Tess Howard MBE
Tess Howard MBE is an Olympian and Commonwealth gold medal winning hockey player, holding more than 120 caps for England and Great Britain.
A current player in the England Hockey League Premier Division for East Grinstead, her story is one of resilience and vision as an athlete, academic, and activist.
She was awarded an MBE for services to inclusive sportswear for women and girls in the 2025 New Years Honours.
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More About Tess Howard MBE
When Tess Howard MBE made her senior debut for Great Britain at 19, she expected the intensity, pressure, and scrutiny that come with elite sport. But what she didn’t expect was how much discomfort could be created by her sportswear.
“At GB we trained in shorts every day, just like every other team in the world. But for matches, we had to wear skirts. They were compression, very tight, and the tops were compression tank tops.”
Her discomfort wasn’t only physical. Body image anxieties, which she had never experienced before, were amplified as her image appeared on TV screens and social media. This problem sparked a deeper question around whether this was just a personal issue or whether it was widespread.
As part of her undergraduate dissertation, she studied the impact of gendered uniform policies on girls’ participation in sport. She found that 100% of the 400 women surveyed said they wanted choice at school, and 70% had seen girls drop out of sport due to the sports kit and body image concerns.
Following her paper and global campaigning for uniform choice, she successfully campaigned to change international hockey rules in 2023 to allow choice of shorts and skorts in the same team.
She also founded Inclusive Sportswear, a non-profit working to make choice the norm in kit policies across all schools and sports. Her school advocacy work reached parliament, and she helped changed the PE kit guidance to support choice, keeping more girls in sport.
She won the British Diversity Awards ‘Athlete Powering Positive Change’ award in early 2026.
Tess Howard MBE | Speaking Topics
– Leadership
– Elite Sport
– Vision
– Mindset
– Resilience
– Teamwork
– Communication
– Determination
– Overcoming Adversity
– Mental Health
– Recovery
– Inclusion
– Activism
– Social Change
– Women’s Sport
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