The first woman of colour to represent Italy in Volleyball, Lulama Musti di Gennaro is Greenhouse’s inspirational Head Volleyball Coach. She tells This Is My Playbook that her rise to the pinnacle of her sport in her home country was a bittersweet journey – A mixed race girl born to a white Italian father and a black Mozambiquan mother, she grew up in Rome where she says ‘no-one looked like me’.
A survivor, like many of the women in high-performance volleyball, of an abusive coach, she excelled in professional volleyball being called up to the national team and enjoyed a happy successful career, marred only by her non-selection for the 2012 Olympics. She had walked away from her sport until a chance invitation to a coaching session for kids rekindled the fire: ‘Working with these kids made me realise that I still loved Volleyball’. She speaks candidly of life growing up and her move to London, ”the first city that I lived in that I didn’t feel different..’ In The Hardest Conversation she speaks of the moment she had to explain to some of the black girls in her coaching group the reality of being judged, unfairly and negatively, and how to rise above it. As she says; ‘The meaning of my name, Lulama, means reconciliation, to make peace. I am starting to embrace that this is my mission..’