Robyn Benincasa

Robyn Benincasa is a World Champion adventure racer, 20-plus year veteran San Diego firefighter, CNN Hero, three-time Guinness World Record endurance kayaker, bestselling author, and founder of the Project Athena Foundation. Named one of the 2020 Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World, the number one Female Speaker by Meetings.net, and a Top 10 Speaker by Harvard Business Review, she is a powerhouse on leadership and extreme teamwork.

World-Class Performer
Robyn has competed and won at the highest levels of adventure racing, leading her team to become the most prolific and consistent World Champions in the sport. Her experiences navigating extreme terrain, sleep deprivation, and relentless competition provide vivid, real-world lessons in adaptability, resilience, and human synergy, what she defines as the magic that allows groups of ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things together.

Keynotes That Drive Results
Robyn’s multimedia keynotes take audiences on immersive adventures that deliver practical, immediately applicable takeaways for peak performance, leadership, and team building. Her signature presentation, inspired by a Fast Company feature on extreme teamwork, shares the secrets that made her racing team champions and translates those principles into strategies for organizational success. Through the Project Athena Foundation, she inspires survivors of medical setbacks to achieve athletic adventures they never thought possible.

Adapt, Overcome, and Win as One!

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.

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.

Building World Class Teams: How to Achieve Breakthrough Performance Through Collaboration, Creativity, and 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