In 2023 ESA introduced a new system of recognition for leaders who have made an outstanding contribution to the sponsorship industry. The first four recipients of the ESA Fellowship were honoured at the 2023 ESA Awards ceremony in London, and Andy Westlake was inducted in November 2023 having ended his tenure as Chair of ESA. John Trainor was posthumously inducted in 2024.
All future inductees will take pride of place alongside their distinguished peers on this page. Click below to find out more about the ESA Fellows…
Delphine Baise
Delphine Baise
Delphine has built a strong experience in working on sponsorship projects in soccer, music, art and business within an international framework. She joined the bank ING in 2000 and has been a member of the communication management team for more than 15 years. Specialising in sponsoring, events and brand activation, the campaigns she put in place with her team were regularly awarded at Belgian level and competed at the ESA Awards.
Delphine’s job is her passion and her values of authenticity, curiosity and excellence are driving all her energy to continue contributing to the growth of the industry in her country.
For 7 years, Delphine was the President of the Sponsoring Expertise Centre of Union Belge des Annonceurs. Inspiring young talents, she is also a lecturer at IHECS (where the studied) in the Master in Event Management.
Delphine is married with 2 daughters and daily makes her personal purpose come true, which is to let people experience moments of magic.
Catherine Hawkins
Catherine Hawkins
Catherine is the Founder of Think!Sponsorship and in this capacity has developed and delivered a range of networking, conference & training tools for the sponsorship industry that have serviced more than 7000 individuals across the last 20 years. Outside of this, Catherine is a commercial specialist working with a broad range of clients across the culture, entertainment, environmental, sports & charity sectors on start-up ideas through to the execution and sale of large-scale sponsorship rights.
In 2016 Catherine became Course Director of the ESA Sponsorship Sales Certificate which accredits sponsorship practitioners in best-practice sales techniques and is fast-becoming an industry standard qualification.
Catherine is Chairman of the National Parks Partnership (NPP) board which represents the commercial interests of all 15 National Parks in the UK. In this capacity she has helped to support the creation and delivery of a sustainable commercial strategy that includes exploring innovative and progressive income-generation opportunities including the award-winning “Revere” programme.
Catherine is a judge for the UK Sponsorship Awards specifically reviewing young talent in relation to The Barrie Gill Award for Most Promising Young Sponsorship Executive, as well as co-founder of the Women in Sponsorship networking group (a group set up and designed to support the professional development of women working within the sector). She is also a Trustee of the Essex Wildlife Trust – a role she enjoys very much that also enables her to be hands-on in her home county of Essex!
Peter Raymond
Peter Raymond
Peter created, and is Course Director of, the much-revered ESA Diploma, which is the industry’s only professional qualification, seeing over 700 budding industry practitioners qualify since 2012.
Peter has had 35+ years working in sponsorship/sports marketing for a number of leading agencies and brands; most notably, for 8 years, as Head of International Sponsorship at Orange. Peter’s previous projects include Castlemaine XXXX and the Australian Cricket and Rugby teams, the Nutrasweet/Flora London Marathons, Lucozade Sport’s strategic entry into sports sponsorship, the British Athletics sponsorship portfolio, the ‘Orange BAFTA’s’, creation and implementation of ‘Orange Wednesdays’ and the ‘Orange Arrows’ F1 team.
Additionally, Peter has been a consultant for Camelot, Panasonic, Michelin, Blackberry, BAFTA, Film London and the Crafts Council on a wide range of partnership-related projects and recently co-founded a boutique strategy consultancy called Brouha.
Paul Samuels
Paul Samuels
Paul Samuels, Executive Vice President for Global Partnerships at AEG Europe, is responsible for overseeing all Sponsorship Sales, Partnership activation and Premium Seating across all AEG assets internationally, outside of the US – including The O2 in London and Mercedes Benz Arena in Berlin, as well as festivals such as American Express presents BST Hyde Park and Luno presents All Points East. Paul is also responsible for the Global Partnerships team across Asia, with exciting new projects in development in Thailand, Japan and Korea.
Having been with the business since 2007, Paul came to AEG from O2, where he worked as Head of Sponsorships. It was here that he first encountered AEG Europe when he negotiated the naming rights for the now renowned The O2, arguably an example of one of the most successful and iconic naming partnerships to date. The partnership re-defined the traditional corporate sponsorship as a huge customer engagement opportunity and it continues to deliver ROI for O2 and AEG 15 years on. Under his role at O2, Paul was also the major broker in sponsorship deals with Arsenal FC and the England Rugby Team.
Paul left O2 in 2006 to serve as The Bonham Group’s CEO for Europe, subsequently overseeing the sale of the company to AEG Europe.
In his current role at AEG Europe, he oversees a team of 100 people across Europe and APAC, negotiating partnerships across AEG’s assets.
Paul sits on the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Silver Clef Awards committee. He is also actively involved with the Speakers for Schools charity, as well as a mentor for the Ort Jump Start programme.
On weekends, Paul can be found on the sidelines watching his three daughters playing football or ferrying them to and from their busy social engagements!
John Trainor
John Trainor
John was seen as the ‘father’ of the sponsorship industry in Ireland and, in particular, the professionalisation of the discipline.
He founded ONSIDE in Dublin in 2005 and was quick to recognise the important role ESA could play in strengthening the skills of the sponsorship workforce in Ireland and the benefits that ESA recognition and awards would bring to elevating the profile of sponsorship in the marketing mix across key Irish decision-makers.
As well as being the first Irish Board Director of ESA, where he served for a decade and helped set up the Diploma, he was a fellow of the Marketing Institute of Ireland where his championing of the sponsorship discipline helped give senior marketing decision-makers more confidence to invest in partnerships.
Importantly he did this not out of self-interest but – as with everything he did – built on the intelligence that a more skilled and better-informed industry would deliver better outcomes for everyone involved.
He thus shared his learning widely, through an annual Industry Report that has landed on desks across the country every January for over a decade.
In the world of sport and entertainment he never sought headlines or recognition but provided a critical steering role in many of the most significant deals over the past two decades between national teams, competitions, clubs and venues and some of Ireland’s biggest brands, many of which will endure for many years to come.
His belief in the value of intelligence and his determination to find a path that served the interests of all parties were key enablers of landmark agreements including the Aviva Stadium, Vodafone’s partnership with Irish rugby and the Guinness Six Nations.
John also used his sponsorship expertise to support countless charities. His inputs had a transformational impact on the IRFU Charitable Trust and the Irish Cancer Society and even in his final months he was helping the Cancer Fund For Children make the most of their partnership with Rory Best. One of his proudest moments was helping Ireland’s first LBGTQ+ rugby team, Emerald Warriors, bring the Union Rugby Cup to Dublin which included convincing Guinness to repaint the famous black gates of the St James’s Gate Brewery in rainbow colours for the first (and only) time in their history.
John’s biggest professional legacy will be the people whose careers he influenced across the wider industry – he was a mentor to so many and helped countless young people take their first steps into the industry.
John Trainor, 1971 – 2024
Andy Westlake
Andy Westlake
Andy has worked in the business of sponsorship and sports marketing for 30+ years. He worked for nine years in commercial radio driving revenue growth and bringing innovation to clients across the independent radio network. He worked on some of the leading radio brands and the biggest partnerships of the time.
Moving agency side in 1998, he joined CIA Medianetwork as Head of Sponsorship & Promotions, latterly becoming MD of the newly formed Total Sponsorship, which alongside a Board position with CIA’s fledgling digital business Outrider, took him in to the world of sport for the first time.
Four years later Andy moved to Fast Track having been appointed MD in March 2010 and CEO in November 2011. Fast Track established a reputation as one of the best businesses in the industry, in the UK and abroad – with offices in the UAE, Asia and Australia. Fast Track was Marketing Magazine’s Agency of the Year in 2011 and secured a place in the Sunday Times Best Small Companies To Work For. This in addition to a long list of award-winning work with some of the world’s leading brands. Fast Track was acquired as the founding business within CSM.
In 2014 Andy was elected to the European Sponsorship Association Board and served as the organisation’s Chair for six years. He established Westlake Consulting in 2015 and now combines that with a role as Director of Reg&Co. He is also Chairman of Chesham United Ladies FC (playing in the FA Women’s National League Division 1 South East) and a Director of Chesham United FC.
