When people ask Riteesh Mishra what he does, they invariably appear puzzled by the response. “I tell them I [have a] dual career,” says the head coach of Charlton Athletic Women. “I don’t reply: ‘football manager’.”

That is partly because he is also a talent manager at Deloitte, helping employees at the international accountancy behemoth fulfil their potential, but mainly because Mishra is a passionate believer in the benefits of parallel jobs. “The leadership skills I’ve learned at Deloitte have taught me so much,” says the 29-year-old. “They help with the difficult conversations all football coaches sometimes have with players.”

Apart from proving complementary, not to mention mentally stimulating, such twin roles can also provide financial stability, something frequently essential in the often poorly paid, desperately insecure world of women’s football.

Mishra learned to be wary of depending on the game for a living when he was a teenager. A star of the academy at Nottingham Forest in his home town, the young midfielder who dreamed of becoming the new Andy Reid had broken into the reserves when a double leg fracture destroyed his playing career.

A decade on he is England’s highest-level British Asian manager. Not content with having led Charlton into the Championship, his side are challenging for promotion to the Women’s Super League and host Huddersfield in the FA Cup on Sunday determined to take a major step towards Wembley.

Immediately after leaving Forest, though, Mishra briefly turned his back on the game and it took an intervention from Michael Jolley, now the Grimsby manager, to lead him into coaching. A former Forest youth coach, Jolley was then the head of football at the University of Stirling. “For a while after the injury things were really difficult,” Mishra says. “But Michael had started a scholarship programme to get players like me back into football, I went to Stirling and discovered coaching.”

Mishra’s concern for similarly rudderless former athletes has inspired him to found the Transition Phase, an initiative that helps young elite-level performers cope with life after sport and combine their speciality with building longer-term careers. As if he did not already have enough to juggle, there is also the expectation that he should serve as a talisman for other black, Asian and minority ethnic coaches. “I’m a little bit uncomfortable with being seen as a role model,” he says. “But so few British Asian coaches are given openings that I feel I’ve got to try and make the very most of my own opportunities, to help break down unconscious stereotypes. No club has put up any barriers for me but I know that’s not the case for everyone.”

Such awareness places him under a bit of extra pressure to succeed but Mishra is accustomed to life as a flag bearer. “Fortunately I’ve never had any direct abuse,” he says. “Playing for Forest’s academy teams I received a handful of racial comments from opposition players and their parents but my mentality was just to get on with it. The culture was not to show any weakness.”

Although today’s emphasis on mental health and increased awareness of casual racism are in many ways much more emotionally intelligent, he is conscious they can also be harshly unforgiving. “I’m a big believer in giving people second chances,” says Mishra, who would be happy to see the former England Women’s manager Mark Sampson return to a technical area in the wake of his apology to Eni Aluko and Drew Spence for making two racial comments. “Eni was extremely brave but Mark’s educated himself and I’d like to see him back in the game. Mark’s a great coach; I don’t think football can afford to lose someone of his ability.”

Mishra is not too shabby a tactician himself, with his team’s success dictating that Charlton are confronting the practicalities of promotion. “We’re having meetings with the FA to discuss potentially becoming a tier-one club,” he says.

At times the infrastructure of the women’s game struggles to keep up with the on-field advances choreographed by coaches such as Mishra. Charlton recently received a £500 FA fine after an insufficient oxygen supply prompted the abandonment of a game against Manchester United when his defender Charlotte Kerr suffered a serious rib injury but he believes it was a harsh sanction. “Safety’s paramount,” he says. “But FA observers signed off our medical equipment at previous games and we had a doctor and two physios there. It’s a big fine for a club like us.”

Mishra hopes for a happier meeting with the governing body’s top brass in May. “We’d love to play at Wembley,” he says. “We got to the quarter-finals last year; now we want to go further.”