Kerri Pottharst
Legendary volleyball player, Olympic Gold Medalist
Profile
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. Kerri is a highly sought-after Keynote Speaker, MC, Global Sports Commentator, Workshop facilitator, Coach, Mentor and published Author.
Feedback
We were privileged to have Kerri Pottharst attend our Company Away Day recently. It was a fantastic experience to train and play several games (even being offered some match winning tips!) with not only a professional athlete, but such a great person. It was inspirational to have the opportunity to meet someone who has achieved so much in their sporting career, including the ultimate goal for any sportsperson: winning an Olympic medal. It certainly made mine and the rest of the Seafolly staff's day one to remember.
Just wanted to drop you a line and say how fantastic I thought Kerri was on the Seafolly away day. I must say I have attended many away days and this lunch time hit out was fantastic! Kerri was extremely professional and WOW, what a woman - very impressive! Meeting someone that has achieved what she has on that kind of casual basis was a real thrill! She was inspirational and not to mention I cannot believe I picked up as many tips as I did!
Kerri Pottharst is an inspiring person not only for kids, but for adults as well. Her beach volleyball workshop with the kids was fantastic, with many kids saying it was the best activity they had participated in. Kerri is a warm and approachable person, who interacts easily with everyone. It was great to have Kerri as a part of our conference.
The purpose of this letter is to thank you for your efforts in coordinating the team building session for our department at Manly. All our team enjoyed learning the skills and playing the game of beach volleyball. There have been many favourable comments on how well the session was run, particularly how there was a very even balance between outlining the skills and the actual games at the end (which as you know became quite competitive). Once again thank you for putting together an excellent team building session. Best wishes for the future success of your business.
Question: 'What was truly memorable about Toshiba's conference on Hamilton Island?' Answers...
- 'Beach Volleyball with Kerri Pottharst.'
- 'I think Kerri Pottharst's session was by far the most valuable - her talk was inspirational and the volleyball was great fun.'
- 'Kerri Pottharst was the highlight for me and her motivational talk.'
Thank you Kerri for adding great value to our conference. Your obvious dedication and passion for your sport was an inspiration to our team and showed us that dreams can be a reality. It was a pleasure to see the transformation of a group of excited individuals into a proficient team by your simple but effective methods. To be able to accomplish this with a great sense of fun and humour is a credit to your skills. Well done.
We really needed to get our guys focused on team work and results - plus give them the chance to have some fun and learn some new skills. The session on the beach was ideal - entertaining, stimulating, insightful and fun. Just the right tonic to send the troops back refreshed and motivated.
We always enjoy hearing from famous sporting personalities and your talk was funny, motivational and inspiring - your Bronze and Gold medals were a big hit! The fact that you had the members lining up for autographs and photos was evidence of your popularity.
It gave us a lot of pleasure to see and talk to you and our memento photos will be treasured for years to come and remind us how much we enjoyed your company and how proud of you we felt.
Kerri, it was just marvelous. Congratulations on an enthusiastic and passionate presentation. The whole package! A story, a message, involvement, and an attitude to suit!
Kerri is a fantastic speaker, she is entertaining, motivational and inspiring. She followed our brief completely and tied our sales event into her presentation making it relevant to our guests. Involving them in the glass walking was fun, but also reinforced her message.
The highlight was obviously Kerri's speech... you only had to look at the girls to see how spellbound they were. Her words of wisdom were not only applicable to our elite athletes, but to all girls in attendance. The life skills advice and crowd interaction was great - particularly the glass walk which was definitely a great metaphor and highlight. Her enthusiasm, passion and ability to inspire was evident throughout the speech - with three simple aspects to success.
Kerri was fantastic! A real professional who made the time for us to brief her before the event. She was highly engaging, humorous and tailored her stories to our audience and theme. She was calm and cool under pressure even when we needed her to add in extra speaking parts just before she went on. Everybody gave her rave reviews and I would highly recommend her to MC an event.
Kerri was a highly motivational and engaging presenter at our retail leasing conference.
Being the highlight of the day, she definitely added great value to our conference. Her story and passion were such an inspiration to our team, not only on a business level, but also on a personal one. We could have easily listened to her all afternoon.
Kerri was excellent. She was by far the best speaker I've heard, so inspirational and down to earth. I have had so much good feedback on her presentation and have already asked our other EA's to consider her for their events in the future.
"You did an absolute fabulous job entertaining us and keeping us to schedule - I really appreciate you rearranging your dinner schedule to MC for us and share you story.”
Kerri involved the right amount of humour, motivation and information to ensure she was the highlight of the evening. She was then happy to stay on and speak on 1-on-1 to selected VIP’s visiting from France.
I booked Kerri to speak at an event we held at the Sydney Opera House. She definitely stands out as one of the best speakers I’ve booked in the last 15 years. Kerri has such a great natural energy; her presentation style is flawless, and she is completely engaging.
She tells her inspiring story with such passion and enthusiasm and conveys her message of strength and perseverance in such a way that you naturally apply it to your own life. It was by far the most interactive Q&A session we’ve ever had. Our delegates were very keen to chat to her more and ask her questions. We had fantastic feedback from them all and Kerri was clearly the highlight speaker of the event.
