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Abi Oyepitan is a two-time Olympian turned entrepreneur and speaker whose story of reinvention, built through injury, loss and comeback, has made her a compelling voice on resilience, high performance and what it really takes to keep going when everything falls apart.
Abi reached the 200m final at Athens 2004, becoming the first British female sprinter in 24 years to reach an Olympic final and ranking sixth fastest in the world. Six years sidelined from major competition and three operations later, she re-emerged to win Commonwealth silver and relay gold in 2010, then closed her career at London 2012, reaching the semi-finals in both the 100m and 200m.
After retiring, Abi co-founded LIHA Beauty with zero industry knowledge, building it from her kitchen table to 100+ global retailers including Liberty, Net-A-Porter, Zalando and Le Bon Marché, and raising close to £1m in investment. Over a decade scaling it into a cult brand, with US Vogue calling their hero product “Africa’s best kept beauty secret” and coverage from the BBC, FT and CNN, Abi eventually walked away from the business, taking with her the lessons, often learned the hard way, in what it actually takes to build something from nothing when you’re starting without a road map.
Abi now speaks and facilitates on resilience, reinvention, and high performance, translating what elite sport and startup life taught her about pressure, identity, and change into honest, practical sessions for audiences navigating their own pivots. She has spoken at Wired, the Dubai Retail Summit, Netflix and Adidas, and appeared on BBC News and Channel 4’s Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas.
How to recognise when an identity or chapter has expired, build the courage to let go, and turn that change into an advantage. Drawing on my own move from Olympic finalist to first-time beauty founder, I give audiences a practical way to think about reinvention as a skill not a crisis.
What elite sport teaches about resilience, recovery, consistency, and performing under pressure, and how those lessons translate directly to business and leadership.
Why effort alone isn’t enough, and why strategy, network, visibility, and understanding the system you’re operating in matter just as much. A challenge to the ‘just work harder’ narrative, grounded in what I actually had to learn (sometimes the hard way) building myself as an athlete and LIHA Beauty from scratch.
A candid look at toxic productivity culture, why ‘balance’ is often the wrong goal, and what elite athletes actually do differently to manage pressure without burning out – practical takeaways for anyone juggling ambition with wellbeing.
Abi was fabulous very engaging and spoke with passion about her amazing journey and really brought the delegates into her talk – please thank her very much as the feedback from my delegates was super.
And what a way to close the day, hearing an inspiring story of resilience, discipline and transition into business from Olympian Athlete and businesswoman Abi Oyepitan OLY.
