Kitty Chiller AM

Kitty Chiller AM is an Olympian whose career spans elite sport and executive leadership. She spent almost two decades at the top of modern pentathlon, competing internationally before the women’s event was added to the Olympic program in 2000. Over her athletic career, Kitty became a 12-time National Champion, a seven-time World Cup medallist and a six-time World Cup finalist, and was ranked World Number One in the mid-1980s and again in 1996, 1997 and 1998. At the age of 36, she competed at the Sydney Olympic Games (2000) despite seriously injuring her kneecap just one week before competition, ultimately finishing a remarkable 14th and undergoing reconstruction surgery shortly after.

Following her retirement from competing, Kitty redirected her drive and discipline into leadership and governance, transferring the lessons of high-performance sport to executive and boardroom environments. She has more than 30 years of experience as a Chair, Non-Executive Director and CEO, with deep expertise across sport, integrity, change management, crisis leadership and organisational governance. Her career includes senior roles across high-performance sport, grassroots participation and international federations, equipping her with a strong, politically astute and collaborative approach to leading complex, people-driven systems.

Kitty has played a pivotal role in shaping Australia's Olympic culture. She was the Deputy Chef de Mission at the London 2012 Olympic Games and later went on to serve as Chef de Mission of the 2016 Australian Olympic Team in Rio, becoming the first woman ever appointed to this prestigious role. As the driving force behind the successful ONE TEAM approach, Kitty reinvigorated the culture of the Australian Olympic Team, embedding values of trust, accountability, inclusion and shared purpose. Her leadership during this period is widely regarded as a benchmark for cultural transformation in elite sport.

Beyond the Olympic movement, Kitty has held numerous senior appointments, including Executive Board Member of the Australian Olympic Committee, President of Modern Pentathlon Australia and the Oceania Modern Pentathlon Confederation, and Executive Board Member of the International Modern Pentathlon Federation. In executive leadership, she served as Chief Executive Officer of Gymnastics Australia from 2017 to 2022, leading the organisation through a period of intense scrutiny and reform. She later joined the National Sports Tribunal, where she served as Deputy CEO, Acting CEO and now Strategic Adviser, contributing her expertise in integrity frameworks, governance and crisis management at a national level.

Kitty is widely recognised for her expertise in strategic and operational planning and management, learning and development, workforce training, sport management and leadership, event and project management, and communication. Her leadership style is authentic, people-centred, and deeply grounded in lived experience, forged in high-pressure environments where accountability and performance truly matter. She brings these insights to every speaking engagement, delivering powerful keynote presentations that are open, honest and often quite raw, balanced with warmth and humour.

Drawing on her extraordinary journey from the sporting field to the boardroom, Kitty speaks compellingly about resilience in leadership and life, driving cultural change, navigating challenging environments, and translating lessons from elite sport into corporate and organisational settings. Her presentations challenge audiences to rethink obstacles as opportunities, place people at the centre of performance, and lead with courage, clarity and purpose in times of complexity and change.