Kate Naess
Working at the intersection of elite sport and corporate leadership, Kate brings a grounded and practical perspective to what it takes to perform in today’s high-pressure, always-on world. Her work helps leaders and teams build the mindset, emotional intelligence, and recovery capacity required to perform consistently over time.
Kate’s perspective is shaped not only by professional expertise, but by lived experience. Born with a hand difference, she first represented Australia internationally in equestrian before a life-changing personal loss led her to triathlon and ultimately the Rio Paralympic Games. Through this journey, she learned that performance is not built by pushing harder alone, but through adaptability, resilience, recovery, and the ability to navigate uncertainty.
With a background in organisational psychology and a career spanning elite sport and high-performance corporate environments, Kate has partnered with Big 4 firms, elite sporting organisations, and global businesses to build cultures where wellbeing and excellence coexist. Her work challenges the belief that high performance and wellbeing sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, showing instead that sustainable excellence depends on both.
Today, Kate is a sought-after speaker, facilitator, and author whose presentations combine evidence-based insights with powerful storytelling and practical tools. Whether speaking to executive teams, conference audiences, or emerging leaders, Kate creates conversations that challenge thinking, inspire action, and equip people to lead and perform under pressure without burning out.
HYPE Diary
-
·
Just Stop
The subtle art of slowing down to speed up: what high-performance sport taught me about sustainable corporate performance There’s a moment in elite sport that rarely gets spoken about. It’s not the podium. It’s not the breakthrough performance. It’s not even the comeback story. It’s the moment an athlete—highly trained, deeply driven, and operating at…
-
·
You Are Not Tired – You Are Leaking Energy
Most of us treat exhaustion as a single problem with a single solution. But human energy flows through four distinct domains — and learning how they feed each other might be the most useful thing you ever do for yourself. ◈Mind Focus, clarity, thoughts, beliefs ◉Body Physical vitality, movement, rest ◍Emotion Feeling, connection, expression ◎Spirit…
-
·
From Endurance to Excellence Rethinking High Performance in Leadership
For most of my life, I’ve worked in high-performance environments. As an elite athlete. Inside corporate organisations. And now alongside executives and senior leadership teams. Different arenas. Different pressures. But one strikingly consistent pattern. High performance doesn’t break because people aren’t capable. It breaks because recovery is missing from the equation. What elite sport understands…
-
·
The Corporate Elite: High Performance the Sustainable Way
Executives and senior leaders are the corporate world’s elite athletes. Just like top performers on the field, leaders in high-stakes environments must sustain focus, energy, and clarity to perform consistently at their best. But in the rush to deliver results, many forget a crucial truth: sustainable performance depends on recovery as much as effort. Learning…