Selima Sfar is a keynote speaker on elite performance, a tennis analyst and commentator for beIN SPORTS, and co-founder of Unus Mundus.
Born in Sidi Bou Saïd, she started playing at eight at the Tennis Club de Carthage and left Tunisia at twelve to train in Biarritz. She trained in France and refused to compete under the French flag. She played for Tunisia.
She turned professional in 1993 and competed for eighteen years. She was the first Arab woman in history to enter the WTA Top 100, reaching No. 75 in singles and No. 47 in doubles. She was also the first Arab woman in history to play the main draw of all four Grand Slam tournaments, with 37 Grand Slam draws in singles and doubles at the Australian Open, Roland-Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open, and a doubles quarter-final at Wimbledon in 2008. She competed at two Olympic Games, Atlanta 1996 and Beijing 2008, and holds a Fed Cup record of 41 wins and 24 losses. In 2016 she won the Wimbledon Invitation Doubles with Martina Navratilova, after reaching the final in 2014 and 2015 and again in 2017.
She received the ITF Award for Services to the Game in 2019. She has been a Global Brand Ambassador for Lacoste since 2010, having been sponsored by the house since 1992. She is a co-founder of Le Club de Gammarth, which opened in 2017 and now covers 14,000 square metres. At Université Paris Dauphine-PSL Tunis she facilitates TheManagement Code and is Marraine de la promotion 2025/2026.
She now speaks to senior corporate and institutional audiences on what stops capable people at the moment they are about to succeed.
Selima Sfar's official speaking topics are listed below:
The Fear of Winning
The collapse does not arrive when you are losing. It arrives when you are about to win.
Dubai, February 2002. Selima Sfar, entering on a wildcard, against Anna Kournikova, a former world No. 8, in the night session. Three sets. A third-set tiebreak. By her own account she was four games and forty love up in the deciding set.
She did not lose that match to Kournikova. She lost it to something else, and it took her years to name it.
The fear that ends careers is not the fear of failing. It is the fear of what happens to a person who succeeds: the visibility, the judgement, the criticism, the distance that opens between you and everyone who knew you before. Most people prepare for difficulty. Almost nobody prepares for arrival.
This keynote names the mechanism, shows it operating on a scoreboard, and explains why the same collapse appears in a boardroom without a single tennis reference.
The Audience Leaves With:
- Why the collapse happens at four love up and not at love four
- What visibility actually costs, and how it is prepared for rather than endured
- The difference between a champion and an iconic champion, and why the system that produced one rarely produces the next
- Where this is already happening in their own organisation, in people they can name
Do Not Be Too Great
Every woman in this room was taught the same sentence. Almost none of us were taught it out loud.
Be capable, but not so capable that it becomes uncomfortable. Be ambitious, but not visibly. Succeed, but apologise for it. Take the room, but not the whole room.
Self-diminishment is not a personal failing and it is not a confidence problem. It is inherited, it is taught early, and it is enforced by people who love you.
Selima Sfar reached the WTA Top 100 before any Arab woman in history had done it, competed at two Olympic Games, and spent eighteen years on tour finding out exactly how much space she was permitted to occupy. She then spent a second career watching senior women hit the same ceiling in rooms with no scoreboard in them.
Same thesis as The Fear of Winning, entered through a different door. Built for women's leadership forums, International Women's Day and gender and policy institutes, and delivered without a single line of encouragement.
The Audience Leaves With:
- Where the sentence was learned, and who repeats it
- Why ambition is punished differently depending on who holds it
- What a ceiling looks like from underneath, described by someone who spent a career pressed against one
- Permission, stated plainly, without being asked for
The Shark Mindset
Anger, envy, humiliation. The emotions nobody puts on a values poster are the ones that decide performance at the top.
The hardest battlefield is not the opponent. It is what the opponent makes you feel.
Joy is easy to work with. Nobody needs help with love. What breaks people at elite level is anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, betrayal and humiliation, and the standard advice is to suppress them, which does not work and has never worked.
An emotion is energy in motion. Directed, it is fuel. Undirected, it runs the person instead.
Selima Sfar takes the emotions competitive environments actually produce and shows what each one can be turned into. Anger becomes assertiveness. Jealousy becomes information. Fear sharpens presence. Humiliation becomes humility, and then becomes the discernment between surrendering and giving up, which are not the same thing and are constantly confused.
Built for leadership teams, sales organisations and anyone operating where the pressure is public.
The Audience Leaves With:
- Why suppression is the most expensive option available
- A working distinction between surrendering and giving up
- What to do with judgement and criticism, first in private and then in public, because the order matters
- Why emotional mastery, not technical skill, separates the people who last
Sexy Spirituality
Not replacing discipline. Adding freedom.
Every high performer builds a system: discipline, preparation, repetition, control, sacrifice, perfectionism. It works. It is why they are in the room.
And then a point arrives where more of the same stops producing more, and working harder is no longer the answer.
Selima Sfar argues that what comes after is not built by subtraction. Nothing is taken away. Something is added.
- Not replacing preparation. Adding intuition.
- Not replacing ambition. Adding pleasure.
- Not replacing structure. Adding instinct.
- Not lowering standards. Moving from perfection to excellence.
Perfection says: I must not make mistakes. Excellence says: I can make mistakes and remain completely inside my power. Perfection contracts. Excellence adapts. A tennis player cannot control the wind, the crowd, a bad bounce or a line call, and at some point preparation has to surrender to presence.
This keynote is about aliveness as a performance asset rather than a reward for performance. It is delivered without asking anyone to want less.
The Audience Leaves With:
- The distinction between perfection and excellence, and why it is worth money
- Why the system that made them successful may be the thing now holding them
- What to add rather than what to remove
- The case for ambition, pleasure and success as evidence of aliveness rather than obstacles to it
Official Feedback from In-Person & Virtual Events
"Selima combines the discipline of a world-class athlete with the wisdom of a spiritual master. Her presence, and inner mastery challenged and elevated every participant, both on and off the field." - Micky, CEO, WNBA
"As an Arab woman sharing her journey from abuse to empowerment, consciousness, and inner freedom, Selima breaks taboos and opens hearts. Her talk is bold, elegant, and unforgettable, a true inspiration for diverse audiences worldwide." - Fabrice, Broadcaster, Former Tennis Champion
- Grand Slam draws - 37, in singles and doubles, across all four events
- Fed Cup - 41 wins, 24 losses
- Career prize money - USD 876,041
- First Arab woman in history to enter the WTA Top 100. First Arab woman in history to play the main draw of all four Grand Slam tournaments
- beIN SPORTS - Tennis analyst and commentator. Arabic from Doha, French for beIN SPORTS France
- 2025/2026 - Marraine de la promotion 2025/2026
- 2022 - Unus Mundus: Co-founded with Fernando Cavalher, 13 May 2022
- 2019 - ITF: Award for Services to the Game
- 2017 - Le Club de Gammarth: Co-founder. Opened November 2017. Now 14,000 square metres
- 2017 - Wimbledon Invitation Doubles: Runner-up
- 2016 - Wimbledon Invitation Doubles: Champion with Martina Navratilova
- 2015 - Wimbledon Invitation Doubles: Runner-up
- 2014 - Wimbledon Invitation Doubles: Runner-up
- 2010 - Lacoste: Global Brand Ambassador since 2010
- 2008 - Olympic Games: Beijing
- 2008 - Career high, doubles: No. 47
- 2008 - Best Grand Slam doubles: Quarter-final, Wimbledon 2008
- 2004 - WTA singles quarter-finals: Cincinnati
- 2002 - WTA singles quarter-finals: Warsaw
- 2001 - Career high, singles: No. 75
- 2001 - WTA singles quarter-finals: Dubai
- 1996 - Olympic Games: Atlanta
- 1994 - Junior: African junior champion
- 1992 - Junior: Arab Junior Singles champion
- 1992 - Lacoste: Sponsored by the house since 199is2
How to hire Selima Sfar
Contact the Champions Speakers Agency to provisionally enquire about hiring Selima Sfar for your next event, today. To get in touch, simply call an official booking agent on 0207 1010 553 or email us at [email protected] for more information.
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