Travels From:

San Diego, CA

Fee Range:

$15,000–$50,000

Favorite Food:

Açaí Bowls

Robyn Benincasa

Robyn gives audiences the tools they need to cross their own finish lines—especially when the challenges are steep, the goals are audacious, the competition is fierce, and constant change is the only guarantee!

Robyn Benincasa is an award-winning keynote speaker, a 20+ year veteran San Diego firefighter, a World Champion Adventure Racer, a best-selling author, and founder of The Project Athena Foundation.

Robyn’s innovative team-building and peak performance strategies help teams cross their most challenging finish lines. Her “8 Essential Elements of Extreme Performance” promote the kind of collaboration, innovation, mindset, and culture that leads to breakthrough results.

As one of MSN’s Top 10 Business Speakers in North America, a World Top 50 Keynote Speaker, the #1 Female Speaker for MeetingsNet, and recognized as one of the Top 10 Speakers Featured by Harvard Business Review, Robyn is known as an inspirational force for leadership, team building, and extreme performance.

Discover how a World Champion Adventure Racer and Firefighter can dramatically improve your team’s performance, commitment, collaboration, culture, and leadership.

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 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, team building, 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 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.

FRIENDLY ALERT!
A speaker Bio is NOT a speaker INTRO! :) Once you book your perfect speaker, you will be provided a short sharp and compelling SPEAKER INTRO to use when bringing your speaker on stage!

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.

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.

Why Winners Win The Game Changing Mindset That Creates Next Level Success

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

Building World-Class Teams
How to Achieve Breakthrough Performance Through Collaboration, Creativity, and A Culture of ONE
(45 – 60 minutes)

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 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. They’ll take home simple and easily applied skills that will cultivate deep and lasting connections in any team.

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…

How Winning Works: The 8 Essential Elements of Human Synergy Approx. 90 - 120 mins*** (not available for virtual events)

Based on her bestselling book, this interactive workshop incorporates Tabletop Team Building* Activities and 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

*The goal for each of these challenges is for everyone to get as many points as they can “as a team.” The bigger question after seeing the content is, “Who really IS on your team?”

Team Bonding Exercises like her “Life Pyramid” (sharing what our goals are, what people would be surprised to know about us, and one peak experience).

***If time allows, Robyn can include a “Coach the Teams” conclusion. Attendees will watch video footage from some of the biggest adventure race failures, and utilizing everything they have learned, the audience will “coach” the teams. By answering compelling and interesting survey questions, they will all be able to see how the teams could have improved their leadership and teamwork using the 8 Essential Elements.

why winner win

Motivational keynote takeaway

Relevence to Your Audience

The Adventurer Who Inspires

Robyn Benincasa’s keynote presentation at our recent convention was GREAT! Her overall message fit seamlessly into our company goals and our franchisees genuinely responded to her. In fact, the early convention survey results are in and a vast majority of our franchisees rated Robyn’s session as one of the highlights of the event. Logistically, she was also wonderfully easy to work with. We were especially pleased with her pre-program preparation and how she paid attention to our core objectives and carried those seamlessly through her message to our franchise partners from the platform.

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Brian Spindel

President & COOPostNet

“I thought yours was one of the best, if not the best, keynote session I’ve seen in over two decades at my company. … you did your homework on us and our event; intensive homework, way beyond just Googling us. You spoke as an insider! You didn’t just bring us into your world, you integrated both our worlds, your examples were specific, but your message and lessons were universal, and I found myself more and more impressed as the talk went on.”

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Global Patient Outcomes & Real World Evidence / VP

“Robyn’s message for our company was perfect. The presentation felt custom-made for us and left everyone ready to help each other win! Everyone loved her energy level and her thought-provoking stories connected with our employees. I have witnessed many members of our team referencing quotes from her talk, and I expect we will incorporate many of them into our company culture. Having high-performing teams is critical to our success, and Robyn’s inspirational message has undoubtedly made our teams stronger.”

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Cogentrix Energy Power Management / COO

I have known Robyn Benincasa for a number of years, and have utilized her talents as both a speaker, as well as a leader of team-oriented events. While the SVP for the Western U.S. for Starbucks Coffee, I selected her as both the lead speaker, as well as the team leader, for our annual Store Manager Leadership Conference, held in Tacoma, Washington. The event was an overwhelming success. In fact, 6 years later, they are still talking about the key learnings, the fun, and the excitement of working together as a team. She also addressed the National Leadership Conference for Starbucks Coffee, speaking to about a 1000 attendees, including the Board of Directors, Howard Schultz, the founder, as well as the senior leadership team, the corporate office, and the entire field organization for Starbucks. She was a great success.

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John Alderson, COO

It's a Grind

I cannot thank you enough for your dedication and phenomenal delivery at the Teambuilding/Bikebuilding event at our National Managers Meeting. I received SO many wonderful, positive comments about Robyn’s presentation. The audience felt you were very authentic, passionate and that you really understood ‘Jamba’. I/we were thrilled. I suspect there will be many upcoming occasions for us to work together. I look forward to it!

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Renee Kempler

Director of Retail MarketingJamba Juice

Robyn Benincasa’s keynote presentation at our recent convention was GREAT! Her overall message fit seamlessly into our company goals and our franchisees genuinely responded to her. In fact, the early convention survey results are in and a vast majority of our franchisees rated Robyn’s session as one of the highlights of the event. Logistically, she was also wonderfully easy to work with. We were especially pleased with her pre-program preparation and how she paid attention to our core objectives and carried those seamlessly through her message to our franchise partners from the platform.

Read More

Brian Spindel

President & COOPostNet

I recently attended your inspirational speech Why Winners Win at the IHR conference in Orlando. I have not stopped thinking about how I can incorporate your ideas not only into my work life, but also into my own personal running goals. Your examples of encountering road blocks but continuing to pick yourself back up have inspired me to keep going whether it’s dealing with a difficult client at work or struggling with my 1/2 marathon training. I am so grateful to have attended your speech and I want you to know sincerely how much it meant to me! Rock on sister!

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Celeste Smith

Interstate Hotels & Resorts

Partial Client List:

Global Patient Outcomes and Real World Evidence
Transformation Management Office, Boston Scientific Global Business Services (GBS)
IBM
Travel Leaders Group
Century 21 Affiliated
HDR Transportation
Community Associations Institute
Allos Therapeutics
Industrial Operations, Genzyme Corporation
P&C Change Management, Bank of Montreal

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