Available to book
Chris Norton
Purpose
Resilience
Workplace Culture
Foster ownership, positive leadership, and resilient teams with Chris Norton, motivational speaker and disability advocate. Chris helps organizations align with purpose and redefine success, focus of the 7 Yards documentary and named among ITA Group's Hottest Keynote Speakers.
Mindset
Humanitarian
Motivational
Athlete
Inspirational
Author
Personal Development
Faith
Chris Norton is a motivational speaker, author, and former college athlete whose journey from paralysis to walking at his graduation and wedding has inspired millions worldwide.
As founder of the Chris Norton Foundation, Chris supports people with spinal cord and neuromuscular disabilities and runs a free wheelchair camp. His remarkable story has been featured in the documentary 7 Yards, earned him recognition among ITA Group's Hottest Keynote Speakers, and formed the basis of his books The Seven Longest Yards and The Power of Faith.
Chris's experiences offer organizations concrete strategies for overcoming adversity and building resilience. He helps leadership teams reframe setbacks into opportunities, develop sustainable perseverance practices, and create inclusive environments where all team members can contribute meaningfully despite facing personal or professional challenges. His approach combines inspirational elements with practical applications for today's complex workplace.
Audiences leave Chris's presentations with actionable frameworks for confronting obstacles, renewed clarity about their purpose and potential, and effective methods for supporting colleagues through difficult circumstances. His insights provide immediate tools for fostering workplace cultures characterized by both empathy and determination.
Book Chris Norton to give your team the rare combination of emotional inspiration and practical resilience strategies that drive measurable results.
Topics, sessions and talks
Change is inevitable. Challenges are certain. Growth is a choice. Drawing on his own experience defying a 3% prognosis to walk at his college graduation and wedding, Chris Norton shares the strategies that helped him transform life-altering adversity into forward momentum. This session gives teams a practical framework for reframing challenges, fostering radical responsibility, and asking for help without hesitation. Turn perceived threats into competitive advantages and build the resilience to grow through anything.
When doctors told Chris Norton he had a 3% chance of ever moving below the neck, he chose to focus on the 3%. This session explores how adopting a possibility mindset, even in the face of overwhelming odds, reshapes what teams believe is achievable. Chris shares the mental habits and daily practices that sustained him through years of rehabilitation, and shows leaders and teams how to apply that same orientation to organizational challenges, change initiatives, and the moments that test whether a culture truly holds.
Chris Norton founded the Chris Norton Foundation to support people with spinal cord and neuromuscular disabilities, and has seen firsthand how organizations that meaningfully include people with disabilities outperform those that treat inclusion as a checkbox. In this session, he makes the business case for genuine accessibility and gives leaders a framework for building environments where people with disabilities can contribute fully. Chris draws on his own story and his foundation’s work to challenge assumptions about ability and reframe disability as a lens for better design, better culture, and better performance.
Chris Norton transforms his extraordinary journey from paralysis to walking again into powerful strategies that help teams overcome obstacles, build resilience, and create inclusive environments where everyone contributes meaningfully. Book Chris today to give your organization the rare combination of emotional inspiration and practical resilience frameworks that drive measurable results.
Testimonials
Featured Projects
often considered together
Blake Leeper
Adversity
Diversity and Inclusion
High Performance
Robert Paylor
Adversity
Resilience
Growth Mindset
Aaron Golub
Company Culture
Disability Awareness
Accountability
frequently asked questions
Something we've not covered here?
Email chris.norton@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Chris's availability and fees. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and a bit about your audience.
Chris Norton structures his sessions around a personal narrative arc — from a 3% prognosis for movement below the neck to walking at his graduation and wedding — and uses that arc as a scaffold for practical frameworks covering resilience, possibility mindset, and inclusive leadership.
Chris Norton speaks on resilience and adversity, possibility mindset, and disability inclusion and belonging. His headline credential is defying a 3% prognosis to walk at his college graduation and wedding, a journey documented in the film 7 Yards and detailed in his books The Seven Longest Yards and The Power of Faith.
No. PepTalk adds no booking fee, so you pay the speaker's fee and nothing beyond it. The service, from shortlist through to contracts and event-day logistics, is included. For repeat or multi-event bookings, PepTalk can agree preferential rates with your procurement team.
Share your event date, audience, format, objectives and budget, and PepTalk sends a hand-picked shortlist within 24 hours. Each suggestion comes with a profile, a fee and a recommendation on the strongest fit. Once you choose, PepTalk handles contracts, travel and logistics through to event day.
The typical fee range is the speaker's standard in-person fee in their home market, shown in their local currency. It moves with format, location, date and session length: virtual sessions and shorter slots usually cost less, while international travel and peak dates cost more. Send your brief to PepTalk and the team will confirm the exact fee in your currency.
Not all of them, and it makes no difference to your booking. PepTalk's network of 15,000+ speakers covers talent the team works with directly alongside speakers represented by agents and agencies worldwide. PepTalk approaches the speaker, negotiates the fee and handles contracting either way.
Three to six months ahead is comfortable for most events, and 12 months is better for large conferences, peak-season dates or one specific in-demand speaker. Shorter timelines are workable, and PepTalk regularly fills last-minute and replacement bookings within days. Availability is the constraint, so get in touch as soon as you have a date.
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