Interview: Rise CEO Sadie Groom on confidence, perseverance, and beating down the doors

By Alexandra Hill

After founding her PR company - Bubble - at age 26, Sadie Groom formed Rise Women in Broadcast in 2017 to promote women working in the non-craft part of the broadcast media technology industry. Rise has since grown into a global network, becoming most famous for its annual Mentorship Programme.

From uplifting women into leadership roles to launching IBC’s Safe Car Initiative to protect women after-hours, she reveals how Rise has made an impact in M&E, while shedding light on how you can too.

Could you tell us what inspired you to make Rise in the first place?

“It was a moment in time when I was pregnant. At that point, I realised the difference between the way that women and men in the industry were being treated. I came back from maternity leave and thought, I’m going to do something about this. The only path I knew was Women in Film and TV (WFTV), but there was a whole bank of women in non-craft roles like engineering, sales, marketing, and business ownership, so Rise began from that.”

You mention women and men were treated differently. What particularly stood out to you?

“Just commentary. People would ask if I would still be in Bubble when I came back from having a child, others would tell me that they wouldn’t give me a contract because I was pregnant. My husband is also in the industry, and my first week back was at IBC. People would congratulate him but ask me who’s looking after Elliot [Sadie’s son] during the conference. I think it opened my eyes, really.

I then started noticing the lack of female leadership. We did a survey in 2016 where we took 1,500 companies at NAB and IBC and worked out how many female CEOs there were. We only found 8.”

What did you want to achieve with Rise?

“Two big things: I didn’t just want it about women having a glass of wine and bitching, so we launched the Rise Mentoring Programme soon after. The other thing was that we would only change things if men were involved, which was absolutely crucial to me. We’ve always offered male mentors, therefore creating a group of male allies, and that is really important since a lot of women’s groups alienate men.”

It’s not about women going above men but trying to find parity.

“Exactly. Some of the worst bosses I’ve had have been female. Another reason for starting Rise was to bring together a community of people who cared about this situation. If there is only one seat at the boardroom for women, we will fight for that. It may not be the case anymore, but at the start it was.”

Could you tell us about a success story you’re proud of?

“We’ve mentored over 800 women now, with success stories of women going from positions like engineering to being a CTO. The biggest success story is about the community we’ve made – our first cohort from 2017 are all still friends. Rise has had an impact on the industry with the launch of the Safe Car Initiative at IBC. Every year we have women come up to us and say you’ve saved me from something nasty happening.

We’ve also found women who never wanted to speak out or be seen. There are so many women who say they wouldn’t want to speak at an event before Rise. Now, as part of every mentoring programme, there is a skills workshop on how to speak.”

At IBC, there are workshops about finding your voice. What should young people take from that?

“Rise has a programme called Panel+, which is where we’ve said to conference organisers that you can’t have all-male panels, so we’ll help you by providing a list of women who may want to do a panel, keynote, or fireside chat. But that list needs to get bigger.

In the upskill session that we’re doing at IBC, Sylvia Cohen will teach women not only to have confidence, but to know why they feel scared when they stand onstage. Because it’s a biological thing that once identified, you can change it.”

What recommendations aside from Rise do you have for under-30s to get into M&E?

“Beat down the doors, be there, turn up at every networking event. If, for example, you want to be an engineer at Sky, I bet in your network you can find someone, or you find the person you think you need to apply for the job to. You could even write them a letter – I wrote a letter to Vogue because I wanted to be a journalist and landed two years’ experience in marketing. Just having a media degree will not stand out on its own, so be interested and be interesting.

Perseverance is another thing. My nephew graduated in Law and has sent off over 100 applications, but nothing. Just keep going and do a job well, even if it is in a pub. We don’t care as employers what it is you’ve done; we care that you’ve been told what to do.

I’ve never employed anyone who hasn’t had a single job before graduating.”

Besides work, how do you balance work with your wider life?

“I don’t believe in work-life balance; I believe in work-life blend. If you balance something, you have to take a bit off one side of the scale to put it on the other, and so you’re always giving up something.

I know how to turn off, but I think I have a bit more energy than most people.”

More on Rise at IBC 2026 can be found in our issue’s coverage of Future Tech.