Karenjeet Kaur Bains

Why organisations work with Karenjeet Kaur Bains

• She holds a Guinness World Record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, set against a male equivalent of 34) and a Commonwealth gold, which gives her claims about pressure and preparation a weight that motivational speakers without competitive credentials cannot match.
• She is the first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World powerlifting championships, which makes her a credible voice on what representation actually costs and produces inside an institution.
• She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant and spent six years in audit at KPMG, so she speaks to professional services and corporate audiences in their own language rather than from outside it.
• She combines a primetime BBC platform as Athena on Gladiators with a serious athletic and professional record, which lands with employee networks, ERGs, and graduate populations in a way a single-track speaker rarely does.

Biography highlights

• Commonwealth Powerlifting Champion; first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at European and World championships.
• Guinness World Record holder, most bodyweight squats by a woman in one minute (42 reps, 2022).
• ACA Chartered Accountant; six years at KPMG in audit before moving into charity finance.
• Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, broadcast on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
• British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year, 2023 and 2024.
• Listed keynote speaker at the ICAEW Annual Conference.

Biography

Powerlifting is one of the smallest, most demographically narrow sports in Britain. The first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World championships is also a Commonwealth gold medallist and a Guinness World Record holder. That combination is what Karenjeet Kaur Bains brings into a room.

Her route to elite strength sport ran through, not around, a professional services career. She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant, spent six years at KPMG in audit, and trained for international competition in the hours either side of a working day. The Guinness record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, against a male equivalent of 34) was set in two weeks of preparation while she held a full-time charity finance role. Her account of how high performers actually structure their lives is grounded, not theoretical.

Since 2024 she has appeared as Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, which has put her in front of a household audience without softening the technical seriousness of her sport. ICAEW lists her as a keynote speaker at its Annual Conference, and she has been recognised as British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year in 2023 and 2024.

For HR, DEI and employee engagement leaders, the value is specific. She speaks to what it takes for someone visibly different to stay, perform, and be seen inside institutions that did not previously include her, and what employers, networks and managers can usefully do about it.

Key speaking topics

• Representation and identity in elite environments
• Performance under pressure and recovery from injury
• South Asian women in sport and professional life
• Breaking cultural and gender stereotypes
• Resilience and the psychology of high performance
• Inclusive culture in professional services

Ideal for

• CHROs, DEI leads, and employee network sponsors planning Heritage Month, IWD, or culture moments.
• Professional services firms briefing graduate, qualified-accountant, and women’s network audiences.
• Leadership and high-performance offsites looking for a credentialled athlete voice over a generic motivational one.

Audience outcomes

• A grounded picture of what visible representation costs and produces inside an institution.
• A practical sense of how high performers structure preparation, recovery, and the routine work around a peak.
• Language for ERGs and managers on how to support employees who are first or only in their roles.
• A reframing of “strength”, physical and professional, that audiences can use in their own teams.