Rodrigues e Sousa is a member of the Portuguese Association for Sport Management and has worked on projects for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Athletics.

The Olympic Format Taskforce will be responsible to leading projects that help the IKF determine which of the new korfball formats has the best chance of achieving broad appeal, with the ultimate goal appealing to the IOC for inclusion on the Olympic programme.

Rodrigues e Sousa is now set to play a leading role in this mission.

"IKF is extremely pleased to compose such a strong team of people working on this important task for our federation in the coming year," said Gabi Kool, chair of the Olympic Format Taskforce.

"We have secured a diverse group, both from within the korfball community as well as some new faces to our sport who bring additional expertise, a proven track record and new perspectives to our taskforce.

"I have full confidence that this team will bring a well-rounded view and recommendation to the Executive Committee in 2023 so we can take the right decisions for an important element of the future of our sport."

The project is expected to be completed by the end of September 2023, after which the promotion of korfball towards the IOC will be initiated as part of a general Olympic inclusion strategy.

Key milestones for the IKF are the creation of a research framework, including the competitive landscape of other sports and mapping out possible appeal among all stakeholders, and field research into possible competition formats and the creation of a scaling framework.

The decision on what format to choose to focus on is expected to be made at the World Korfball Congress in 2023 in Taiwan.

Following that, the IKF will launch active promotion of the format towards the IOC and the International World Games Association.

Other members of the Olympic Format Taskforce are Indian Samiha Dabholkar, with a focus on commercial and media subjects, Jens van Poucke of Belgium, Chinese Taipei national team player Ya-Wen Lin, Dutchwoman Marjan de Jong, American national team player Willard Johnson and Geert Hendriks of The Netherlands, who is vice-president of the Swiss Korfball Federation.