A real team, in a real office, who actually know your sector.
Unlike most martial arts organisations, BMABA is run by an employed team rather than volunteers fitting it around something else. Safeguarding, governance, technology, communications and member support, from our Petworth headquarters and across the UK.
Governed properly. Audited independently.
BMABA CIC is a Community Interest Company regulated by the CIC Regulator, with a legal asset lock binding every pound to our mission. We are led by a senior leadership team spanning executive, governance and safeguarding, and operations, working within management systems certified to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2022 under UKAS accreditation and externally audited every year.
Safeguarding governance sits deliberately apart from commercial leadership. Our Designated Safeguarding Lead is empowered to act on any concern, at any level of the organisation, including against the Chief Executive. That separation is the point of it.
Giovanni Soffietto
Giovanni is the award-winning social entrepreneur behind the British Martial Arts and Boxing Association. Raised in poverty and having launched BMABA with twenty pounds of start-up capital, he embodies the power of martial arts to transform lives and break generational cycles of disadvantage.
With more than 25 years in martial arts as a participant, instructor and fighter, he brings a lived understanding of the sector and a track record of building sustainable, mission-led organisations from the ground up without funding or external backing. He remains the strategic and operational driving force behind our growth, innovation and national impact.
Senior Leadership Team
The four people accountable for how BMABA is run. Three of the four senior leadership roles are held by women.
Giovanni
Founder & Chief ExecutiveGiovanni holds executive accountability for BMABA’s strategy, commercial performance and technology. He has led the organisation through fourteen years of unbroken self-funded growth, its conversion to a Community Interest Company, and certification to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2022 under UKAS accreditation, where he serves as governance lead for both management systems. He directs our national partnerships and sector reform work, and personally architected the digital infrastructure the association runs on. A martial artist of more than 25 years.
Read his story
Helen
Head of Governance & Safeguarding, Designated Safeguarding LeadHelen leads our governance and safeguarding function, bringing nearly two decades of school leadership to the role, including headship of two schools within a federation. A qualified teacher with a master’s degree, Helen also chairs a voluntary committee within an educational charity. She is an expert in safeguarding, SEND and inclusion, and strategic oversight. As Designated Safeguarding Lead, Helen holds the independence to act on any concern, at any level of the organisation.
Our safeguarding
Niki
Operations ManagerNiki has been part of BMABA for a decade, building and leading the customer service and administration function that thousands of instructors rely on every week. With a background in customer management honed at Men’s Health, she works alongside Giovanni and Helen to hold standards across the organisation and turn them into the responsive, human support BMABA is known for.
Talk to the team
Kirsty
Head of Social ImpactKirsty leads our social and environmental mission, the work that makes our Community Interest Company status mean something in practice. She founded and runs the Fighting Chance Baby Bank from our Petworth headquarters, supporting local families with essentials for babies and young children, and oversees our wider community programmes alongside our environmental commitments, including tree planting through Ecologi and clean water provision through charity: water.
Our charitable impactThe wider team
Membership services, administration, safeguarding support, inclusion, education, technical support and development. Not all of us are martial artists, but we are united by a belief in what martial arts does for communities.
The kind of employer we choose to be
The standards we hold the sector to start at home.
BMABA is an inclusive employer by conviction rather than compliance. Our team spans a broad mix of ages, genders and backgrounds, with women holding three of our four senior leadership roles. We are a neurodivergent-led organisation, from our Chief Executive through members of our wider team, and we build working practices around how people actually think and work best rather than around convention.
We are proud signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant, and we pay every member of staff the real Living Wage. We invest in young people, creating first-career opportunities and structured development in a sector that has rarely offered either. And because our headquarters also hosts the Fighting Chance Baby Bank, the values we employ by and the values we serve by share a front door.
We put down roots as well as standards. From our home in Petworth we contribute to the upkeep and heritage of the town, support local historical research, and lend our expertise and technology to amateur and community groups whenever it is needed.
We donate to local sports teams, charities and schools, and we deliver martial arts in small rural schools that would otherwise have no access to it, because a national organisation should still be a good neighbour. Wherever we can fund locally, we do.
Our Charitable ImpactMulti-Award Winning & Nationally Recognised
Ministerial Commendation And Parliamentary Recognition
“Organisations such as the British Martial Arts and Boxing Association support unaffiliated martial arts providers to adopt the safeguarding code… Providers with recognition under the code can display a logo on their promotional materials to show participants that their safety measures have been vetted.”
BMABA CIC has been recognised at the highest levels of Government for our commitment to safeguarding in martial arts. During a House of Commons debate on combat sport safety, the Minister for Sport, Stephanie Peacock MP, highlighted the British Martial Arts & Boxing Association by name for our work in supporting independent and unaffiliated clubs to adopt the Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts. This direct mention in Parliament demonstrates that our efforts to raise standards and protect participants are shaping the national conversation on safety in combat sports.
Following that debate, the Minister for Sport wrote formally to commend BMABA’s work, praising our role in raising safeguarding standards across the independent martial arts sector. She described our contribution as “extremely useful” to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s ongoing policy development, and thanked us for our ongoing efforts to make martial arts safer for children. This recognition reflects the trust placed in BMABA to help Government address urgent safeguarding challenges highlighted by recent tragedies within combat sports.
For our members and the wider martial arts community, this recognition underlines BMABA’s credibility as a leading voice for independent martial arts in the UK. It demonstrates that our grassroots-driven mission, to promote safe, inclusive, and properly governed martial arts for all, is influencing national policy and gaining ministerial support. Being referenced in Parliament and commended in writing by the Minister for Sport reinforces that BMABA is not just a governing body, but a sector-shaping organisation working to protect participants and secure the future of martial arts.
“I appreciate your ongoing efforts to make martial arts safer for children.”
Don’t Take Our Word For Any Of It.
Every credential on this page can be checked without asking us. Here’s each one, its registration, and the independent public register where you can verify it yourself, in about thirty seconds.
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ISO 9001:2015 Certification Issued by the British Assessment Bureau under UKAS accreditation. Verify us directly on UKAS CertCheck, the national accreditation body's own public register.Certificate 267261 Verify on UKAS CertCheck
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ISO 27001:2022 Certification Issued by the British Assessment Bureau under UKAS accreditation following our July 2026 audit. Listed on the same UKAS CertCheck entry as our ISO 9001.Certified July 2026 Verify on UKAS CertCheck
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Companies House & CIC Status Our full filing history as a Community Interest Company, including our annual CIC community interest reports, is public at Companies House.Reg. 10676965 View our filings
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ICO Data Protection Registration Our registration under UK data protection law, on the Information Commissioner's Office public register.ZA241917 View the register
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Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts Sport England's own safeguarding pages publicly reference our Club Colours provision under the Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts. Read it on their site, not ours.Club Colours Approved Read it on Sport England
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UK Register of Learning Providers Our listing on the UK Government's official register of learning providers, under provider reference 10098149.UKPRN 10098149 View our listing
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Social Enterprise UK Our listing in Social Enterprise UK's public member directory, certifying BMABA as a business trading for social and community good.Certified Member View our listing
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FCA Register (Insurance Introductions) We act as an Introducer Appointed Representative of Pulse Insurance Limited (FCA Registration 308626). View Pulse's entry, and its representatives, on the public Financial Services Register.IAR of Pulse Insurance, Reg. 308626 View the FS Register
And While We’re Being Transparent: What We Don’t Claim
Credibility cuts both ways. These are the things you won’t hear us say, because they wouldn’t be true.
- We are not a Sport England-recognised National Governing Body, and we don't pretend to be. As a multi-style organisation we're broadly ineligible, and we're honest about what NGB recognition does and doesn't mean.
- Our Cyber Essentials certification is the standard tier. We don't claim Cyber Essentials Plus, and we won't until we hold it.
- We're a CIMSPA Training Provider Partner. Individual courses are submitted for formal CIMSPA endorsement and we confirm endorsed status course by course, never wholesale.
- Every award we display was genuinely entered, judged and awarded. Finalist means finalist, winner means winner, and we label each one accordingly.
Behind the chat, a full-time team who know martial arts.
Our AI assistant handles the straightforward questions instantly, at any hour. Everything else reaches a person: a full-time, UK-based team who know the sector and will give you a straight answer, including when the answer is that we are not the right fit for your club.
