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Patrick Foster
Patrick Foster is a workplace wellbeing speaker helping organisations build sustainable high-performance cultures. A former professional cricketer and bestselling author, he has spoken to over 100,000 people, with clients including HSBC and Manchester City.
Patrick Foster is a former professional cricketer and bestselling author who draws on his recovery from gambling addiction to help organisations build sustainable high-performance cultures. He speaks on perfectionism, fear of failure, and the belief that self-worth depends on achievement.
Patrick has spoken to more than 100,000 people, with clients including HSBC and Manchester City. His memoir, Might Bite: The Secret Life of a Gambling Addict, was published by Bloomsbury and praised by The Times, BBC Radio 5 Live, The Spectator, and the Daily Mail. He also founded GAM-Ed, a wellbeing education programme for schools.
Patrick's career took him from a professional contract with Northamptonshire to the City as an insurance broker and then into teaching at an independent school, while hiding a gambling addiction for more than a decade. That experience gives him a clear view of how outward success can mask private struggle, and why high performers often find it hardest to ask for help.
Through keynotes, leadership sessions, and workshops, Patrick helps leaders recognise the hidden struggles that strong results can conceal, question unhealthy habits around pressure, and build psychological safety so that asking for support feels normal. Teams leave with practical ways to let ambition and wellbeing strengthen each other.
For leadership events, conferences, and wellbeing programmes, Patrick offers a candid, first-hand account of high performance under pressure, backed by practical guidance teams can apply straight away.
Topics, sessions and talks
Why can someone appear successful while struggling in private? Patrick Foster draws on his time in professional cricket, the City, and education to show how perfectionism, fear of failure, and constant pressure make achievement unsustainable. His own story of gambling addiction and recovery opens a candid conversation about the warning signs that strong performance can hide. Leaders and teams come away better able to spot hidden struggles and create workplaces where asking for support feels possible.
How can leaders sustain ambition while protecting the people who deliver it? Patrick Foster examines how everyday leadership behaviour shapes pressure, communication, and psychological safety, and how wellbeing and performance depend on each other. Drawing on his experience of elite sport and the City, he helps audiences recognise unhealthy coping patterns before they take hold. Managers and teams leave with practical ways to build resilience, open up honest conversations, and create a healthier performance culture.
What happens when achievement becomes the measure of personal worth? Drawing on his career as a professional cricketer and his recovery from gambling addiction, Patrick Foster explores why high achievers struggle with setbacks, hide vulnerability, and feel unable to ask for help. He shows how fear-driven behaviour takes root and what a healthier response to pressure looks like. High-performing teams, emerging leaders, and sporting audiences gain a clearer sense of identity beyond results.
Delivered through GAM-Ed and tailored to students in Years 7 to 13, this session draws on Patrick Foster's lived experience and his background as a teacher. He helps young people explore mental wellbeing, gambling and gaming risks, digital habits, and decision-making, with a focus on identity and self-worth. Available for assemblies, year groups, sixth forms, and small-group workshops, it leaves students able to recognise warning signs, choose healthier coping strategies, and know where to find support.
Parent sessions and staff training that help a whole school community understand the pressures young people face, from gambling and gaming to online influences and behavioural addictions. Parent sessions focus on conversations at home and building resilience together. Staff training and INSET cover safeguarding awareness, wellbeing, and practical support strategies. Run alongside the student keynote, they create a coordinated programme that gives pupils, parents, and staff a shared language for spotting vulnerability and responding early.
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frequently asked questions
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Patrick Foster uses his own story of a gambling addiction, kept hidden through careers in cricket, the City, and teaching, to open a practical conversation about the warning signs that strong performance can conceal.
Patrick Foster specialises in the human cost of high performance, building sustainable high-performance cultures, and the link between success, identity, and wellbeing. A former professional cricketer and author of Might Bite: The Secret Life of a Gambling Addict, he has spoken to more than 100,000 people, with clients including HSBC and Manchester City.
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