Bonita Mersiades

Bonita Mersiades is founder of Fair Play Publishing, the Football Writers' Festival and Manly Writers' Festival. She is recognised internationally as a 'FIFA whistleblower' for lifting the lid on corruption and governance issues within world football administration. She was team manager of the Socceroos and head of corporate and public affairs with Football Australia. Prior to working in football, she was a senior executive with the federal government, and has led Australian delegations to World Health Organisation and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation fora in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. She has written extensively on sports governance for a wide range of publications and has written three books: My World is Round – the biography of Frank Farina (1998), Whatever It Takes – the Inside Story of the FIFA Way (2018), and Portraits in Football (2022). She is chair of the community-based cancer care charity, NBCCC.