Dame Sarai Bareman, of Zurich, Switzerland, DNZM, for services to football governance.
Dame Sarai Bareman has been contributing to football internationally and in New Zealand for a number of years.Dame Sarai was initially the Finance Manager for the Football Federation of Samoa and then Chief Executive Officer between 2008 and 2014. In 2014, she became Deputy General Secretary of the Oceania Football Confederation. In 2015, she was appointed as the only female member of FIFA’s Reform Committee, advocating for increased numbers of women in leadership and the prioritisation of women’s football. Consequentially, the first FIFA Women’s Football Division was established in 2016 and she was appointed as FIFA’s first Chief Women’s Football Officer, overseeing the delivery of the Women’s World Cups, the development of the game across the 211 member countries and increasing the number of women at all levels of football. She was instrumental in hosting the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in New Zealand and Australia, the most attended women’s sporting event in history with a record number of attendees in New Zealand for a football match, men’s or women’s. That record was broken three times during the tournament, with the final number sitting at 43,217 attendees. Dame Sarai launched the first ever global women’s football strategy in 2018, encouraging empowerment through football and growing the game.