Inspirational Speaker

Kerri Pottharst OAM has spent a lifetime decoding human high performance. She is an Olympic champion who has dedicated her life to personal growth and evolution.

 As a tall and lanky teenager, Kerri grew up in some ways feeling somewhat out of place. In discovering Volleyball she found a place she could call home, and it was from there she began to rise as one of Australia's most promising young athletes. The turning point came for Kerri when in 1992 a brutal knee injury should have ended her career. What could have been the end, birthed a new beginning. With a winning mindset, she turned pain into purpose, and pivoted seamlessly into the world of Beach Volleyball. The rest as they say is history.

Most Australians will recognise Kerri who alongside Nat Cook became famously known as the Dreamachine after they won gold in Beach Volleyball at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. For Kerri, this was the culmination of a lifetime of hard work and training working with performance coaches in the highest echelons of the sport. In that time, she competed in 3 Olympic Games, winning two Olympic medals - Bronze at Atlanta and Gold on the iconic Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Upon retiring from international-level competition, like many world-class athletes, becoming a speaker was an obvious next step. That said, the world of speaking, just like sport, is a game where only the best survive. While she was no longer required to wear a bikini on stage, she had a gold winning tool kit from her sporting experiences that would serve her well. As a result, she has spoken to audiences from top-tier corporate organisations in Australia and around the world for more than 20 years.

Alongside her speaking business, Kerri is the author of ‘The Business of Being an Athlete’. After years of mentoring and coaching sporting professionals she has transitioned her experience and expertise out of the sporting arena, to work as an executive coach for both corporate and non-corporate clients in the Art of Human High Performance.

A regular commentator at the Olympic Games and other beach volleyball events, Kerri continues to rise as a respected business thought leader in the area of high performance. Her expertise sits beautifully in the intersection of what it takes to be a world-class athlete alongside how that skill set is applied in leadership, in building teams, cultures, and high-performing organisations. Her core approach is to view human high performance as a holistic system that integrates all aspects of the mind, body and soul.

Personally, Kerri is always reaching new heights. As a result in 2021 she signed up as a recruit for Channel 7’s SAS Australia. This is a show that is notoriously physically and mentally gruelling. Kerri had one intention; “To inspire other women to show up for their best life. Regardless of the risks, the fear or the doubt, we will never evolve into a version of ourselves that is better than today unless we continue to say yes to new challenges.”

As a speaker, Kerri is charismatic yet credible. She is warm, yet at the same time, her content is designed to challenge audiences to step into a new potential. She is a natural storyteller sharing personal anecdotes that are both emotional and meaningful. Kerri is renowned for being the consummate professional, and thus she embraces a solutions-based mindset, and prides herself on ensuring her content is precise yet at the same time infused with aspiration for what's possible tomorrow.