Robyn Benincasa

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4.9667 out of 5

Leadership, Team Building & Extreme Performance Expert; World Champion Adventure Racer, Health Advocate, Bestselling Author

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San Diego, CA, USA
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Robyn Benincasa Biography

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. Benincasa 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: Benincasa inspires people to grab life with one hand, grab their teammates with the other, and to create that special magic that makes all of us better TOGETHER than we ever would have been alone!

Benincasa 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, Benincasa definitely knows a thing or two about creating Human Synergy, or as Benincasa 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 Benincasa 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, Benincasa’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.

Benincasa’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. Benincasa 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! Benincasa’s incredible stories and breathtaking footage of extreme teams in action is an invigorating thrill ride that will leave you energized.

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Speaker profile last updated by AAE Talent Team on 06/16/2025.

Robyn Benincasa Speaking Topics

  • T.E.A.M.W.O.R.K.: The 8 Essential Elements of a World Class Team Culture

    How can your company’s team members operate like world-class teammates who collectively rise to challenges using human synergy? That’s the term Robyn Benincasa coined to describe the magic that allows ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things together through a deeply connected team culture that ensures consistent peak performance by capitalizing on the collective strength of the team.

    Based on her New York Times bestseller, Robyn’s flagship keynote takes leaders and teams on an immersive journey from being individual team members to becoming great teammates with the tools and inspiration to build their own world class teams in every aspect of their lives.

    Attendees will discover that achieving consistent peak performance doesn’t result from reaching up and simply trying harder as an individual. Just as in mountaineering, reaching the summit successfully involves reaching OUT—figuratively “roping up” to other people; sharing your strengths, and equally importantly, your challenges. Accepting help from a teammate isn’t a permanent state or sign of weakness, it’s a gift to the team. And it’s how you win. When everyone on the team leaves their ego at the start line in pursuit of your organization’s highest purpose, there’s no finish line you can’t cross together.

    Takeaways

    • Fuels deep and lasting care, empathy, and respect between colleagues at all levels.
    • Inspires leaders to prioritize team building in their quest for world-class results.
    • Helps team members grow into teammates who capitalize on each other’s strengths and see themselves as leaders in their areas of expertise, regardless of title or tenure.
    • Simple skills anyone can apply to cultivate consistent peak performance through real connection with colleagues, clients, etc.
    • Builds an organizational culture of “we thinkers” so teams can think creatively and take calculated risks to reach higher peaks.
    • Leaves the audience buzzing with ideas about how to raise their game and their team’s to the next level, personally and professionally.

  • Win as One!: Achieving Breakthrough Performance Through Collaboration, Creativity & a Culture of One!

    Whether something is changing in your business or industry, what’s your approach: do you see a challenge as a threat or an opportunity? As leaders, our response can drive our organization to adapt, overcome and win through a mindset of relentless success through connection, calculated risk taking, and collaboration.

    In this unique, authentic and fast-paced multimedia keynote, Robyn shares the essential elements of world class performance that allowed her adventure racing team to overcome known and unexpected challenges to become the sport’s most prolific and consistent world champions. They weren’t the fastest team. Yet they discovered smarter, better and more efficient ways through the course through fierce teamwork and innovation, using their resources in game-changing ways, and sharing challenges and strengths from start to finish.

    This winning strategy applies seamlessly to the epic adventure your business is on—no mud, blood or sweaty gear required. :)

    Takeaways

    • Gives everyone an immersive experience that builds the excitement needed to achieve your next huge goal together.
    • Creates a team culture that continuously embraces challenges as opportunities for innovation, visionary creativity and breakthrough performance.
    • Empowers individuals to lead with their strengths and leverage their teammates’ talents to unlock greater collective potential.
    • Shows teams how taking calculated risks pays off as a strategy for exponential growth.
    • Inspires audiences with a success mindset tested by ordinary people (not superhuman Olympians).

  • 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 succeeding against all odds? Drawing inspiration from Robyn’s team of world champion adventure athletes and winners from all walks of life, this inspiring and practical keynote dissects the traits, skills and attitudes behind the world’s most consistent high performers.

    The best of the best experience uncertainty and obstacles like everyone else. Yet they reach great heights through characteristic courage, adversity management, a keen ability to create synergy with their colleagues, and the ability to continuously inspire themselves and others. And yes, luck (opportunity + preparation): their level of preparation allows winners to discover and capitalize on opportunities.

    Takeaways

    • Leveraging a game-changing strategy that shifts one’s mindset from “not losing” to winning.
    • Finding the opportunity in challenges to innovate and create future success.
    • Empowering continuous improvement to spur change and reinvent the game.
    • Capitalizing on resources and pooling individual strengths to achieve even bigger goals.
    • Demonstrating the 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 consistent peak performance.

  • Inspiring Greatness Through G.R.I.T.: Creating The Passion To Pursue The Impossible

    What inspires us with drive, perseverance and resilience to pursue goals that seem impossible, and achieve world class results in times of great change and challenge? We create this greatness in ourselves and our teammates through GRIT, a 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 real secrets to her teams’ success over 20 years of leading the pack in adventure racing and as a firefighter. Much of our drive comes from our connection to something greater than ourselves: the passion we have for an inspired mission, the respect for a team whose success is inextricably tied to ours, and the clients whose lives we will touch.

    Audiences leave Robyn’s keynote with a deep understanding of how to create GRIT in yourself and your team. Most importantly, you’ll be on a mission to inspire GRIT in everyone who is lucky enough to know you—-the kind of leader that helps others climb their tallest peaks, fight their biggest fires, and cross their most challenging finish lines.

    Key Takeaways

    • Demonstrates a find-a-way-or-make-one attitude.
    • Inspires teammates to commit to deep respect for one another and the higher purpose of the mission.
    • Supports the best outcomes through anticipating and preparing for all conditions and contingencies.
    • Shows how white space thinking allows for ingenious solutions and mission-driven innovation.
    • Helps leaders and teams navigate difficult challenges by envisioning what kind of story we’d like to tell.
    • Sustains a drive to succeed in tough times when it’s tempting to quit.

  • Adapt, Overcome, and Win as One! Virtual Keynote* (30 - 60 minutes)

    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.

    • available for virtual & in-person events

  • 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 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

    • available for virtual & in-person events

Robyn Benincasa Books

  • How Winning Works: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth
    How Winning Works: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth

Speaker Lists Featuring Robyn Benincasa

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    Robyn Benincasa generally travels from San Diego, CA, USA, but can be booked for private corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. For more details, please contact an AAE Booking agent.
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Robyn Benincasa is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as T.E.A.M.W.O.R.K.: The 8 Essential Elements of a World Class Team Culture, Win as One!: Achieving Breakthrough Performance Through Collaboration, Creativity & a Culture of One! , Why Winners Win: The Game Changing Mindset That Creates Next Level Success, Inspiring Greatness Through G.R.I.T.: Creating The Passion To Pursue The Impossible, Adapt, Overcome, and Win as One! Virtual Keynote* (30 - 60 minutes) and Building World Class Teams: How to Achieve Breakthrough Performance Through Collaboration, Creativity, and A Culture of ONE (45 - 60 minutes). The estimated speaking fee range to book Robyn Benincasa for your event is $20,000 - $30,000. Robyn Benincasa generally travels from San Diego, CA, USA and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Eric Boles, Amelia Rose Earhart, Mike Abrashoff, Jim Davidson and Adam Markel. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Robyn Benincasa for an upcoming live or virtual event.

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