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Jessica Buchanan
Change Strategist & Best-Selling Author
Jessica Buchanan
Change Strategist & Best-Selling Author
Biography
Jessica Buchanan shares with audiences her experience in learning first-hand that the human spirit is impenetrable. No matter what obstacles or challenges lie in our path if we dig deep to find the strength and fortitude, there is help for any situation no matter how impossible the odds.
On October 25, 2011, Jessica Buchanan and a colleague were kidnapped at gunpoint by Somali land pirates and held for 93 days, enduring the most harrowing and painful experience of her life. On the day of her kidnapping, she silently said to herself, “Some do come out alive, the numbers are small but they do exist.” During her captivity, she was terrorized by her captors, held outdoors in a scrub desert and kept on a starvation diet. With her health steadily deteriorating her husband, Erik Landemalm, was furiously working behind the scenes with the FBI, professional hostage negotiators, and the United States government to negotiate her release.
Finally after fruitless negotiations with her captors and her medical state becoming a life-or-death issue, President Barack Obama ordered Navy SEAL Team Six to attempt a rescue. On January 25, 2012 members of SEAL Team Six attacked the heavily-armed captors, and airlifted Buchanan and her colleague to safety.
Through this experience, Buchanan learned that the human spirit is indomitable and that we are more resilient than we could ever imagine. Today she shares with audiences the tools she quickly learned to find strength to face any situation no matter how large or small the challenges or obstacles. She learned first-hand how to remain hopeful, dig deep even when you feel completely empty of any resources and trust your instincts as all can find the inner strength to face any situation. She chronicled the story in the New York Times best-seller and 2013 USA Best Book Award/Autobiography, Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six (2013).
Speaker Videos
TEDx: Change is Your Proof of Life
The Rescue of Jessica Buchanan | 60 Minutes
Sizzle Reel
Navy Seal Foundation Speech
National Day of Courage
Inside the SEAL Team Rescue Mission
Speech Topics
Impossible Odds: A Story of Strength & Survival
Audiences of all types looking to be inspired and motivated to face the everyday and extraordinary challenges of their lives with grace, tenacity and the ability to move forward.
The audience will leave with:
- Feelings of inspiration and a renewed perspective showing them that they have what it takes to persevere through obstacles, no matter how impossible they may seem in the present
- Specific tools Jessica used during captivity, that you can employ in your every day life, that inspire gratitude and a willingness
- A poignant reminder that no matter how alone we may feel, we have not been forgotten
Deserts to Mountaintops
This keynote is geared specifically to those audiences looking to walk in greater alignment with themselves, and for those who are ready to start listening to their own voice and hone their intuition.
The audience will leave with:
- Tools for honing their intuition in every area of their lives
- Real life examples that drive home the life and death situation that not listening to their intuition can cause
- Exercises that will bring them into greater self-awareness and alignment into what they want for their future
- Feelings of Empowerment that will bring them to decisions more quickly, ultimately getting them to their next steps in an effective and efficient way
Kidnappings, Ransoms & the Security Sector
This keynote is for the audience who works specifically in the security space. With Jessica’s unique background in the INGO (International Non-Governmental Organizational) space combined with her professional training as a teacher, Jessica shares lessons learned from before, during, and after her kidnapping experience to enable aid organizations and companies of all sizes and sectors to learn from her kidnapping experience as both a cautionary tale and a story of survival success.
The audience will leave with:
- Practical takeaways and lessons learned from the unique perspective of a former hostage
- An unforgettable illustration of the importance of an organization’s Duty of Care
- A renewed sense of purpose as to their WHY supporting their mission
- A commitment to their own personal security, and listening to their gut
- An actual security checklist they may use prior to visiting project locations at home and abroad
Change Strategist
Change is an inevitable part of life. Whether the change is something you have chosen or if the change has chosen you, the one thing you ALWAYS have is a choice. Through sharing the dramatic story of her rescue by SEAL Team Six after being held hostage by Somali Pirates, New York Times Bestselling Author, Humanitarian, and Survivor, Jessica Buchanan will show you how to become a collaborator with change and create the strategies you need to survive and thrive. Through story-telling and practical exercises, Jessica teaches you the lessons she learned during her 93-day captivity that will show you how to build a collaborative mindset that empowers you to optimize change. Jessica will walk you through activities that invite contemplation, create a new definition of change, and launch you into a space of abundant growth and success.
Coping Through Crisis: How 93 Days with Somali Pirates Prepared Me for COVID
Jessica brings a simple shift in perspective as she outlines the similarities she faced during her kidnapping, to those we may be feeling at such a historical time as this. The commonality of uncertainty will align as Jessica recounts the helplessness she experienced during her 93 days as a hostage. She will examine the loss of control she felt, over even the most basic of needs, and discuss the hardships associated with the KNOWING things are going to end, versus the BELIEVING they will, and how that affects our coping strategies in the midst of crisis.
Through her story telling, Jessica reminds us that we are more resilient than we think we are, and how working our way through this marathon of complication is an opportunity for us to see what we are truly capable of as a collective community. Jessica teaches her audiences to use humor to help shift perspective, and shares the necessary skill of visualization and referring to the past, as useful tools to successfully manage trauma.
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