Kath Koschel
Survivor, Founder of Kindness Factory, Keynote Speaker & 2025 NSW Australian of the Year
Kath Koschel knows how to take on a challenge and win, having learnt to walk again several times, physically and mentally. She also knows how to deliver acts of kindness. As the founder of the Kindness Factory, the acts of kindness she contributes to the world each day are dramatically changing the way we engage in schools, business, the community and within ourselves.
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A testament to the power of human spirit, Kath Koschel is a survivor who has overcome incredible odds and unimaginable tragedy to inspire ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
Kath Koschel is a former professional cricketer and Ironman competitor who’s world came crashing down when she broke her back twice in the span of five years and was told that she would never walk again. Instead, she faced the challenges head-on and defied all medical prognosis by teaching herself to walk again on three separate occasions.
In the midst of these harrowing experiences, she believes she experienced two things in large amounts: adversity and kindness. After re learning to walk for the second time in her life, this realisation kickstarted a 2-month journey around Australia which relied solely on the kindness of strangers. No cash, credit card, food or water – and no help from family or friends!
Driven by a passion to spread gratitude and kindness in the world, she founded Kindness Factory™ with the goal of encouraging one million acts of kindness. To date, Kindness Factory has recorded over 7 million acts of kindness and is now a registered not-for-profit in three countries.
An internationally sought after speaker and author of Kindness the book, Kath has worked with some of the biggest and most well-known companies and brands in the world to help them achieve perspective, resilience, good culture and of course, kindness.
Topics
MENTAL FITNESS
What if we thought about mental health in the way that we thought about physical health? Just like physical fitness, mental fitness is pivotal to all human development; informing our performance and our mindset whilst also aiding our ability to connect with others effectively. Mental fitness underpins the foundation to a life well lived, in and out of the workplace.
In the Mental Health: Building and Sustaining Mental Fitness keynote, Kath unpacks what mental fitness means and how to effectively manage it with her mental health framework, backed by evidence-based strategies including:
- Self awareness as a foundation for growth and moving through to self- acceptance
- Growth through adversity and change – How to grow through what we go through
- Linking gratitude, humor and kindness to mental health and fitness
- How to cultivate community and conversation through connection and belonging
- How to build resilience, optimism and agility
WORKPLACE CULTURE
Employee disconnection leads to lower productivity and lower rates of retention. Creating a workplace of belonging and kindness is proven to aid better mental health, as well as increasing profitability, productivity, high performance and retention. It’s good for your people and good for your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Learn 4 ways to increase psychological safety in the workplace
- How to foster higher levels of psychological safety in your team.
- How to deepen trust and build high-value relationships with co-workers, customers, and clients.
- How to build an inclusive culture
- Bringing collaboration back post covid
CHANGE RESILIENCE
Change is a reality for all and it comes at us in many ways. But be careful, history shows that only a small number of change strategies succeed. Your people will enable it, or obstruct it.
Kath will build a bespoke offering with key and actionable take aways for the audience to implement immediately to overcome resistance, manage the change process and land on key messages for your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Key steps to implementing change and how best to manage it
- Providing perspective to overcome resistance to the change process
- How to create and navigate opportunity in the change process
- How to bring choice to periods of change
- Adopting a resilience mindset in the face of change
