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Robyn Benincasa
Adventure Racing World Champion, CNN Hero & Bestselling Author
Robyn Benincasa
Adventure Racing World Champion, CNN Hero & Bestselling Author
Biography
When the challenges are steep, and the competition fierce, Robyn Benincasa provides individuals and organizations the tools they need to inspire themselves and one another to their greatest heights and to cross their most challenging finish lines.
For the last 20 years, she and her teammates have been competing at the front of the pack in the most unique and compelling classrooms on earth: The jungles of Borneo, the Himalayan peaks of Tibet, the rivers of Fiji, the rainforests of Ecuador and the deserts of Namibia, studying the good, the bad, and the not-so pretty of Extreme Teamwork. It is through these harrowing, life affirming and often hilarious experiences in the world's most grueling challenges that she has emerged with her truly unique perspective on what it takes to build the kind of world class teams that succeed against all odds, triumph in the face of adversity and win as one in times of great challenge and change. Robyn accepts full blame for inspiring people to do insane things like climb Mount Kilimanjaro, run their first triathlon, start their own adventure racing teams, hike across the Grand Canyon with a group of Survivors, or start their own businesses. This is, after all, who she is and what she does: Robyn Benincasa inspires people to grab life with one hand, grab their teammates with the other, and to create that special magic that makes all of us better TOGETHER than we ever would have been alone!
Robyn has made an art form of extreme performance by competing and winning at the highest levels of sport and business; her keynotes are powerful, impactful, and packed with practical, real-world takeaways that inspire peak performance and exceptional leadership. As a 20+ year veteran San Diego firefighter, a World Champion Adventure Racer, a 2014 CNN Hero, a Guinness World Record Endurance Kayaker, a best-selling author, and founder of The Project Athena Foundation, Robyn Benincasa *definitely* knows a thing or two about creating Human Synergy, or as Robyn puts it, "That magic that allows groups of ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things together."
Known as an inspirational force for leadership, teambuilding, and extreme performance, her award winning and game-changing keynotes have earned Robyn accolades as one of 2020s World’s Top 50 Keynote Speakers (Real Leaders Magazine), the #1 Female Speaker for Meetings.net, and is one of the Top 10 Speakers featured by Harvard Business Review. For the past 15 years, Robyn’s keynotes have motivated countless teams and received rave reviews from user groups, associations, and Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, Starbucks, Walmart, Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, HubSpot, Intel, and more.
Robyn’s multi-faceted experience inspires people to grab life with one hand, grab their teammates with the other, and to achieve audacious goals that they could never accomplish alone. She is the expert that companies call on to build world class teams, inspire peak performance and create a culture of champions. Robyn has successfully translated the lessons learned from extreme team sports to the corporate world, with compelling keynotes that show how groups of ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things together.
Grab ahold of your seats! Robyn’s incredible stories and breathtaking footage of extreme teams in action is an invigorating thrill ride that will leave you energized.
Speaker Videos
Demo Reel
Adapt, Overcome, and Win as ONE!
Virtual Keynote Promo
Playing to Win: How Champions Lead Change
True Human Synergy
How Winning Works
Be Willing to Learn
Project Athena
Speech Topics
Adapt, Overcome & Win as ONE! (Virtual Keynote)
Get Ready to Win YOUR Most Challenging Races… Add the Inspirational Force of Leadership and Performance to Your Next Event!
If there’s one thing we can all be certain of right now, it’s that change is the only thing that’s going to stay the same. It’s our response to that change that dictates our success. So how do we as leaders inspire the kind of mindset and build the kind of teams that drive our organizations to adapt, overcome and win as ONE in the face of times of extreme challenge and change?
This unique and fast-paced multimedia keynote is inspired by a Fast Company Magazine feature story entitled “Extreme Teamwork” about Robyn’s World Champion Adventure Racing team. Robyn shares the Secrets to Extreme Teamwork that allowed her team to be the most prolific and consistent World Champions in the sport, lessons that are easily applied to the adventures in our business lives. Their team culture of innovation, visionary creativity, relentless lead building, and embracing calculated risk as a strategy for success made them one of the most exciting and successful teams in the history of adventure sports, and in Robyn’s Adapt, Overcome, and Win as One keynote, she shares the mindset and strategies that created their consistent breakthrough performance.
AND Each Virtual Keynote includes a full super experienced tech team on Robyn's end to ensure everyone's success in creating the magic! You book the event, and our team makes you look like a rockstar.
* available for virtual & in-person events
Why Winners Win: The Game-Changing Mindset That Creates Next-Level Success
What are the common attributes of people who make a lifelong habit of winning… and who succeed against all odds?
Drawing inspiration from Robyn’s team of World Champion adventure athletes as well as Winners from all walks of life, Why Winners Win uncovers the common traits and attitudes of the world’s most consistent high performers. The Best of the Best experience times of great challenge and change just like everyone else; but with characteristic Courage, Luck (Opportunity + Preparation), Adversity Management Skills, and a keen ability to create Synergy with their colleagues, they possess the ability to continually motivate and inspire themselves and those around them to the top of the podium in any endeavor.
This inspiring keynote addresses the following goals, dreams and themes:
- Teaching and leveraging a game-changing strategy that shifts one’s mindset from “not losing” to winning.
- Embracing times of great challenge and change as a springboard to future success.
- Empowering continuous improvement to spur change and reinvent the game.
- Capitalizing on resources and building a world class team to achieve even bigger goals.
- Demonstrating the importance and value of G.U.T.S. (Going the Distance, Unwavering in your patience and faith, Taking Calculated Risks and Shattering the Norm).
- Solidifying how Luck is a proven formula of Opportunity + Preparation that drives peak performance and consistent results.
* available for virtual & in-person events
Building World Class Teams: How to Achieve Breakthrough Performance Through Collaboration, Creativity & a Culture of ONE
How do you inspire individual team members to become great teammates? What if your teams were not only driven to achieve goals with each other but FOR each other? The world’s most successful teams have one thing in common: Human Synergy, which Robyn describes as ”the magic that allows groups of ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things together.” If your goal is to take a group of successful individuals and make them successful as a team, this team-building keynote is the perfect message to set the tone for your event!
Robyn’s most requested keynote is based on her best-selling book, How Winning Works: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons From The Toughest Teams On Earth. Robyn’s innovative team-building strategies offer practical tools to adapt, overcome, and win as ONE, against all odds. In this fast-paced, story-driven keynote, Robyn Benincasa takes your group on a multimedia adventure which visually and viscerally imparts the mindset that allows teams to adapt, overcome, and win as ONE even when the stakes are high and the only thing constant is change. Your world class team will discover that achieving at peak levels isn’t about only reaching UP and trying harder as an individual, but reaching OUT and sharing strengths, talents, and challenges within a World Class Team.
Robyn gets attendees buzzing with inspired ideas about how to raise their team to the next level, both personally and professionally. And they’ll take home simple and easily applied skills that will cultivate deep and lasting connections in any team.
"The hallmark of a world class team is when they’re not only working WITH each other, but FOR each other." – Robyn
* available for virtual & in-person events
Inspiring Greatness Through G.R.I.T.: Creating the Passion to Pursue the Impossible
What inspires the resilience to chase challenging finish lines and achieve world class results in times of incredible challenge and change? How do we create the passion and internal drive to pursue goals that seem impossible? We create this kind of greatness in ourselves and our teammates through G.R.I.T!
G.R.I.T is that magical combination of:
GUTS
RESPECT for our teammates and the mission
INNOVATION
TEAMWORK that makes us “sticky” to our goals and dreams.
In this keynote, Robyn shares the real secret to her and her teams’ success over 20 years of leading the pack in the sport of adventure racing and as a San Diego Firefighter—their “we will find a way or make one” attitude, their love of the mission, their deep respect for one another, their ingenious solutions and white space thinking, their intensive preparation for all contingencies and conditions, and their incredible ability to not just work with each other, but FOR each other. Having the GRIT to go the distance in any endeavor isn’t just a matter of mental fortitude.
Much of our endurance and drive to succeed in those tough times when others would quit comes from our connection to something greater than ourselves, the inspiration that comes from mission driven innovation, the passion we have for our goals and the people whose lives we will touch along the way, the understanding that we are writing our life story during our most difficult challenges, and the respect for a team whose success is inextricably tied to ours.
When you leave Robyn’s Inspiring Greatness Through G.R.I.T keynote, you will have a deep understanding of how to create GRIT in your own life and in your team culture, but most importantly, you’ll be on a mission to inspire that GRIT in everyone who is lucky enough to know you—- the kind of leader every organization needs to help them climb their tallest peaks, fight their biggest fires, and cross their most challenging finish lines…
* available for virtual & in-person events
How Winning Works: The 8 Essential Elements of Human Synergy
Based off her bestselling book, this interactive workshop incorporates Tabletop Team Building Activities* & Team Bonding Exercises** that attendees will participate in at their tables, incorporated throughout the session.
Created to use ALL 8 of the Essential Elements that Robyn Benincasa utilizes as the foundation of all of her keynotes (this workshop is the only one that uses all 8 Elements), attendees will walk away with a complete understanding of how to execute leadership lessons from the toughest teams on earth:
T-Total Commitment
E-Empathy & Awareness
A-Adversity Management
M-Mutual Respect
W-We Thinkers
O-Ownership of the Project
R-Relinquishment of Ego
K-Kinetic Leadership
Testimonials
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