Meet The Team & Committee Behind The Award Winning Martial Arts Association BMABA - British Martial Arts & Boxing Association (BMABA) For Clubs & Instructors

Meet The Team

We’re proud to be powered by a dedicated, skilled team working tirelessly behind the scenes to support our members and mission.

From safeguarding and compliance to technology, communications, and customer service, every member of our team brings passion, professionalism, and deep expertise to their role. While not all of us are martial artists, we’re united by a shared belief in what martial arts can do for communities – and in the values that BMABA represents.

Unlike many martial arts organisations, we operate with a dedicated employed team at our Petworth HQ and elsewhere throughout the UK, so our members receive responsive, knowledgeable support backed by decades of combined experience.

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’re 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, with a Designated Safeguarding Lead empowered to act on any concern, at any level.

Giovanni Soffietto

FOUNDER & CEO

Giovanni Soffietto is the award-winning social entrepreneur behind the British Martial Arts & Boxing Association. Raised in poverty and having launched BMABA with just £20 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 of martial arts experience as a participant, instructor and fighter, Giovanni brings a deep, 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 BMABA’s growth, innovation and nationwide impact.

Senior Leadership Team (SLT)

The expert team overseeing BMABA

Giovanni

Founder, CEO

Giovanni 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 BMABA’s national partnerships and sector reform work, and personally architected the digital infrastructure the association runs on. A martial artist of more than 25 years.

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Helen

Head of Governance & Safeguarding, Designated Safeguarding Lead

Helen leads BMABA’s 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, who also chairs an educational non-profit, 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.

Niki

Operations Manager

Niki 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.

Kirsty

Head of Social Impact

Kirsty leads BMABA’s 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.

The Wider Team

Bella

Marketing & Membership Services

Anna

Administration

Christina

Strategic Support & Safeguarding

Cat

Customer Services

Elizabeth

Administration

Jenny

SENCO & Inclusion Advisor

Sue

Educational Specialist

Rainer

Technical Support

Tharsh

Developer

Geoff

Retained Videographer

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, not 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, not 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 our 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’s 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.