Polly Williamson is a multiple gold-medal winning event rider who suffered a near-fatal brain injury when a horse she was training panicked and kicked her in the head. Relearning to talk, walk and coherently think Polly is now following a successful career as a motivational speaker, focusing on building mental... Read more
Polly Williamson is a multiple gold-medal winning event rider who suffered a near-fatal brain injury when a horse she was training panicked and kicked her in the head.
Relearning to talk, walk and coherently think Polly is now following a successful career as a motivational speaker, focusing on building mental resilience and determination. She clearly and poignantly explains the tools and characteristics she used to work with her altered brain and how she rediscovered the key elements that drove her sporting success. Rising towards the challenge of securing her changed identity, Polly absorbed and worked with the added strengths of diversity.
At 18 years old Polly was selected for her first European Championships winning double gold. Polly went on to win a further 4 gold medals and 2 National titles competing across Europe and Australia. Polly also competed in a celebrity race round Aintree jumping the original Becher’s Brook! Polly secured numerous financial sponsorship agreements with high profile global companies and set up her own business producing horses for the international market, alongside training international competitors in Great Britain and Europe.
In 2011 Polly sustained a life changing accident incurring a traumatic brain injury. Her successful business was closed and her secure family life with her husband and 2 children was temporarily weakened as Polly was left struggling to know who she now was. This loss of identity – led by her damaged brain pathways – plummeted her self-esteem and confidence and needed extraordinary resilience and determination before she truly became secure in her new skin.
The decade-long journey from coma to a full, successful existence saw plenty of challenges overcome. Polly talks of the strategies she used during her recovery and her first-hand experience of the publics’ positive and negative reaction to mental issues. Her story is one of pure and relentless determination and is a reminder to anyone that it is always possible to start again, even after the most significant of setbacks.
Polly has achieved an extraordinary recovery. Enthusiastic to share her remarkable experiences with audiences globally, Polly has become the proud author of ‘Where Did I Go?: Rediscovering My Identity, Lost After a Traumatic Brain Injury’, a publication that provides an in-depth, personal and at times amusing account of what she experienced to the reader.
Polly is passionate about supporting the future generation, spending 6 months volunteering at a Barnardo’s centre supporting young children and an ambassador for The Sophy Layzell Trust – a charity supporting children with an acquired brain injury. Polly is also a frequent speaker for the charity ‘Headway’.
As a speaker, Polly shares her inspirational story and leaves audiences with the clear message that we all have an inner strength to overcome adversity and that a new path can be found, working with differences rather than against them.
The one-of-a-kind Polly Williamson is a humorous, sincere and heartwarming speaker, guaranteed to leave a strong impression on all her audiences with a potent reminder of what we can achieve.
The neuro diverse will often think outside the box and new and unfettered thinking can make any organisation great. Keynote sessions will explain how the neuro diverse mind can think differently.
Sharing the tools used to stabilize mental health and move forward following a life changing brain injury.
We all seek an identity. Traumatic brain injury took away Polly’s identity and a keynote session can explain the characteristics and actions used to build an identity.