Catherine Spencer
Former International England Rugby Captain
Owner and Founder of Inspiring Women
Author of ‘Mud, Maul, Mascara’
Catherine retired from international rugby in 2011. Following her first cap in 2004 Catherine went on to win 63 caps for England, score 18 times for her country and captain the team for over 3 years. Catherine took part in 8 Six Nations competitions winning 6 of 8 and captained her team to 3 championship titles. Catherine also led her country to a European cup title, 2 Nations Cup tournament victories and led England to the World Cup final held on home soil in England in 2010. England lost narrowly to New Zealand 13 points to 10 however the home World Cup shot Women’s Rugby into the limelight and their media presence escalated. As captain, Catherine was at the forefront of this and thrived as a leader throughout this time.
Catherine has undertaken several different media engagements including studio pundit and commentary work for a range of broadcasters including Sky Sports and the BBC and Women’s World Cup coverage with ITV in 2017 and 2022. Catherine has written published articles for the Independent on Sunday, the Sunday Times and the Guardian and has written regular columns for the popular weekly Rugby Paper.
Catherine is Patron of the charity Tag Rugby Trust; a charity that she has been involved with since 2007 who’s aim is to “Build futures through rugby”. She feels passionately about helping to develop communities around the world using rugby as tool. Catherine and TRT have developed FITR (Female Inspiration Through Rugby), a programme supporting young girls in Zimbabwe through the power of a network of local community mentors.
Catherine’s story demonstrates clearly her steps towards success and highlights her focus and determination to improve and reach higher levels throughout her sporting career and beyond. Catherine grew as a leader throughout her time as Captain and offers some great insights into developing captaincy and leadership skills in a team setting. Her experiences of managing retirement from sport and taking the step to develop a new business as well as dealing with perceived failures adds a very real and honest focus to her delivery.
Catherine gained her CIPD HR Management level 5 qualification in September 2018 as well as receiving an Honorary Doctorate from Canterbury Christchurch University in the same year; she had a baby in 2019 and her own book – ‘Mud, Maul, Mascara’ was published in February 2020. After a five-year period of teaching Philosophy and Sociology in a Secondary School Catherine has once again, in 2026, taken the reigns at Inspiring Women. Always looking for the next challenge Catherine brings this mindset and message to her talks; that it does not always matter if we don’t know where our end point is – if we look around, look forward and look up.
“A huge thank you for your presentation at the Women’s Leadership Network conference yesterday. All our delegates loved your talk and found it so inspirational. We had comments like ‘Absolutely brilliant. Loved every word’. When I looked at the events evaluation where we asked delegates to rate speakers from 1-4, 4 being excellent, I noticed that everyone rated you as 4 except for two people who rated you as 5! I think that sums it up… You were brilliant.” – Women’s Leadership Network
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