Dr Kate Hays

Dr Kate Hays is Head of Women's Performance Psychology at the Football Association, supporting the England Women's Football Team. With two decades of working with Olympic teams, professional athletes and organisations at the highest levels, Kate has developed expertise in building mental resilience in high-pressure environments, enhancing team cohesion and collaboration, and creating strategies for sustained success.

Kate explores her 'Building Blocks of Success', a framework she has developed throughout her time as a sport psychologist. From her work alongside world-leading athletes and coaches, she considers how to increase confidence to influence performance, develop winning strategies for teams and leaders, and build mental resilience in both elite sport and business. Her approach focuses on creating sustainable cultures that allow people to succeed repeatedly, accepting that whilst winning is important, it is more important to thrive and learn. She addresses performing under pressure and building cultures of sustainable success, demonstrating how good teams can become great teams.

The author of How to Win: Lessons in Success from the Front Line of Performance Psychology, Kate considers how to create a winning mentality in both individual and group settings. She applies this to business as well as to elite sport, showing how anyone can find long-term and sustainable success using her ideas, applying psychological exercises and challenges to any environment, personal or professional. Her approachable, practical style challenges conventional thinking on performance to help support people gain an understanding of self and of those working, playing, striving and living alongside them.