Resilience Speakers to Inspire High-Performance Teams

The best resilience speakers give teams a way of handling pressure, setbacks and recovery that still works weeks after the event. Resilience speakers tend to come from one of two places: people who've rebuilt after injury or trauma, and people who've spent whole careers performing under scrutiny in cockpits, on pitches and at altitude. The nine below cover both, and each suits a different kind of brief, from leadership summits and sales kick-offs to company-wide away days.

All nine are available to book through PepTalk, and for a wider shortlist you can browse the full roster of resilience speakers and adversity speakers. Several also sit naturally alongside PepTalk's mental health speakers and motivational speakers.

What makes a good resilience speaker?

A good resilience speaker pairs a personal story with a method the audience can use at work. They connect what happened to them with the pressure your team is under right now, and they're clear about whether they're strongest in a keynote or a workshop. When you're shortlisting, look for three things.

• A method people can apply. Ask what the audience should do differently on Monday. If the only answer is "feel inspired", keep looking.
• A story that fits your team's pressure. An expedition story lands one way with a team facing redundancy and another way with a team facing a product launch. Match it to the challenge your people are actually in.
• The right format. A keynote sets the tone for a room of 400. A workshop shifts behaviour in a team of 20. Most speakers are stronger at one of the two, so ask.

Ed Jackson

Book Ed for

Rebuilding, in small increments, after everything changes overnight.

A spinal injury left Ed Jackson quadriplegic and facing the prospect of never walking again. He walked out of hospital, has since climbed at altitude, and founded a charity supporting others through life-changing injury. His story is told in the documentary The Mountain Within Me.

Ed's value to a team is the granularity. He talks about progress measured in millimetres, which suits organisations midway through a hard change. Teams facing a restructure, a long integration or a project that's stopped feeling winnable tend to get the most from him.

Learn more and book Ed Jackson →

Katie Piper OBE

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The long, unglamorous work that follows a crisis.

Katie Piper survived a life-changing attack and went on to become a best-selling author, broadcaster and founder of a charity supporting people with burns and scars. She's spoken about recovery for well over a decade, and it shows in how she handles a room.

On a corporate stage, Katie spends real time on the years in the middle of recovery: self-acceptance, how colleagues and friends help or get it wrong, and what support looks like in practice. That makes her a strong fit for wellbeing programmes, and for organisations ready to talk about wellbeing more honestly than an awareness week allows.

Learn more and book Katie Piper OBE →

Lauren Murrell

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Keeping a team moving forward through long, uncertain change.

At 23, weeks before her final law exams, Lauren Murrell was diagnosed with leukaemia and given a 20 percent chance of survival. A stem-cell transplant from her sister saved her life. She went back to law school, qualified, and built a corporate legal career in London, New York and the Caribbean, then had to rebuild again after Hurricane Irma destroyed the island she called home. She later co-founded the award-winning skincare brand By Sarah with her sister, now stocked in Ocado, Planet Organic and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Her keynote, Resilience: The Mindset That Saved My Life, breaks down the thinking patterns that carried her through treatment and recovery, and turns them into a framework for high-stakes moments at work. Having rebuilt her life twice, she's especially useful for teams in prolonged change, and she's spoken for Goldman Sachs and the University of Oxford. For more on her approach, read Resilience: Why Navigating Change Is a Skill You Can Build.

Learn more and book Lauren Murrell →

Bonita Norris

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Turning an intimidating goal into steps a team can start on.

In 2010, aged 22, Bonita Norris became the youngest British woman at the time to summit Mount Everest. She skied the last degree to the North Pole the following year and summited Lhotse in 2012, having started climbing barely two years before her first Everest expedition.

That compressed timeline sits at the heart of her keynote, Mountains of the Mind. She's open about the mental health struggles that ran alongside the expeditions, and about the ordinary planning that made an outlandish goal achievable. Named Best Speaker Storyteller at The Speaker Awards, she suits kick-offs and strategy days where a team needs to believe a stretch target is within reach.

Learn more and book Bonita Norris →

Chris Ashton

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Staying at the top for a decade, including the years you get written off.

Chris Ashton won 44 England caps and became the first player to score 100 tries in Premiership Rugby, a record built across spells at Northampton Saints, Saracens and Leicester Tigers before he retired in 2023. He was named Premiership Player of the Season, finished as the all-time leading try-scorer in the Heineken Champions Cup, and set the single-season record in France's Top 14 with 24 tries for Toulon in 2017/18. The "Ash Splash" became as recognisable as the finishing that earned it.

His resilience story runs through the whole career. He switched codes from rugby league to union, moved between clubs and countries, and fought his way back into form more than once after being left out. For a team, that becomes a practical lesson in performing while the environment keeps changing, and in using a setback to set up the next stretch. He's a good fit for sales teams and any group asked to hold a high level across a long season.

Learn more and book Chris Ashton →

Which other resilience speakers suit high-performance teams?

Four more speakers who regularly come up for high-performance and resilience briefs, each strongest on a different angle.

Jonny Wilkinson CBE

Best known for the drop goal that won England the 2003 Rugby World Cup, Jonny Wilkinson now speaks candidly about what chasing perfection cost him. He's a mental health advocate as well as a rugby name, and he's at his strongest on performing under scrutiny while protecting your own wellbeing.

Learn more and book Jonny Wilkinson CBE →

Kate Richardson-Walsh OBE

Kate Richardson-Walsh is England's most capped hockey player and the captain who led Team GB to Olympic gold in Rio in 2016. She's the pick when the brief is resilience across a whole squad, and she's specific about how the team handled conflict, selection and trust on the way to that final.

Learn more and book Kate Richardson-Walsh OBE →

Mandy Hickson

The second woman to fly the Tornado GR4 on the RAF front line, Mandy Hickson brings human factors thinking to corporate audiences: decision-making under load, speaking up to seniority, and how good teams catch errors before they compound. She's the most method-led speaker on this list.

Learn more and book Mandy Hickson →

Stef Sword-Williams

Founder of F*ck Being Humble and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, Stef Sword-Williams works on the everyday resilience of being visible at work. Her sessions are practical and workshop-shaped, covering self-advocacy, handling rejection and asking for what you're worth.

Learn more and book Stef Sword-Williams →

How should you brief a resilience speaker?

Brief a resilience speaker on what's actually happening in your organisation, who's in the room, and anything that shouldn't be raised. A team three months into a merger needs a different hour from a sales floor coming off a strong quarter, and most speakers will shape the session around that context if you give it to them.

Flag sensitive ground clearly, particularly a recent bereavement, redundancy round or serious incident. Tell the speaker what the audience already believes, so they can build on it. And decide early whether you want a keynote to open the day or a workshop to close it, because that choice shapes everything from running time to room layout.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a resilience speaker cover?

A resilience speaker covers how people and teams recover from setbacks, sustain performance under pressure and adapt when circumstances change. Most combine a personal account with a method the audience can apply at work, so people leave with something practical to use.

Who are the best resilience speakers to book for a corporate event?

The best resilience speakers to book for a corporate event on PepTalk's roster include Ed Jackson, Katie Piper OBE, Lauren Murrell, Bonita Norris and Chris Ashton, who each bring a deep personal story to a keynote. Kate Richardson-Walsh OBE and Mandy Hickson suit team-focused briefs, Stef Sword-Williams runs practical workshops, and Jonny Wilkinson CBE speaks on performance and mental health. The right pick depends on whether your brief is individual recovery, team culture or sustained performance.

How far in advance should we book a resilience speaker?

Book a resilience speaker four to six weeks in advance for a single keynote, and several months ahead for well-known speakers in peak periods such as January kick-offs and September conference season. If your date is fixed, start the enquiry as soon as you have it.

What is the difference between a resilience keynote and a workshop?

A resilience keynote runs 30 to 60 minutes, works for a large room and sets the tone for an event. A resilience workshop runs longer, suits groups of roughly 10 to 30, and uses discussion and exercises so people practise the thinking themselves. Speakers are rarely equally strong at both, so say which you want at the enquiry stage.

Book a resilience speaker for your team

💡 Would you like to build a session on resilience and high performance around one of these speakers? Let us know, and we'll find the perfect PepTalk expert for your organisation. Send us a message via the chat and we'll take it from there. Remember, it's always a good time to get a PepTalk!