"Harry is actually one of my coaches" - Serena Williams teams with Prince Harry to discuss mental health
WTA
During a collaboration that promoted mental health awareness, Serena Williams admitted that Prince Harry helps in solving her life's problems.
Williams and the Duke of Sussex appeared on a panel for BetterUp, a company that provides employee coaching and mental health services, alongside CEO Alexi Robichaux.
The royal, who serves as the company’s chief impact officer, spoke with Serena about facing burnout, setting boundaries and dealing with loss and setbacks in life. Toward the end of the panel, Serena even divulged that Harry is one of her go-to people for solving her life problems.
“It’s hard. I’m a terrible loser,” Serena said. “When it comes to losing, I even hate that word,” she noted. “Because for me, if I have a loss I actually learn so much from it.”
Williams would go on to explain that “some of my best growth has come from a loss.”
“Even when I’m investing in a company, I actually want to know about your losses,” the 23-time Grand Slam winner said. “If you started a company before, how did you do? ... Where did you kind of fail at? Because if everything was so good and so clean and so easy, then that doesn’t even build character, you know?”
Harry chimed in and spoke to the idea that people can continue to grow and learn from setbacks.
“If you’re in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s and even your 50s, and you think you’ve got it sorted, then bad stuff’s gonna happen,” Harry said. “There’s a lesson here. There’s a lesson I’m being schooled by the universe. There’s something in this for me to learn.
“So that next time it happens, I become more resilient or better at being able to see a way around it, to be able to achieve the ultimate goal. And if you have that perspective, then every single bad thing that happens ― again, what you perceive to be bad ― actually can be good.”
Toward the end of the talk, Serena said the duke had helped her find a mental coach whom she continues to work with. And beyond that, she said, Harry is “always solving” her “life’s problems.”
“I know I joke a lot, but Harry is actually one of my coaches,” Serena said, laughing. “Whenever I see him, he’s always solving all my life’s problems, so I kind of give that to your BetterUp coach, it’s kind of helped me ― so thank you!”
Williams is longtime friends with Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, and attended the royal couple’s wedding in 2018 with her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Meghan and Ohanian appeared together on a panel for a TIME 100 Talk in October 2020.
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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