- Former UFC fighter and two-time national champion wrestler
- Founder and Executive Director of Fight For The Forgotten, humanitarian nonprofit
- Author and speaker on personal accountability, navigating adversity, and resilience
Justin Wren is a former UFC fighter turned humanitarian leader whose work bridges elite sport, resilience, and global community impact. A two-time national champion wrestler and Black Belt Magazine Hall of Fame inductee, Justin is the Founder and Executive Director of Fight For The Forgotten.
Justin’s mission began after a life-threatening battle with addiction led him to re-evaluate his purpose. A defining journey to the Democratic Republic of Congo transformed his outlook, setting him on a path to support the Batwa, Efe, and Mbuti Pygmy communities. Through his organisation, he has helped deliver clean water, land rights, sustainable agriculture, healthcare, and freedom from slavery to thousands of people. His work continues to expand across sectors, partnering with organisations that value social impact, resilience, and meaningful action.
Alongside his humanitarian leadership, Justin draws on his background as a 10-time State Champion, 5-time All American, and experienced UFC competitor in his memoir Fight For The Forgotten, while his podcast Overcome With Justin Wren, explores topics like mental health, trauma recovery, and the everyday battles people face.
In today's corporate environment, where purpose-driven leadership drives engagement, Justin demonstrates how personal accountability and resilience can transform challenges into opportunities. His experiences show organizations how to build authentic team cultures that embrace discomfort for growth while maintaining unwavering focus on meaningful goals. These principles help companies navigate uncertainty while creating sustainable impact.
Audiences leave Justin's presentations with practical strategies for overcoming obstacles, frameworks for setting and achieving ambitious goals, and renewed belief that individual contributions matter regardless of position. His storytelling inspires people to recognize their capacity for meaningful change within their professional roles.
Book Justin to give your team a rare combination of raw authenticity and actionable leadership principles that transform personal purpose into organizational impact.
Justin's showreel and videos
Topics, sessions and talks
Leadership Principles From The Ring To The Rainforest
Justin Wren charts his path from elite combat sport to humanitarian action, revealing how a near-fatal turning point reshaped his understanding of leadership, purpose, and resilience. Justin explores personal accountability, navigating adversity, and the discipline required to rebuild a life of service. Through vivid stories from the Congo Basin Rainforest, he connects frontline experience with universal workplace challenges, showing how small, consistent actions create lasting change. Audiences gain renewed belief in their individual capacity to contribute meaningfully.
Why we recommend booking Justin
Justin Wren, former UFC fighter turned humanitarian leader, delivers a powerful blend of authentic storytelling and actionable leadership principles that show teams how to transform challenges into opportunities while creating meaningful impact. Book Justin to inspire your organization with practical strategies for overcoming obstacles and building a purpose-driven culture that drives engagement and sustainable results.
There are very, very few people like Justin, his kindness, compassion, passion, appreciation for others is beyond contagious. He absolutely hit it out of the park! A little story, one of our hospital CEOs asked him to take a picture for her son in Kuwait. Not only did he do that, he took a video with her to send him. This left me in tears. He has no idea what this means to her (and to me). My goodness he is a gem, and I could go on and on about him. He stayed after his presentation and talked to everyone that came up. Making each person feel incredibly special. This matters, this matters to them and to me! Thank you!
Hayley Finch-Genschorck
Director of Education, Kansas Hospital Association
I didn't expect an MMA Fighter to have me in tears for most of his presentation, but I guarantee every human will leave changed for the better, having heard The Big Pygmy's talk...I think my teens said it best, when I asked them how the talk affected them. My 15-year-old son said, "If we all treated other people and looked at life the way he does, we'd have a utopia." My fourteen-year-old daughter said, "He showed us you can come from a regular or even disadvantaged background and still meaningfully impact others' lives -- or in his case with his work with the pygmy peoples, you can bring joy to a whole village.
At Growth Energy, we are the largest trade association representing Biofuels in the world. Each year we host over 500 attendees to our Annual Executive Leadership Conference for our member CEO’s, Board Members and Associate Supporters. It’s imperative that we deliver a strong keynote to wrap up the last day of our event. We have had some truly remarkable speakers through the years and each year the bar is set higher to find someone with a top caliber message. This year we hired Justin Wren as our keynote. We couldn’t have been happier with our results. He was incredible and stage and with our supporters. He has a keen ability really pour himself into truly listening and connecting to the folks he was around during our event. He invested extra time to do this with us the night before going above and beyond our agreement. That’s the kind of guy he is. The real deal. His speech was compelling and delivered in a manner that appealed to our attendees on a truly emotional level. His pace was right on track and people easily followed him in his one-of-a-kind story and journey. I don’t think I’ve had this many post-event requests for a speaker’s book in our past event history!
Kelly Manning
Sr. VP of Development, Growth Energy
