Meet the AISTS Athlete Scholarship Recipient: Johanna Allston

AISTS is committed to supporting talented individuals in their journey to become leaders in the sport industry. Through our scholarships, we aim to recognise and empower the next generation of professionals who will make a positive impact on the global sport community. Whether it is supporting athletes transitioning into management roles or promoting gender equality in sport, AISTS is committed to helping future leaders achieve their ambitions.

The admissions for the September 2026 intake are now open, and applications for the AISTS scholarships are accepted until 30 November 2025.

AISTS Athlete Scholarship

The AISTS Athlete Scholarship provides a unique opportunity for high-achieving current and former athletes to transition into leadership roles within sport management. This scholarship recognises those who have demonstrated excellence in their sporting careers and are ready to apply their skills and experiences beyond the field of play.

Through the AISTS Master of Advanced Studies in Sport Management and Technology, (former) athletes gain the academic knowledge, practical tools, and professional network needed to turn their on-the-field experience into a successful career in sport management.

Previous AISTS Athlete Scholarship holders:

Meet the current recipient: Johanna Allston

Johanna Allston is an Australian World Orienteering Champion, ultra-endurance athlete, performance coach, author, and advocate for athlete wellbeing. She remains the only non-European ever to win a World Orienteering Title and the only athlete, male or female, to claim both Junior and Senior World Championship titles in the same year (2006).

Over a career that has taken her to more than 40 countries, Johanna has competed at the highest level of sport, winning gold and silver medals at the World Games and representing Australia across multiple endurance disciplines. Beyond her achievements as an athlete, she is passionate about coaching and redefining performance through a holistic lens: exploring how to reach peak potential while sustaining and leveraging health, careers, relationships, and dreams.

Her journey from elite swimming and marathon running to world titles in orienteering, and later to ultra-trail running, has shaped her philosophy of “Grow, Play & Perform Wilder” and “How you do one thing is how you do everything”. This belief underpins her coaching work with thousands of athletes and individuals, her two books, her online training planners, and her award-winning business Find Your Feet Australia.

Johanna is the author of The Trail Running Guidebook (2020) and Finding My Feet: My Story (2021), both of which highlight the inner journey of elite sport and the importance of identity and wellbeing. She also was the youngest ever member appointed to the Australian Institute of Company Directors Council, and worked for 7 years as an advisor on wilderness preservation and sustainable recreation & tourism management in the Tasmanian Wildnerness World Heritage & National Parks Advisory Council.

She joins the Master of Advanced Studies with the ambition to build on her extensive experience as an elite athlete and refine the way she thinks about leadership and the evolution of sport, particularly through the lens of athlete wellbeing, safety and integrity at the heart of elite human performances. Eager to be challenged, she seeks exposure to diverse perspectives, cultures, and leadership models that will help her to truly transition from an athlete into a leader in sport. Learn more about her at www.hannyallston.com.au and www.findyourfeet.com.au.

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In her own words

What does it mean to you to be the AISTS Athlete Scholarship recipient?

This is just huge for me. Unexpected and huge! Humility is one of my greatest values in life and so I have always competed with a real internal drive. So, to be recognised so formally for what I have achieved in sport, but also what I have achieved and am striving for as a person and in my career so far feels like such a gift. Financially too, we have really had to overcome mountains and oceans, literally to be here as we have had to relocate our young family to the far end of the earth to be here. The scholarship has made this possible for us and I am forever grateful to the AISTS for this gift and seeing my attributes.

How have your experiences as an athlete helped prepare you with the skills and perspectives needed for leadership roles in the sport industry?

I am from a small island called Tasmania off the southern Australian coastline. I always had a dream to become an Olympic athlete and doctor specialising in athlete wellbeing, but I ended up taking a very different yet parallel path thanks to opportunities that came my way! After an early career as a national-level sprint freestyler, I transitioned into orienteering and running, culminating in a 15-year elite international career in orienteering, trail running, marathon & distance track athletics and sky-running (quite a change from 50m sprint free styling!). I am the only non-European to win a World Orienteering Title, and also the only junior-aged athlete to win a senior title in the same year. I am proud of my journey through sport but it didn’t come without its challenges – career-threatening injuries, safeguarding breaches by coaches and sporting personnel, and family events that really shaped who I have become. I was also in mostly non-Olympic events or events less supported by our national sporting federations, and at times, self-coached. So, I quickly had to adapt to an individual who was self-driven, internally validating and assessing performances, asking for help from experienced ‘others’, building support teams, setting goals and strategies, and being flexible and honest in how I reached outcomes. I have always lived by the motto that ‘how you do one thing is how you do everything’, and so these attributes and attitudes are now embodied in everything that I do and I believe that they are all key attributes and skills required in leadership, as is empathy and a capacity to elevate & bring together others. After retiring in 2017 from elite sport, I gained further insights, a critical one being the concept of archetypes and identity. I had this crushing feeling, like an internal death inside me, at the thought of no longer being an athlete and somehow ‘having to be a responsible adult’. Even though I had been studying and working a career in parallel to my elite sport, it still felt like retiring was like removing my legs. But through this journey and with the support of amazing mentors I have been able to elevate and really connect my identity of an athlete into a more holistic part of the bigger me, now seeing myself as an athletic individual that has great attributes but it sits alongside the skills and attributes of mother, adventurer, business woman, wife and more. The career transition from athlete to being here in the MAS programme has really been a long, insightful and at times difficult one. But it has brought me an understanding of myself and a purpose to life – to assist others through the highs and lows of elite sport, and all the transitions that occur throughout that period, including the ‘retirement’ transition which we must all face at some point but which doesn’t have to be a severing of your athletic identity and sense of self. 

How do you think the sport industry can benefit from having former athletes in leadership positions?

We need athletes at the table! Whilst we are only one of the actors in elite sport, sport isn’t sport without us. Every single athlete, whether individual or team members, summer or winter sports, Olympic or non-Olympic have a completely unique and individual journey because sport happens in a greater sphere called ‘life’ and is so influenced by surrounding events, people and stakeholders. We need the voices of these individuals, diverse in nature, to help us understand the greater purposes, to set the goals, create the strategies, gather the community members around this vision, unite the athletes and other stakeholders… just to name a few. And I deeply believe that we need the voices of the non-Olympians too. I recognise quite clearly that I am not an Olympian and do not have those experiences to draw from, but I carry with me experiences which definitely contributed to inhibiting my pathway to being an Olympian. We need these voices too so that we can learn what the inhibitors are to performance and excellence, helping to break down these barriers and support our future aspiring athletes and elite athletes too. So yes, please, help us to the table and we will help you!

What motivated you to join AISTS, and what excites you most about this new chapter?

It is extremely hard to open doorways into the international sporting sector from Tasmania. With such a strong understanding that I wanted to positively influence and support the journey of our current and future athletes, to help make elite sport and safer and more positive-growth experience, and to help put wellbeing at the heart of human performance endeavours, I knew I needed to be exposed to a bigger sporting environment than that of my own athletic career and to hear the voices of experts who could help me gather further insights and draw parallels, and to ‘get my foot in the door’. Honestly, to sit in a room with my colleagues, all whom have extraordinary backgrounds and experiences to date, to listen to our lecturers and keynote speakers, to visit international sporting bodies that embody why we are all here… it makes me tingle all over. I know that this is where I want to be and I am so grateful for the experience that AISTS is delivering for us.

How would you describe your MAS experience so far, and what do you think makes it unique?

In one word – extraordinary! I think what makes it so unique is the real-world exposure to the international sporting sector and all the amazing models of excellence that exist within it. I really do feel that we can learn a lot of the key concepts in other academic and career pathways, but it is the nuances, the unique applications, the personal discussions and the voices of our colleagues that elevate this course into a place unreachable in the external academic world. Plus, honestly, Switzerland is amazing! To live here, and in the Olympic capital of Lausanne with its quick access to the mountains and opportunities for my family, is a dream!

Looking ahead, what are your main aspirations in the sport industry, and how do you hope to make an impact?

I know, with utmost certainty, that I wish to work in driving and elevating the importance of athlete wellbeing, both mental and physical, as well as safeguarding and supporting individuals through career transitions, and I want to do this on a bigger platform than what I could achieve from Tasmania and greater Australia. I know that these concepts are so foundational to the experiences we have through sport, our view of sport as a whole, and what the human can achieve through performance to inspire the greater global communities.  

What advice would you give to other aspiring sport industry professionals who are considering scholarships or a similar career path?

I am not convinced that there is ever a ‘right time’ to consider such big life decisions. I remember very clearly the same feeling and thoughts when I thought about motherhood! But there is a niggling voice that you might hear in the back of your head, or a tingling sensation that you get when you think about applying, that cannot be ignored… and trust me, it persists if you do try! I believe that it is really important to listen to these ‘gut feelings’ and to be brave enough to explore the idea further and perhaps, to give it a try. Only then can you really appreciate what is on the other side. Applying for the MAS course and the scholarship took time and energy but I also found it a really insightful process as I was able to reflect on where I had come from, what I had gathered along the way, and where I could see myself going into the future. Being here now has made all that hard work and deliberations worth it, not just for me but for my family too.