Yona
Knight-Wisdom
- 3x Jamaican Olympic Diver (2016, 2021, 2024)
- Paris 2024 Olympic Team Captain
- 4x International Silver Medalist
- Keynote Speaker
- AquaticsGB Performance Centre Coach (2025-Present)
- Dame Kelly Holmes Trust Athlete Mentor (2020-25)
- World Aquatics Athletes’ Committee Member (2025-29)
- PanAm Aquatics Athletes’ Committee Member (2024-28)
My Diving Journey
About Yona
Thanks to the miracle of In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), Yona was born in Leeds, England in 1995, to a Barbadian mother and Jamaican Father. He was identified as a future Olympian at the age of nine, and achieved that miracle three times over during an extraordinary twenty year career.
Services
Yona is passionate about the growth of people and the growth of his sport. He achieves both by speaking on stage to large audiences about his phenomenal diving career, providing deeper insights to smaller groups through coaching & mentoring, and giving back directly to his sport as a full-time diving coach.
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Yona’s keynote, “Fulfil Your Potential: My Journey From IVF to Olympic Glory”, is a stimulating exploration of his extraordinary journey, tailored based on the audience to resonate with a range of ages and career stages.
His presentations offer a practical roadmap to success through a compelling and comprehensive oversight of his groundbreaking diving career, or a deeper dive into his main topics of Ambition, Visualisation, Mindset, or Self-Belief.
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As an ILM Level 5 Coach & Mentor and Dame Kelly Holmes Trust Athlete Mentor, Yona helps high-performing individuals, and young people alike, to fulfil their potential.
The unique experiences of his 12-year international diving career led him to develop the AIMS Framework:
- Be Ambitious without fear.- Imagineer your future.
- Embrace the athlete Mindset.
- Improve your Self-Belief.
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For over a decade, Yona has coached aspiring divers within the successful programmes at City of Leeds Diving and Edinburgh Diving Club, and is now employed as an AquaticsGB High-Performance Diving Coach, based at the iconic London Aquatics Centre.
Bedrock SPorts Initiative
This initiative aims to address the current lack of access to elite coaching in sports like diving, the need for water safety education, and the absence of world-class sporting facilities in the country. Through the three core programmes - the YKW Diving Academy, Wise In Water, and Project Montego Bay Sport - BSI aims to empower Jamaican youth, promote water safety, and position Jamaica as a player in global sports tourism.
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The Mission is to establish a grassroots diving programme that gives young Jamaican athletes access to safe, structured training guided by qualified coaches, setting the foundation for a sustainable pathway of progression from novice levels to international competition, while encouraging achievement, fun, and community.
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The Mission is to increase access to swimming and promote water safety to children and adults across Jamaica in unity with local schools and communities. We will empower individuals through the joy of swimming, challenge cultural perceptions that limit aquatic participation, and inspire a new generation of athletes in all disciplines, creating pathways for youth to engage in aquatic sport, cultivating a sense of community pride through sport.
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The Mission is to build the foundations of a dynamic and thriving ecosystem which will: be committed to supporting and developing talent in a variety of sports; promote physical and mental wellness among the local community, and; strengthen Montego Bay’s status as a premier destination for tourists by providing world-class training opportunities, innovative sports tourism options, and engaging entertainment.