Liesel Jolly is a sponsorship and partnership-marketing executive best known for her work in women’s football with Visa. As of August 27, 2026, the Women’s Football Awards judging panel identifies her as Visa’s Women’s Football Lead in Europe, responsible for the company’s UEFA property portfolio and the strategy, management and activation of its Team Visa Women’s Football programme.
Her public career is defined less by a playing background than by the commercial and player-development side of the sport. Jolly has described 2018 as the point when she entered women’s-football work despite knowing little about football at the time. That same year, Visa says it became the first UEFA sponsor dedicated specifically to women’s football, giving her work a clear institutional starting point within the company’s expanding commitment to the game.
Key takeaways
- Jolly is publicly listed in 2026 as Women’s Football Lead at Visa in Europe.
- Her responsibilities include Visa’s UEFA women’s-football portfolio and Team Visa’s programme for female footballers.
- She co-created The Second Half, a career-development initiative for professional women players, which Visa developed with input from Karen Carney and Kim Little.
- She was Highly Commended at the 2024 Employer’s Excellence Awards and won the Corporate Football Trailblazer category at the 2025 Global Football Industry Awards.
- Reliable public evidence documents Jolly’s professional collaboration with Karen Carney, but does not establish a romantic relationship.
Liesel Jolly profile summary
| Detail | Verified information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Liesel Jolly |
| Profession | Sponsorship and partnership-marketing executive |
| Employer | Visa |
| Current public role | Women’s Football Lead at Visa in Europe, as of August 27, 2026 |
| Main football responsibilities | Visa’s UEFA portfolio and Team Visa Women’s Football programme |
| Major programme | The Second Half |
| Recent individual recognition | Corporate Football Trailblazer, Global Football Industry Awards, 2025 |
Building a career in women’s football
Jolly had already spent many years at Visa before becoming closely associated with women’s football. In a public post around 2024, she said she had recently marked 13 years at Visa, which places the beginning of her tenure at roughly 2011. An exact joining date has not been established in the public material used for this profile.
The important change came in 2018. Visa says that was the year it became the first UEFA sponsor dedicated to women’s football. Jolly later recalled that she entered this area of work knowing very little about football but wanting to contribute to opportunities for women players.
That starting point helps explain the shape of her public career. Rather than approaching the sport as a former elite player, she became involved through sponsorship strategy, partnership management and athlete-support programmes.
By May 2025, UEFA was identifying her as Visa’s sponsorship-marketing lead for women’s football when she took part in its Business Case for Women’s Football event. The Football Association of Wales had similarly described her as Visa’s Women’s Football Lead in 2024.
What she does at Visa
Jolly’s role sits at the intersection of sponsorship strategy and practical tournament activation. Her current Women’s Football Awards biography says she manages Visa’s UEFA property portfolio as well as the strategy, management and activation of the Team Visa Women’s Football programme.
That work can involve much more than putting a sponsor’s name around a competition. In a first-person account following UEFA Women’s EURO 2025, Jolly said she had overseen her second Women’s EURO for Visa and that the company activated across all 31 matches in eight cities. She also said she attended 14 matches and spent four weeks in Switzerland during the tournament.
Those figures come from Jolly’s own account rather than an independent operational audit, but they give a useful picture of the scale of the work behind a major international sponsorship.
Her involvement extends beyond tournament execution. The Football Association of Wales reported that participants in its BE. Football mentoring programme had discussions with Jolly during the 2023 cohort, placing her within a wider network of people contributing to women’s development in football.
The Second Half
The clearest example of Jolly’s player-focused work is The Second Half, a Visa initiative designed to help professional women footballers prepare for careers alongside or after playing.
Visa announced the programme in 2020, while its current programme material says the UK rollout launched successfully in January 2021 before expanding into Portugal and Spain. Jolly has said she co-created the initiative.
The programme was developed with the involvement of former England international Karen Carney and Scotland international Kim Little. Visa describes its content as including financial literacy, social-media management, CV writing, communication and leadership, alongside mentoring and opportunities for work experience.
That makes The Second Half different from a conventional sponsorship campaign. Its purpose is to address a practical problem faced by professional athletes: playing careers are finite, and retirement can require a substantial professional transition.
Visa’s current description of The Second Half focuses on giving players tools and experience that can help them prepare for that transition. Jolly has also described the programme as a meaningful part of her own professional work, saying that helping players think about their next career became an important interest for her.
Her connection with Karen Carney
Searches for Liesel Jolly often appear alongside Karen Carney’s name, but the well-documented connection between them is professional.
Visa’s original materials say Carney and Kim Little collaborated with the company on The Second Half. Jolly has subsequently discussed that programme as one of the defining projects in her women’s-football work.
No authoritative source used for this profile confirms that Jolly and Carney are romantic partners. The evidence supports describing them as collaborators through Visa’s player career-development work, and it should not be extended beyond that.
Awards and professional recognition
Jolly’s work has received several forms of industry recognition, although the distinctions are worth stating precisely.
At the 2023 Women’s Football Awards, Visa’s “When More of Us Play, All of Us Win” campaign won Marketing Campaign of the Year. The official winners list attributes the award to Visa and the campaign, while Jolly said separately that she collected it on Visa’s behalf. It was therefore a company or campaign award rather than an individual award for Jolly.
In 2024, she was Highly Commended in the Outstanding Employee category at the Employer’s Excellence Awards. She was not the category winner, an important distinction because some less careful biographies have blurred the wording.
Her clearest individual award followed in 2025. At the Global Football Industry Awards in London on November 20, Jolly won the Corporate Football Trailblazer category. The award organiser’s report lists “Liesel Jolly, Visa” as the winner.
She also appeared among the judges for the 2025 Leaders Sports Awards, where she was listed under the title “Women Sports Sponsorship Lead, VISA.” That wording differs from her current public title, but the variation appears to reflect differences in how organisations described her role rather than evidence of an entirely separate job.
A career shaped by sponsorship rather than celebrity
Much of Jolly’s public record is professional rather than personal. That distinction matters because recent biography pages have attached precise claims about her age, education and private life to a record that does not support those details with the same level of confidence.
Her own comments provide a more useful way to understand her career. In reflecting on her 2025 Corporate Football Trailblazer award, Jolly said that when she became involved in women’s football in 2018 she “knew absolutely nothing about football.” The significance of that remark is not that she lacked expertise permanently, but that her path into the sport came through commercial partnerships rather than a playing career.
Over the following years, her work became increasingly embedded in major women’s competitions, player programmes and sponsorship strategy. By 2023, she described attending her fifth UEFA Women’s Champions League final since Visa’s partnership with UEFA Women’s Football began. Two years later, she was overseeing Visa’s activity around another Women’s EURO.
That progression gives her public profile a clear through-line: moving from corporate sponsorship work into a specialised role focused on how a major brand participates in the women’s game.
What is publicly known about her background
Reliable public information about Jolly’s professional work is considerably stronger than information about her early life or private background.
Several recent biography sites have published an exact birth year and detailed education history, including claims about zoology, behavioural ecology, an Executive MBA and management qualifications. Those details have not been established through sufficiently authoritative records for inclusion here as fact.
Similarly, there is no responsibly verified public basis in the material used for this profile for stating an exact age, birthplace, spouse, children, salary or net worth.
That does not leave the biography incomplete. Jolly’s public significance comes from a well-documented professional body of work rather than from celebrity-style personal information, and the strongest sources consistently centre on Visa, UEFA, The Second Half and women’s-football sponsorship.
Current status
As of August 27, 2026, Jolly remains publicly identified by the 2026 Women’s Football Awards as Women’s Football Lead at Visa in Europe. The same profile says she continues to manage Visa’s UEFA property portfolio and Team Visa Women’s Football programme.
Her recent record also shows continuing visibility across the football-business ecosystem: a UEFA sponsorship panel in 2025, major tournament activation during Women’s EURO 2025, industry judging and the Corporate Football Trailblazer award later that year.
An indexed UK Charity Commission record also lists a Liesel Jolly as a trustee of the Rachel Yankey Foundation from May 8, 2024. Because the live register page could not be fully inspected in the research underlying this profile, that role is best treated as a recorded public association rather than used as a major part of her current biography without a fresh register check.
Conclusion
Liesel Jolly’s public profile is best understood through her work behind women’s football rather than through personal biography. At Visa, she has become closely associated with UEFA sponsorship, Team Visa and The Second Half, combining commercial partnership work with programmes intended to support players beyond their time on the pitch.
The strongest evidence places her firmly within the business and development side of the women’s game as of 2026. Where the public record becomes thinner—particularly around age, education, relationships and finances—the more accurate biography is the one that leaves speculation out.
