Football as a Vehicle for Change: Using Football Stories for Social Impact with Kely Nascimento

This week's podcast guest is Kely Nascimento – founder and CEO of The Impact Game, President of the Nascimento Foundation, global sport and narrative strategist, and daughter of Brazilian legend Pelé.

Kely's career has travelled through art school, graphic design, photography, theatre, and content creation, before converging on purpose-driven storytelling in football, particularly in women's sport and social impact. Drawing on a life lived between Brazil, the United States, and Paris, she has developed a unique lens on how art, culture, and human behaviour intersect with football.

In this conversation, we go deep into storytelling as a tool for social change, why football is such a powerful vehicle for humanity's stories, and how better listening, empathy, and diversity in decision-making can unlock the "untapped power" of women's narratives in sport.

During the podcast chat we spoke about:

1. Football is the vehicle, not the destination
   Kely's real subject is people, not sport. Football is simply a powerful global stage to explore human behaviour, identity, culture, and social issues. If you love something outside sport (art, music, law, education), you can still bring that into football as your vehicle.

2. The best storytelling starts with understanding yourself
   Every story passes through your personal "filter" of experiences, beliefs and biases. Effective storytellers keep doing inner work: understanding who they are, what they value, and how that shapes the way they see and retell stories.

3. Listening and asking are more important than talking
   Kely emphasises active listening: asking questions, letting people finish, and then clarifying instead of assuming. Great storytelling often comes from hearing what people struggle to say and helping them express it—without putting your own meaning on top.

4. Who tells the story matters as much as the story itself
   There's a big difference between:

   • A group of powerful people telling women's or marginalised communities' stories for them, versus
   • Creating space, resources, and platforms for those communities to tell their own stories.
     Brands, federations, and media need to move from "consulting women" to letting women lead narrative creation.

5. Context and culture are non‑negotiable in social impact
   Real impact requires understanding what people actually want in their own context. The Zanzibar example shows this: changing school schedules, working with imams, and respecting religious and cultural norms did more for girls' sport than any top‑down "liberation" message could.

6. Feminism is about choice, not one 'correct' path
   Whether it's wearing a hijab, changing your surname, or how you present your identity, Kely stresses that feminism means women deciding for themselves—not swapping one set of prescriptions (patriarchal) for another (a narrow version of "modern freedom").

7. Joy is fuel for sustainable storytelling work
   Kely separates joy from constant happiness. Joy is the deep sense of meaning you get from the work, even when parts of it are hard (like editing, travel, or friction with institutions). To last in this space, you must find and protect the joy in the process, not only in outcomes.

Connect with Kely & Resourses:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelynascimento/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkelynascimento/

Kely's Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B1d7AvZ1CI&t=368s

Ted Talk: Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

Women in Soccer: https://womeninsoccer.org/