Kate Aldridge | UK

Bio

Kate Aldridge is Director of Business Operations and EDI at the England and Wales Cricket Board, where she leads on cricket’s ambition to become the most inclusive team sport.

 

A member of the ECB executive management team, Kate is focused on embedding EDI principles within her wider remit of strategy, operations, and insight. Since 2023, she has led the game’s response to the seminal Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report, overseeing a broad programme of structural, cultural and regulatory change across the professional and recreational game.

 

Kate has also been a Non-Executive Director at Badminton England for the past three years, where she Chairs the Governance Committee. Her leadership is characterised by practical delivery, evidence-led decision making and a commitment to creating lasting change across sport.

 

Provide in depth information about you and your current job role.

As Director of Business Operations & EDI, and member of the executive management team, at the England and Wales Cricket Board I lead a diverse team across business operations, strategy, insights and equity, diversity and inclusion.

 

My role is both organisational and cricket-wide. I ensure that ECB to operates effectively as a national governing body, while also leading the strategy and delivery to help cricket become the most inclusive team sport in England and Wales.

 

In practice, this means working across the ECB, the professional game and the recreational cricket network, including the 56 County Cricket Organisations part-funded by the ECB. My work includes:

• leading the development and implementation of cricket’s EDI Action Plan;
• overseeing the design, delivery and ongoing monitoring of the ECB’s response to the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report;
• working with Boards, CEOs, senior leaders and operational teams to embed inclusive practice into governance, organisational culture, recruitment, and community participation; and
• using data and insight to drive accountability, including through developing an industry leading EDI dashboard that objectively measures cricket’s progress across key indicators.

My background in strategy and innovation, data and analytics, and programme management has shaped the way I approach EDI: not as a standalone initiative, but as a core part of how cricket plans, invests, governs and delivers. I work collaboratively with colleagues across the ECB and the wider game to turn ambition into practical, measurable impact.

 

Why do you feel you have been selected for the Head of Diversity & Inclusion Award?

I believe I have been selected because I have led significant, measurable and sustained EDI change across one of the UK’s major sports at a time when cricket has had to confront difficult truths about structural inequality, discrimination and exclusion.

 

Since the publication of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report in 2023, I have been responsible for leading the game’s response and turning a wide-ranging set of recommendations into an organised programme of delivery. That has required strategic leadership alongside relentless focus on operational delivery, as well as emotional intelligence to bring a diverse collection of stakeholders on the journey.

 

The reason I believe this nomination is appropriate is not any single project, but the way the work has been led. I have translated a highly complex, emotionally charged and public set of challenges into a clear plan that has been delivered by hundreds of people across multiple organisations.

 

Under my leadership I have taken EDI from a set of commitments on paper into meaningful action that has fundamentally changed the way the landscape of cricket, with the principles of inclusion becoming embedded into business-as-usual.

 

What diversity initiatives have you implemented within your workplace across the following diversity strands?: Age | Disability | Gender | LGBT | Race | Religion & Faith

 

My work has focused on making EDI part of the core way cricket operates, rather than a series of disconnected campaigns or programmes. The initiatives below sit across the ECB as a workplace and across the wider cricket network, including the 56 County Cricket Organisations part-funded by the ECB.

 

Through my team, I have established five employee resource groups comprising of ECB staff, as well as staff who work at Professional Cricket Clubs and Recreational Cricket Boards. These ERGs are: Women in Cricket, Race in Cricket, Social Equality, LGBT+ Community in Cricket and Cricketability (disability) networks. I provide ringfenced funding to enable these groups to host events and activities, as well as resource support for recruitment of committee members, strategy design, and operational delivery.

 

• Gender: A key part focus of my work has been improving gender representation in leadership structures. In particularly, through setting the standards of the County Governance Framework, I had overseen significant improvements in Board diversity across cricket. Women now make up 40% of Professional County Club Boards and 41% of Recreational Cricket Boards, compared with 9% and 12% respectively in 2019. This has been achieved through targeted support with executive search firms as well as the setting and enforcement of targets linked to ECB funding.
• Race and ethnicity: A major part of my role has been leading cricket’s response to the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report and supporting a more systematic approach to tackling racism and exclusion. This has included delivery of a meaningful programme of racial literacy training across ECB and the cricket network for the top 150 senior leaders. The governance framework mentioned above has also focused on improving diversity on Boards with Professional County Club Boards now at 22% ethnic diversity and Recreational Cricket Boards at 18% ethnic diversity, compared with 6% and 3% respectively in 2019. As of 2026, the ECB’s Board was 33% ethnically diverse, exceeding the ECB’s 20% target. I have worked closely with the ECB’s talent development team to improve representation in playing pathways with ethnic diversity almost doubling in both the boys’ and girls’ talent pathways between 2019 and 2026.
• Religion and faith: I have delivered inclusion work that recognises the importance of faith and culture in how people experience cricket. This has included hosting community and staff events to mark Ramadan, Diwali, Vaisakhi and other moments that create space for education, celebration and connection in partnership with the Race in Cricket network. Through our online education platform accessible to anyone involved in cricket, I have provided access to guidance and first-person content that helps people understand how to deliver more inclusive sport in their community (e.g., guidance supporting athletes who are fasting).
• LGBT+ inclusion: I have supported practical inclusion activity through employee networks, Pride and Rainbow Laces activations, guidance for the cricket network and work with partners such as Out4Cricket. The game-wide census shows LGBTQ+ representation is strong across the county network and ECB, exceeding the UK average. Through an internal communications campaign we increased disclosure rates from 12% to 98% for gender identity and from 29% to 70% for sexual orientation, helping ECB be able to better understand its staff demographics.
• Disability: A key part of my role has been helping to establish the Cricketability employee network, creating a dedicated voice for disabled, D/deaf and neurodiverse colleagues, and colleagues with long-term health conditions. The network has helped bring lived experience into organisational conversations, raise awareness of accessibility and inclusion barriers, and support more practical conversations about reasonable adjustments and inclusive workplace practice. ECB is a Disability Confident Employer and I have piloted the use of Inclusion Passport to support ECB staff in communicating their needs. Across cricket our disability inclusion gap has narrowed from -15%pts in 2023 to -6%pts in 2025.

 

Although not listed in the template, socio-economic background has been a key feature of my work as class and school background are significant barriers to involvement cricket. My role has focused on ensuring that we collect meaningful data across our workforce and playing base to ensure meaningful interventions can be put in place. In this time the ECB has increased its disclosure rates from . I have worked closely with the talent pathway team to develop and fund a strategy that increased coaching and match-play opportunities for state school students by 50%, and doubled our investment in local hubs that support the most talented teenagers to develop.

 

The ECB’s strategy – Inspiring Generations – which I am responsible for ensuring is delivered, has as its overarching ambition for cricket to become the most inclusive team sport. For EDI specifically, we aim to improve our EDI Dashboard grade from D+ to B by 2028. This dashboard uses quantitative measures to objective assess progress on diversity, inclusion, equity, and fair access which are converted into school grades to aid understanding. For Diversity we report against gender, ethnicity, LGBT+, disability and socio-economic background and compare these to UK averages. We also report on inclusion gaps for these demographics too, as well as ECB’s gender and ethnicity pay gap.

 

What impact have these initiatives had on your workplace? [300-500 words]

The impact has been both cultural and structural. At the ECB, EDI is no longer treated as a separate programme owned only by a specialist team. It is increasingly part of how the whole organisation plans, invests, and makes decisions.

The most important workplace shift has been accountability. EDI is built into our business planning process (which I oversee), and annual census and dashboard data is used to identify gaps and develop targeted action. I have monthly meetings with the ECB’s Chair to discuss progress on EDI and it features as a conversation at Board meetings on a regular basis.

 

Key areas of progress include:

• Staff understanding of EDI has improved through training my team has designed and delivered with a 28%pt increase in staff saying they understand and feel educated across the breadth of EDI.
• The ECB has materially improved disclosure rates, including gender identity disclosure rising from 12% to 98%, and sexual orientation disclosure from 29% to 70%.
• Inclusive Employer’s feedback report from the recent Silver accreditation described the ECB’s approach as “well developed and evidence led”, with strong use of data, intersectional analysis, leadership engagement and public reporting.

Across the cricket network, the impact has been the creation of clearer and more consistent expectations. Through the County Partnership Agreement and County Governance Framework, County Cricket Organisations are required to meet EDI standards covering education, Board diversity, having dedicated Board and executive EDI Leads, publishing public EDI action plans and progress reports on an annual basis.

 

Across the County Cricket network there has been material improvements in a number of metrics:

• Game-wide census data shows four out of five inclusion gaps have narrowed since 2023, including the disability inclusion gap closing from -15%pts to -6%pts, and all other demographics having a gap of 5%pt or less.
• Inclusion levels for ethnically diverse staff in cricket’s workforce increased from 73% in 2024 to 84% in 2025, closing the gap compared with white staff.
• Racial literacy and inclusive leadership work has strengthened expectations of senior leaders and given them a clearer role in creating anti-racist and inclusive cultures.
• The EDI dashboard has created a more objective way of measuring progress across inclusion, diversity, equity and fair access, helping the game identify where further attention is needed.

Cricket has not yet solved every issue or fixed all of the underlying structural and institutional challenges. However, the game now has stronger systems: clearer standards, better data, more visible leadership accountability, more targeted investment and more practical mechanisms for change. Independent assessment by Sport Structures in September 2025 described cricket as “a game in motion” that has moved from acknowledgement to action. That is a material shift from aspiration to delivery, and it gives the ECB and the wider sport a stronger platform for long-term cultural change.

 

Have you or your company received any accolades as a result of your work surrounding equality, diversity & inclusion?

The ECB’s EDI work has received external recognition, including being a finalist for Diversity Team of the Year at the British Diversity Awards 2025. In the same year, I was also personally shortlisted for Head of Diversity of the Year at the DIVA LGBT+ Awards.

 

The ECB received a Silver Award from in the Inclusive Employers Standard. The 2025 feedback report scored the ECB above the UK average in every assessed pillar and described our approach as well developed, evidence led and supported by strong systems for data, governance, leadership engagement and public reporting.

 

Please provide a name and contact details of a person we can contact to make this evidence credible.

Clare Connor