Find your purpose after major setbacks: Katie Piper on how to adapt, reinvent and lead

I found my why and I can't find you your why. But what I can tell you is nobody ever found their why on a mediocre day. So actually you're going through something right now that you can't see an end to or you're feeling why me. Why don't you ask yourself instead of why me? What now? You could say oh my gosh my life was over at 24 and interrupted and destroyed. Or you could say oh my gosh I got an unexpected chance to restart my life at 24. That's how I see it. I I didn't lose my power. I stepped into my power. Welcome to Meet the Leader, a podcast from the World Economic Forum. I'm Robin Pomero. We're recording this video podcast at the annual meeting 2026 in Davos and are joined by someone who has a very personal experience to discuss with us and a message of hope. She's one of the cultural leaders at this Davos meeting. Katie Piper. Katie, how are you? >> I'm very good, thank you. >> For anyone who doesn't know, who is Katie Piper? >> I'm many different things to many different people. I am a TV presenter, an international best-selling author. I'm also a charity founder, a friend, a mother, a wife, and a survivor of male violence and a burn survivor. It's interesting to decide an answer to that question, isn't it? Who are you? Something we all ask. Our identity. Do you think your answer to that has probably changed over the years? >> I think what happens in society, particularly as a woman and a young girl growing up is we're told our identities and we're told what value those assets bring. The value of youth, the value of beauty. And I think actually when you go through um transformation or when you have life experience whether that comes with age or trauma what you realize is identity is very much self- authored and that you don't have to conform to society's idea of identity at certain stages of your life. >> You experience an unimaginable thing as a young woman that changed your life. For anyone unfamiliar with the story and you've written about it in your memoir and you've talked about it in the media, what can you tell us about what happened to you? >> I was injured at a very young age at 24 years old. So an incredibly formative time in anybody's life. I was living in London. I was very ambitious, very motivated, very sociable person. My career was very much aspiring at this stage. I was working on shopping telly as a presenter, working as a model and it was a career and personal life that very much um revolved around not just my looks and my appearance but also my levels of confidence and self-esteem which is why I assume that when somebody wanted to hurt me or in fact destroy me the method that they chose was to throw sulfuric acid into my face. Now this was 17 years ago back in 2008 and this kind of male violence, gender based violence was really not known about actually for some people it was seen as as a cultural thing uh that didn't happen in Europe and actually since what data now shows is that acid attacks are on the rise not just in the UK but in Europe too. >> It's incredible they're on the rise. What's what's going on? >> From a human point of view it it's it's shocking that they're on the rise. is the worst side of mankind, the worst side of humanity. To maim a person, to destroy somebody's life without taking their life, to leave them an empty shell of their former self. When we think of other acts of maming and harming somebody, they're slightly removed. This is very personal, but I completely understand why acid attacks are on the rise and why they are the weapon of choice because they carry the least sentence versus knife crime and gun crime. They don't in the UK they are not categorized um as a separate charge. They are seen as GBH in in the UK courts. So there is not a massive deterrent. You know get caught carrying acid versus get caught carrying a gun or a uh knife. It's much more lenient sentencing or or no sentencing. You will not be incarcerated in some cases. So I can see why it is the weapon of choice for many perpetrators. >> GBH for a nonUK audience. Grievous bodily harm is a very serious violent attack on someone. But what about the underlying causes though? I'm doing at least one other interview about men and women, about the manosphere or toxic masculinity, and also about the challenges faced by men and boys. It's so hard to distinguish the noise, what we hear about what's going on, like, oh, this is on the rise, this thing's happening, from the reality of it. But so just from the perception there seems to be a lot of misogyny on the social media channels people in a position perhaps a position like yours in the media we here receive a lot more misogyny than maybe they did 10 or 20 years ago what what's been your experience of that and and do you have a theory as to why that is? This is a big broad topic and and if I looked at it just through data of who are the perpetrators and who are the victims of acid attacks, you know, I founded my own charity in the UK um in 2010, the Casey Piper Foundation. We're a burn rehabilitation charity. So, we take survivors after their acute care and we support them for the rest of their lives until they feel that they no longer need us and then we know we've done our job successfully. So if you actually look at the data, it's it's not just um male to female violence. Women also are perpetrators of acid attacks. Their victims can be men or women. Acid is used in gangbased violence also as well as honorbased violence. So the data does suggest that it's not just male to female crime. But I suppose my own story when you're talking about misogyny and and this sort of culture that we saw in the dramatization of adolescence in the UK um is about rejection is about men feeling rejected and how they respond to that rejection and also how we view women and how we believe by removing their beauty we remove their power and they no longer hold a value to society. once they are disfigured. >> It's really hard to imagine if anyone's not been through it how your your life has changed and how you go on then. You mentioned the charity you formed. You've got a very successful TV career now. How do you start putting things together? Is is there a moment where you manage to get yourself back on track or is it just a gradual daybyday thing? Life is littered with um things that are out of our control, but it's also littered with opportunities and it's not what happens to us that will define us and unless we let it. It's how we then react and what we do with it afterwards. We all know we're dealt this this this hand in life, these cards, but it's how we play it. We play it different to our neighbor. For me, um I feel very strongly that, you know, I noticed this thing especially with Gen Z, right? I noticed this thing in in younger culture where we we're such a disposable society. Years ago when I was seeking employment, I remember my parents saying you can't have different employments littered through your CV. You stay somewhere. You're loyal. You you and that that's a good thing. Changing jobs is a negative thing. Well, that's completely not true anymore. You can you can do evening courses, you can do online courses, you can work several jobs, you can pivot, you can change completely different careers at any point. So we're able to be more disposable and replace and move on. Same with with dating. If we don't like equality in somebody, we can block them. We can swipe left, swipe right. We can meet people beyond our town, beyond our circle. The reach is huge. So there are lots of positives to these things in professional and personal life. But I feel that what it does is it gives people a message that everything we are doing or involved with or enduring we should like and it should be seamless pathway and we should enjoy it. So what that means is whenever anything gets hard we either quit or we turn to negative coping mechanisms. So that could be uh sex, drugs, alcohol, fast fashion, online shopping, gambling, whatever it is. And then we never find out what we love and what we're good at. You know, I had an opportunity in life to find out who I truly was. You know, when it was really put to the test, I was able to find out so much about my character when I faced adversity. And actually, when you look at what is confidence? Well, confidence is so closely correlated to resilience because we're conditioned to fear dark times and to shy away from them. But it's all the dark times that are helping us build our resilience. A little bit of suffering in life is quite character forming. And then when we build that resilience, we then live with the confidence. And the confidence I talk about is not smooth skin or the latest watch or a certain figure. It's the confidence to know that whatever happens to me in life. I will bounce back. I will reinvent. I am malleable. I am not rigid. I can evolve. And it and it's the confidence to say I will be okay whatever happens to me. We really do young people a disservice where we don't allow them to find that out and to find their why. You know, when people meet me, then they ask me about pivotal moments or finding purpose again once everything was taken away. When I founded my charity, I truly connect with acts of service to others, advocacy, giving voices to people that might not have been heard. And I found my why. And I can't find you your why, but what I can tell you is nobody ever found their why on a mediocre day. So actually, you know, if you're going through something right now um that you can't see an end to or you're feeling why me, why don't you ask yourself instead of why me, what now? And actually, you know, I was able to turn pain into purpose. And I I know it's a real privilege to find your why in your 20ies. Not many people do find their why. Some people don't find their why until they retire. You know, they spend their life doing something that they don't even enjoy. So, you know, I really have kind of mixed feelings about sort of pain and suffering and actually how we can reframe that. And, you know, it's about mindset. I think >> it's interesting what you're saying about allowing embracing the bad times as well. >> Yeah. >> And and sadness because, you know, everything's so glossy and perfect on a screen, isn't it? But everyone's sad. Not everyone goes through what you've been through, but everyone goes through very, very painful things. Life life can be very painful. And I think you're saying one of the things you'd say to people is embrace that in some ways. >> Are they even are they sad times or are they just part of the rich tapestry of life? H how else will the human being ever be challenged? How else will they dig deep? We're obsessed. Uh especially in British culture, you know, when somebody's suffering, we want to give them an answer. We want to comfort them. We want to take it away. And and anyone that's been through uh trauma, which really is everybody on varying degrees, will know sometimes you can't. There's nothing you can say and you can't relieve someone of that suffering. I mean, you can sit with them and you can you can be a voice, you can be an ear, you can listen to them, but you cannot take it away and you don't always have to. We don't always need to understand stuff whilst it's happening. I mean, it's a very unique personal thing, but for me, I have a faith. And if you have a faith in anything, even if that's not religious, even if it's spiritual, you don't have to make sense of everything in the present tense. You can sometimes let go to a higher power and you know know that in hindsight you understand everything and it works out in the end. You have to keep that faith. >> It's a bit like if you're talking to someone who's bererieved, you say you'll get over it. >> It's like the worst thing you could possibly say because no one wants to get over that. You need to live with it and find a way through. But it's not like you're getting over something. It's >> I think the word is acceptance. >> You know, when you accept what should have been and live in actually what is happening is when the true healing starts because I think we all know people that live in the past. I mean, they're usually depressed. It's a very stagnant place to be with no healing, no progress. We we know the opposite of the people that live in the future, very anxious, very highly strong. They're over here worrying about this. Well, real life is happening here. Most of the things we all worry about don't actually happen. And the things that we didn't even consider are the things that really happen that throw us off course. >> Let's talk about your charity that you mentioned, the Katy Piper Foundation. It's support to burns victims. All kinds of burns victims, right? It's it's not just acid attack victims. >> All burn survivors. Um >> survivors. I'm sorry. Let's use that word. >> The victims didn't make it. This sounds like a really stupid question, but why did you decide that's what you would make your cause? >> There were two sort of halfs to me founding a charity. I had on my acute life-saving care on the NHS in London and I found a huge gap in burn rehabilitation. So anyone that isn't familiar with the treatment of burns, there is ingrass, plastic surgery, life-saving care. And then the rehabilitation of burns stops the further disfigurement, the contracting, the shrinking, the toughening of the scars, which actually is functional. You know, people aren't able to use their eyelids, their mouth, their limbs if they don't have burn rehabilitation, which involves a multid-disciplinary approach of physios, OT's, speech therapists. It's not just holistic and well-being. It's it's a medical uh journey. So I actually had to travel to France and live in France in a burn rehab center. So initially when I was coming back to the UK and I was going into the waiting rooms in the UK, seeing people with the same injury as me, but their outcomes were not as superior and sophisticated, I knew that I had to help people. So I I literally just set up a bank account with charitable status and I started to raise money as a grant-giving trust to send other people to France. Well, that charity has had so many different people support us and care about our mission. And we've connected with people from all walks of life, you know, fundraisers, volunteers, donors, supporters, burn survivors, their networks, their friends and family. Fast forward over a decade now, we now have our own burn rehabilitation center in the UK. It's the first and only one of its kind. We're in the northeast of England near St. Helens in Liverpool and we are a residential facility where um patients come and stay with us and have all their impatient care. So it was very much led by medical results. It was working with medical professionals. But there was this whole other arm around acceptance in society. You know the bar was so low for me where people would genuinely sit opposite me in interviews like this and say to me, "What now? How do you plan to be a mother? Did you want to have a husband? What will you do? How will you work?" And people genuinely just couldn't see somebody with a disability or a facial disfigurement being anything other than a victim or somebody that we should support or pity or raise money for. And I knew that to be different. I knew just having a burn injury didn't mean that you wouldn't want to set up your own business. Wouldn't mean you couldn't be a trailblazer, a CEO, wouldn't mean you wouldn't get married, have sexual relationships. And the way that we saw people who were visibly different was so archaic. 2012 the Parolympics coming to London was such a positive thing for how we saw those living with disability who were not disabled you know they were not less than and I think now diversity has changed for the better within media within beauty industry uh within the professional environment it still has a long way to go but it's a completely different landscape to when I became disfigured in 2008 >> what's the one thing you wish everyone would know about burn survivors >> gosh that's a really difficult questions. I think it's it's not just burn survivors. It's it's any visible difference. We fear what we don't know. And that that goes for sexuality, ethnicity, those living with diseases that still carry stigma. We fear what we don't know and don't see. And we fear what we don't want to be, what we think is our worst nightmare. We shy away from it. And actually with, you know, my own experience with I I meet band survivors all the time. And it's not always visible. It's under their clothes. And there's so many more of us than people realize and so many more people like us. Maybe not living with burns, but that stigma, that shame, that blame. And I think it's about trying to go outside of those preconceived ideas. When we make decisions uh through being ruled by fear, when we live in fear, we live a very um restricted life. You know, when you see those that are set free, that are liberated, that don't hold any prejudice, they lead this amazing life where they can connect with people on a far deeper level. I mean at the moment globally we're seeing lots of people um who are being fed misinformation and living in fear and then marginalized groups are suffering and we are going backwards. So please if you fear something instead of discriminating away and turning away from it and discriminating against it please lean into it. Please educate yourself because when I feel fear of something, I realize it's because I lack knowledge and understanding in that area. And every citizen has a duty to to educate themselves on that and to be more inclusive and to practice those basic principles and morals of mankind. >> Learn more about something that you don't know about. Engage with people >> if you get a chance to. >> Be curious. Be curious. Be kind. be informed and it it's about empathy, isn't it? I carry that empathy that at any time in any place that could be you. Everybody is somebody's daughter, somebody's son. Try and put yourself in that place in in in humanity. >> You wrote your memoir, Still Beautiful. It's a lovely book. I think you went out of your way to make it very personal to the reader because there are some pages where you've just written handwritten almost a note to the reader. >> Yeah. And also at the end of the book, you give a list of what seems to be advice to young women. It's almost to me it was like I wish I'd known this at that age, you know. >> Did you relate to it as well then? >> I think so. Good. Well, I'm relating very much to what you're saying right now. I'm pleased to hear that. >> Absolutely. If there is one word of advice, one of those things that you could tell either yourself or a young woman >> today, what would you say or what do you say? It's like the internal and external narrative, isn't it, about who we are and how we view ourselves. And like you say, my my most recent book, Still Beautiful, it ends with kind of listing, you know, if you've ever felt not good enough, if you've ever felt too fat, too thin, whatever it is, it was never you. You were never the problem. And I think what I had to do at a young age having a burn injury is I had to examine everything I'd been told about where my value lied, where my worth lied, where I got my confidence from. And I wrote Still Beautiful when I turned 40 because I then was examining, well, what does that mean? You know, because again, we tell women that youth is is a very powerful and important currency that sits alongside beauty. So, here I was now losing youth and having lost beauty. And what did that mean? And I realized that so many things that I'd been conditioned by society, whether that was through the literature I'd read, the movies I'd watched, the products I'd been sold, wasn't true. And I was never the problem. and I never needed fixing or shrinking or um erasing with creams. And in the age of social media, we're constantly sold to. We are the constant consumer because that keeps the economy going, right? And actually, the most powerful women are those that can't be sold to, that I don't need to fix myself. I'm not broken. It's actually how society views women and where they place their value and their worth that is broken. It's tricky to look in the mirror, isn't it, though, for anyone to say to say this is to try and work out who you really are, particularly for a young person. >> But I think it's about saying I decide who I am. And and my advice is you were never the problem. It's not it's not you. And actually, there's no shame in starting over again. And I I you could say, "Oh my gosh, my life was over at 24 and interrupted and destroyed." Or you could say, "Oh my gosh, I got an unexpected chance to restart my life at 24." You know, that's how I see it. I I didn't lose my power. I stepped into my power. Yes, it was uncomfortable, but most um dramatic change is uncomfortable. Most growth is is through discomfort, right? If we if we lean heavily into discomfort, we experience the most productive growth. >> Are there people you've met who've really inspired you? There are, but it's not what you would think. You know, I was making a documentary in New Orleans recently in a maximum women's prison. So, I could really be all over the globe doing a range of different things. So, you would think, well, is it celebrities that inspire me? Is it world leaders? But actually, no, it's not. It's actually the people that I meet every day through my foundation or the women I meet in the prison that have had these lives that we don't hear about. They they are the voices that don't get platformed. And they're quietly getting on with the unthinkable. The one thing that most people say, well, that would destroy me. I couldn't get through that. These people are getting through it and they are making a success of their life. And I suppose what it does for me is, you know, like anybody, you know, my my trauma is way behind me. It was 17 years ago, right? So my problems now are that uh we didn't have any hot water yesterday morning so I couldn't shower the kids before school or my problems is the roads closed at the end of the village and I'm late for work. I have those regular problems. So when I meet people now through my foundation they give me perspective. They help me practice gratitude and I think we never as human beings stop needing um that that humbling and that gratitude in life. >> So what are you doing here in Davos and what's your impression? Is it your first time here? Yeah. >> What's it been like? >> Well, it's my first time at the World Economic Forum and for me it's a great opportunity to be here as a cultural leader. You know, for me it's it's a platform to say that actually showing vulnerability isn't by any means a weakness. You know, talking about mental health doesn't make you less able or capable in a professional setting. In fact, it can be somewhat of a superpower because it does show um how you cope under pressure and how you do deal with adversity. And I think also what it shows is that this empathy and this kind of social change are as important as finance and policy in leadership and in fact they're critical in leadership. I mean I've met some incredible people here and I think you know I'll go away from this with lots of reflections. It it's such an amazing opportunity to hear such a range of diverse voices and opinions but I also think you know we're all human. We're all, you know, sometimes to to put people on this pedestal in a certain way isn't helpful. And I think the unique connection that I have had through my own journey is yes, people might not have had acid thrown in their face, but they relate and connect with me because of the emotions and because of the adversity and the trauma and that unites us all. And that's what when you really strip everything back and status and titles is we are all as one in that way. Katie Piper, thanks very much for joining us. We've been recording lots of great interviews. You can find all of those on.chodcast. I'm Robin Pomeme at the World Economic Forum. Thanks to you for listening and watching and goodbye for now.