Level playing field: How one Monash alumna turned sport into social impact

2 March 2026

Growing up in a low-socioeconomic Melbourne neighbourhood, Associate Professor of Practice Brigette McGuire has built a career using sport and marketing to debunk stereotypes and increase access to opportunity.

When Brigette McGuire first stepped onto Melbourne’s most prestigious tennis courts as a teenager, she knew she belonged on the court – however unfamiliar the broader territory felt.

Her opponents arrived with “more than one racquet in big tennis bags”, and tournaments were held at clubs with thick hedges and rows of courts that seemed to “go on forever”.

“I did not understand the concept of inequity then,” she said.

“But what I observed was that there wasn’t anyone else playing these tournaments from where I lived.”

More than three decades later, the Associate Professor of Practice in Marketing at Monash Business School has transformed those early encounters into a career dedicated to expanding access and embedding social responsibility into business leadership.

Learning fair play through hard work

Raised in a migrant family in a low socio-economic neighbourhood, A/Prof McGuire learned early the importance of hard work.

“If you needed something, you worked for it; opportunities were not taken for granted,” she said.

At school, she realised gender and background shaped opportunity.

“There weren’t opportunities for girls to play football or cricket,” she said. “This seemed odd to me, as I did not understand why sports were segregated.”

Her family’s suburb also faced stigma.

“Our family home was a concrete commission house in a suburb with one of the worst reputations in Melbourne for intergenerational crime and unemployment; I knew that stereotypical assumptions could be made,” she said.

Those assumptions disturbed her because “It was not the full narrative.”

On the tennis court, however, she found something rare: equality of rules, if not resources.

“The odds were even,” she said. “I understood how the game was played, and it didn’t matter what people might assume.”

Changing the game: Marketing with purpose

Before she became a university academic and consultant, A/Prof McGuire’s career began in elite sport as a squad coach, where she first witnessed the talent of future champions Lleyton Hewitt and Alicia Molik.

“As an enthusiastic young tennis coach, I was appointed Development Officer for Tennis in South Australia and was given a broad mandate to grow the game across the state,” she said.

Within two years, more than 20,000 children had taken part in free programs.

Later, at Tennis Australia, she led national inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities and women and girls, and directed the Ford Australian Wheelchair Tennis Open.

She then went on to create campaign programs for some of the biggest names in sport, including the Australian Open, the MCG, Golf Australia, and the Australian Sports Commission.

Her work later expanded into broader social impact initiatives, including the ON US: Australian Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children for the Australian Childhood Foundation.

“My voluntary work as President of the Women’s Tennis Foundation and running the NYC Marathon to raise funds for the Women’s Sports Foundation has been important to me,” she said.

“Girls who play sport become women who lead.”

‘A successful career requires curiosity and resilience’

Today, A/Prof McGuire has taught more than 1,000 students in Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, leading a unit that has received the Dean’s Purple Letter five times.

The 2025 Dean’s Community Award winner and first Associate Professor of Practice in Marketing at Monash sees education as a platform for long-term influence.

“I want students to know that their studies can enable them to do world’s best work; that they can achieve great commercial success and at the same time, help communities thrive,” she said.

“Having a successful career requires curiosity, a love of learning, and, much like in sport, a resilience to push on, even when the territory is unfamiliar.

“At Monash Business School, students have the breadth and depth of teaching and research that can support them at every stage of their career.”

Learn more about the Monash Business School Dean’s Alumni Awards