Chris: “Sports diplomacy consultancy?”
Tom: “Let’s go!”
With very different professional backgrounds and networks, we wondered what would happen if we united 30 years of sporting excellence with 20 years of diplomatic foreign policy experience.
It felt instantly inspiring. We felt that sport, rooted in and for the benefit of communities, could make the world a better place as it is key to health, to happiness and to societal cohesion.
We also saw that in a politically fragmented world with multiple competing crises, sport offers a tangible space in which to build local and global community.
Tom Williams
Tom began his career with a degree in Human Biology, Exercise, and Health from Oxford Brookes University in the late 1990s, then worked as a personal trainer in Leeds during the early 2000s, while also serving as a fitness conditioner for elite athletes and sports teams.
In 2005, he earned his Master’s Degree in Sport & Exercise Science from Leeds Beckett University, before taking up a post as Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at The University of Leeds from 2006 until 2010. During his time at the university, Tom helped to establish the Woodhouse Moor parkrun in Leeds, the fourth parkrun event and the first outside London.
In 2010, Tom joined parkrun, where he worked his way up through various leadership positions, including UK Event Activator, UK Country Manager, UK Managing Director, and Global Chief Operating Officer.
Thanks partly to Tom’s contribution, parkrun is now a global success story with over 10 million registered members and over 400,000 people taking part every week across over 20 countries. The organisation recorded its 100-millionth instance of participation in 2023, and is widely recognised as the world’s largest mass participation sporting event.
In July 2024, Tom was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Sport Science by Leeds Beckett University, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to public participation in exercise, and in 2025 was inducted into the Leeds Beckett University Carnegie Sport Hall of Fame in the Leadership Category.
Chris Lomax MBE
Chris dedicated much of his 20-year diplomatic career at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) to leading multilateral negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva. He received an MBE for repeatedly securing international consensus to protect human rights, prevent conflict, genocide and mass atrocity.
Throughout his career, Chris built and led teams across UK Government Departments - spanning the UK’s diplomatic network - and worked with many countries at multilateral organisations including at the UN, G7, EU, OSCE, NATO and G7.
Chris has expertise in geo-political and geo-economic super forecasting for foreign policy; led Foreign Office policy on women’s rights; created the FCDO's external challenge function that injected private sector, academic and think tank expertise into government policy; and most recently led FCDO work on the Horn of Africa. Chris’ previous diplomatic roles also include Deputy Ambassador to Eritrea and UK Japan Policy Officer.
Outside of government, Chris has delivered workshops for UN bodies, guest lectured on negotiation skills at the FCDO’s Diplomatic Academy, Lancaster University and the University of Leeds. For a number of years, he mentored college students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and has an MA at Distinction level in International Human Rights Law from the University of London.