Baroness Katherine Grainger DBE

Baroness Katherine Grainger DBE is an Olympic rowing champion, sports leader and member of the House of Lords. She won medals at five consecutive Olympic Games, from Sydney 2000 to Rio 2016, and now chairs the British Olympic Association. She brings audiences two decades of lessons on resilience, teamwork and leading organisations at the top level of sport.

Katherine took up rowing at the University of Edinburgh in 1993. She won silver in the quadruple sculls in Sydney in 2000, silver in the coxless pair in Athens in 2004 and silver again in the quadruple sculls in Beijing in 2008. At London 2012 she and Anna Watkins set an Olympic record on the way to the double sculls final, then won gold. Four years later she came out of retirement and won silver in the double sculls in Rio. Across her career she also won a series of World Championship medals between 1997 and 2011.

Alongside her rowing she completed a PhD at King's College London, researching the whole life order introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

After competing, Katherine moved into sports leadership. She chaired UK Sport, the body that invests in Olympic and Paralympic sport, until 2025, and was then elected Chair of the British Olympic Association, the first woman to hold the role since the BOA was founded in 1905. Since 2020 she has been Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, the first woman in the office. On 20 April 2026 she joined the House of Lords as a crossbench life peer, as Baroness Grainger of Garelochhead.

She has broadcast for the BBC as a co-presenter of Rowing World Cup coverage and the BBC Inspire series, and as a pundit at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. She has also appeared on Superstars, A Question of Sport, Countdown and The Clare Balding Show.

Katherine was appointed MBE in 2006, CBE in 2013 and Dame Commander (DBE) in 2017. As a keynote speaker, host and after-dinner guest she talks about teamwork, overcoming setbacks, motivation, winning and the importance of clear communication, with the credibility of someone who has led from both the boat and the boardroom.