MADE BY MOMENTS - JAKE ZAPPIA (FIFA MASTER 25th EDITION)

“I’ve never known where I’m going, and that’s the fun of life.”

Not everyone is wired to live without a plan. But for Jake Zappia, a proudly Australian grandson of Italian immigrants, it’s exactly this openness to chance – chance meetings, chance experiences – that has shaped a meaningful life, one that spans childhood on a hobby farm, professional stints in elite sport, and now, global graduate study through the FIFA Master.

With dirt underfoot and tomatoes in hand, Jake’s upbringing in Adelaide blended both a rural life on a small farm and the traditions he inherited from his Italian roots. “We'd spend our summers on BMX bikes,” Jake remembers, also adding, “Or you'd be woken up at 7:00AM on a Saturday morning by Dad saying, ‘Hey, I need to ring and worm the sheep.’” Juxtaposed to this were family rituals like annual “Sauce Day,” where the family made passata from scratch.

But Jake inherited more than recipes. “We come from that background of people who sought an opportunity to make things better for their family,” Jake says of his grandparents’ migration story. “My dad didn’t speak English until he went to school…he was bullied for not speaking the language.” But now, two generations later, most of their grandchildren have achieved higher  education. “It’s a huge testament to what they were able to achieve.”

Growing up with that legacy, Jake developed an inner drive that needed somewhere to go. For him, that place was sport – and it wasn’t just a pastime, it was obsession. But that also sometimes meant that intensity came at the expense of connection. “I took it so seriously, I just had no time to socialize,” he says of his years playing cricket and Aussie rules. “I was there to train, which for 11-year-old or 12-year-old is a pretty intense way of looking at it.”

While Jake eventually found himself working in sport and joining the FIFA Master, it of course wasn’t always the plan. Jake originally pursued a filmmaking career at university, majoring in creative arts and screen and media. “I loved writing stories. I used to make movies when I was a kid and just really enjoyed working with people.”

That enjoyment extended to the restaurant where Jake worked as a server during and after university. “Everyone should work as wait staff at some point in their life. I think that is the best possible grounding you can have as a human being,” he beams. “Everything that I learned about life, I learned in a restaurant in some way, shape, or form. And I think as someone who loves food and being around people that can cook is also just amazing.”

In his own words, “life is just like a series of sliding doors moments.” One of those doors happened to be at the TV station next door to his restaurant. “The camera operators and journalists would always come in and drink in the bar after they would finish their shifts. And I remember talking to one of the camera operators and saying, ‘oh, is this what you do? This is what I studied.’”

Next thing he knew, Jake was invited to tag along. That invitation turned into eight months of shadowing camera crews, learning his neighbours’ tricks of the trade. While not earning any pay for this work, he found it equally rewarding, starting his mornings on the road, then making his way back to the restaurant by 4:30PM for a six-hour shift. “I’d do that five or six days a week. It was one of the best years of my life.”

That experience eventually turned into a paid gig with the TV station as a camera operator, where he worked for the next year. Little did he know that the next door had been slowly opening throughout this time. Jake’s next move brought him to Adelaide Football Club, influenced by the very same person who brought him onto the camera crew. “He said to me ‘there's a good friend of mine who works at this football club. They're looking for someone, give him a call, and go do the interview.’ And that was that.”

Jake spent the next four years working at the club, first behind the camera and eventually expanding his role into digital production, media management, and storytelling. “I fell into working in sport and absolutely loved it.” The club gave him a front-row seat to the emotional pulse of professional athletics, but it also gave him something else: perspective. “You’d see how deeply wins and losses affected people. But at the end of the day, it’s still people kicking a ball around. That changed my whole relationship with sport.”

All of this unfolded against the backdrop of Adelaide, a place that quietly shaped Jake’s outlook, even as he began to outgrow it. His hometown, nestled between hills and coast, instilled a slower rhythm and deep familiarity. “Home is suburban, but it’s in the hills,” he says, drawing a parallel to the lyrics of Hilltop Hoods song 1955 in saying “Time moves a little slower here.”

Once the butt of jokes across Australia for its isolation and quirky civic missteps (like a one-way freeway that had to be manually reversed each day), Adelaide has since evolved into what Jake affectionately calls “the little engine that could.”

“Now it’s vibrant,” he says. “We’ve got the second-biggest fringe festival outside of Edinburgh, a huge arts scene, amazing beaches and wine regions, and major international sporting events.” Though he’s now lived and studied across Europe, Jake is quick to say: “It’s home. It’ll always be home.”

When his partner landed a dream role in Canberra, Jake took a leap of his own, leaving behind his comfort zone to start fresh in a new city. It was there that his relationship with sport began to shift again. “That was the first time that I'd been out of the Adelaide bubble, not taking it so seriously, going there and being like, ‘actually I'm here to make friends and socialise.’ It was a totally different experience, and amazing.” What he didn’t expect was to find a job in sport again, let alone one that would stretch him in an entirely different direction. That’s how he ended up at Sport Integrity Australia, the country’s national anti-doping agency, where, once again, chance opened yet another door.

At Sport Integrity Australia, Jake added depth to his professional experience. Initially hired as a video producer, he quickly found himself stepping beyond the camera. “I went from just making videos to writing comms strategies to helping build policy and education frameworks.” Working on issues like child safeguarding, anti-doping, and competition manipulation, Jake found fulfillment in the behind-the-scenes work of protecting sport. “We are sometimes seen as the ‘bad guys’ in sport, but we are trying to protect athletes,” he says.

One case that stuck with him involved an athlete who was banned after testing positive for a substance hidden under another name despite having done their due diligence. “That athlete was banned for 18 months. And 18 months is a lifetime, especially if you’re not at the start of your career.” The experience gave Jake a new lens: sport wasn’t just about winning or spectacle; it was about fairness and education. After several years of building from the inside, Jake began to feel the pull toward something more global. That’s when the FIFA Master came back into view.

Jake had first come across the FIFA Master programme eight years earlier – long before he felt ready to apply. “If I’d applied then, I wouldn’t have been qualified,” he admits. “And even a few years ago, I don’t think I would’ve gotten the full experience out of it. I think timing means a lot in life.”

But after years of working across sport’s front lines, he reached a point of clarity. “My partner and I got to a point where we said, ‘We want to live in Europe. If we’re going to do it, it has to be now.’”

What started as a curiosity became a decision, and that decision quickly became a transformational year. “It’s massively changed my perspective on the world,” Jake reflects on the last 10 months. “You learn so much from the speakers, but even more from the people in the classroom. Networking used to feel scary, but now I realise it’s just about talking to people…something I already love to do.”

With the FIFA Master now behind him, Jake isn’t rushing to define what comes next – and that’s exactly the point. He’s built a career not by mapping every step, but by leaning into the moments that matter. “I’ve never known where I’m going, and that’s the fun of life.” Though, wherever he lands next, he’ll arrive ready, simply because he hasn’t tried to control the getting there.

By Geneva Decker

FIFA Master 25th edition student

FIFA Master - International Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport, ranked Europe's No.1 course a record 12 times by SportBusiness.

FIFA Master - 25 years of Excellence in Sport Business Education - organised by CIES in partnership with De Montfort University (UK), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Italy) and the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).