘my goodness, this is this is amazing.’”From there, Chenery took time on evenings and weekends to shadow people on productions, before getting a chance as a production secretary through this a few months later. Then, every time, “someone was ill, or had got caught up,” she would take the opportunity to try new roles, her success in them helping her to continue progress and end up in her current role. Along the way, Chenery became the youngest person to ever do VT replays, and to have directed boxing - which she continues to specialise in.“I think for most of my career steps I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I tried to learn from others and then give it a go,” Chenery explained. “When I started, you had to do it on your own time. People love talking about what they do, and they love sharing knowledge.”At the time, this circuitous route wasn’t as unusual as it may seem now, particularly at Sky. Chenery believes the broadcaster’s flexible approach to careers is a strength. “You could come in as an accountant and retrain to be a camera operator, or you could come in as an operator and retrain to be accountant,” she explained, which allowed people like her to enter the industry without having to go to university.Chenery became used to people being, “quite surprised,” when meeting a female director, “We had a couple of women who worked in the director’s assistant role which was good, but apart from that it was heavily male.”However, she saw some benefits to this, saying, “I’ve always thought of it as a bit of a superpower, because if people underestimate what you’re there for, that’s OK. My biggest strength is that I don’t mind asking stupid questions. Even now, when I go out on a site survey or something like that, I’ll ask something stupid, and I’ll get the answer and half the other people won’t have known the answer. If you go in with the mentality that you don’t mind if anyone underestimates you and you’re happy to ask the daft questions, what you end up with is having the most power and the most information because people are happy to share with you.”Reactions were mixed, with, notably, the Boxing Writers’ Awards not allowing women to attend for much of her career before Sky played a part in pressuring it to change. There was also support from other quarters, “I’m very lucky that I had some great people that were really helpful and supportive of me, and were really keen to see a woman succeed in the role. Then along the way there were some people that, maybe, had a bit of unconscious bias, rather than anything out of the ordinary, just because they were surprised.”Generally, boxing was an area of support, “A lot of the boxing gyms I’d go to were really supportive of women within sport,” and continues to be - Chenery noted that from her experience boxing has the highest female contingent of any sport.Looking forward, Chenery believes that the confidence to take on new challenges, as she has shown through her career, is key to women continuing to succeed in the industry. “If you’d have asked me five years ago, I’d have said cameras [was an area that needed more female representation], but we’ve absolutely smashed that now. I think the place we’re at now is that nobody discounting themselves. Sometimes that can be a trait that’s more more prevalent in women than men, not always, but to discount yourself on a role and think, ‘Oh, I can’t do that.’If I look at all of the technical roles where women are really good and really strong, whether that’s sound or cameras, they’ve probably all had male allies who have said, ‘Yeah, of course you can, you crack on and do it.’ They have just needed that to then prove themselves. So I think we’re very blessed that we have quite a strong network of people championing people, and that’s what you need. I think it all comes down to confidence at the end of the day.”Helping parents and carers to stay in the industry is another area, “we spend a lot of time on,” Chenery added, as well as making sure that freelancers are supported. Chenery regularly invites people interested in the industry to come and shadow productions, with some then going on to pick up roles when they come up - much as she did when she was younger. This sharing of knowledge, and letting people try many different areas of production, is seen as key to bring new people into the industry, “There are so many different roles, that when I came in I didn’t even know what any of them were. We have a duty to try and give people that exposure and let them see a little bit.”An example of how far women in sport have come is the Unstoppable fight night, which Chenery is speaking ahead of. The all-women’s world championship event takes place on 7 March at Royal Albert Hall, and Chenery said, “It’s great that it’s women’s sport. That’s brilliant. We have so much of it on Sky now. But the best thing from my stance is that it’s brilliant boxing, whether it’s men or women. We have quite a lot of mixed cards now, and it’s great that we’ve got that many good [female boxers] that we can have an all-female one, because it’s nice to celebrate something like that.”Watch Unstoppable, an historic all-women’s world championship event at the Royal Albert Hall, live on Sky Sports and NOW on Friday 7 March.
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