SPENCER LEE BOYA, FRSA

About

Spencer Lee Boya, FRSA is a Social-Entrepreneur and Multi-Disciplinary Artist who currently serves as the CEO of the UK-based International Sports for Development Charity, Boxing is Love.

The organisation works in more than 14 countries in Europe, North and South America, East and South Asia, and across Africa, using the sport of boxing to help disadvantaged young people reconnect with education and lead better lives through programmes covering the Social Sciences, Literacy, Numeracy and Nutrition.

Members of the APPG on Boxing, Boxing Is Love, senior stakeholders and former World Cruiserweight Champion Johnny Nelson are pictured at Westminster following a meeting with Stephanie Peacock MP, Minister for Sport, at the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport

Since taking the role in 2024, he has redirected the charity's strategy and expanded its footprint from a three-country operation into a global network across fourteen countries and counting, spanning Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. Alongside Shelly Lee, he designed the current pedagogical model, which pairs boxing with integrated programming in the social sciences, literacy, numeracy and nutrition, serving young people aged 11 to 18 from disadvantaged backgrounds. Shelly and Spencer also established the charity's research programme and have rebuilt every other pillar of its operation, from its international mission trips to its campaigns and grants work.

Spencer (right) chairing a panel discussion at the London School of Economics alongside panelists Dr Tamsin Alexander (left to Spencer), Dr Franziska Strack (left to Tamsin), Dr Khabat Abas (left to Franciska), and Gabriel Prokofiev (left to Khabat)

Previously, he co-founded ‘The Social Canvas Projects’, a series of 3 projects that took place from December 2023 - April 2024 to address the violent conflicts around the globe at the time through the lens of the Creative Arts. Throughout the three projects, he engaged more than 100 students from all artistic disciplines and organised 3 events that attracted 1000+ visitors, including figures like Ai Weiwei, Gabriel Prokofiev, who worked with him on a voluntary basis in support of the project’s mission.

His work is multidisciplinary by design, moving between the arts and the social sciences. His enduring preoccupations are class and education, and the role that sport and the arts can play in the lives of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. He is drawn to the question of what a well-rounded formation looks like for young people whose circumstances have narrowed their options, and to the institutions and practices that can widen them again. Much of his professional life sits at the point where those questions become programmes on the ground.

He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he read Human, Social, and Political Science as an undergraduate (St Edmund's) and Entrepreneurial Studies as a postgraduate (King's). He was awarded the Derek Cornwell Scholarship for Musical Performance at the highest level, the ESG scholarship (two places per annum) and the Susan Tomes Music Prize.

Whilst at Cambridge, he served as the 128th President of the Cambridge University Amateur Boxing Club, President of King's College Graduate Society, and Co-President of King's College Music Society.

He also studied Music at Goldsmiths College while studying the piano under Professor Andrew Zolinsky from the Royal College of Music.