Sarai Bareman

Sarai Bareman – FIFA Chief Women’s Football Officer

After a successful 12-year career in the banking and finance industry in New Zealand, Sarai started her career in football administration in 2009 working for the Samoan Football Federation, where she also played for the national team.

Following two years of rebuilding the financial management of the association, Sarai took over as Chief Executive Officer and continued to grow and develop the sport of football in the country. In July 2014, she moved to New Zealand to take up the position of Deputy General Secretary at the Oceania Football Confederation where she continued working diligently towards the growth of football in the wider Pacific Region.

In 2015, Sarai was appointed as the sole female member of the FIFA Reforms Committee, where she advocated for concrete requirements to secure the presence of more women in leadership positions and more resources for the women’s game. She has become one of those leaders herself and is now in a position to promote and drive the implementation of those measures.

She was appointed FIFA’s first ever Chief Women’s Football Officer in 2016 and she currently heads the Women’s Football Division as a member of FIFA’s Management Board.

Since taking up her role with FIFA, Sarai has overseen the launch of organisations first ever global strategy for women’s football and the delivery of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France 2019 - the most successful edition of the tournament to date with more the 1 billion broadcast viewers worldwide and stadium audiences totalling more than 1 million fans.

Bareman also led the implementation of new, tailor-made development programmes to support FIFA’s 211 Member Associations in developing women’s football around the globe. The next edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023 will be co-hosted in her home country New Zealand and neighbouring Australia, where the key focus will be leaving a lasting legacy for women’s football in the region and beyond.