HOW TO CULTIVATE UNSTOPPABLE EXCELLENCE IN YOURSELF AND YOUR ORGANIZATION.
Excellence isn’t reserved for a select few. It’s a mindset that anyone can adopt, no matter who you are, or where you begin.
In this transformative keynote, Olympian Sarah Wells will reveal how we can all cultivate excellence in ourselves and in organizations. Sarah will share the core principles that drive excellence: the power of belief in yourself, the courage to do things differently, and the resilience to rise from setbacks. By going all in on your unique strengths and experiences, you can unlock success in ways only you can achieve.
Through compelling stories and real-life examples, Sarah will help audiences understand that excellence isn’t about perfection, it’s about breaking free from limiting beliefs and constantly striving to outperform who you were yesterday.
With more than a decade of competition at the highest level, along with a master’s degree in leadership & innovation from the Smith School of Business, Sarah delivers powerful, research-backed insights that unlock the mindset and practical tools to cultivate excellence in everything you do.
Join Sarah to discover how to make excellence your daily standard and watch it transform not just your work but every facet of your life.
Key take-aways:
EMBRACING CHANGE AND TURNING OBSTACLES INTO OPPORTUNITIES.
Change is constant, and how we respond to it defines the trajectory of our success.
In this inspiring and transformative keynote, Olympian Sarah Wells invites you to reframe the way you think about obstacles and setbacks. Drawing from her journey as an elite athlete, Sarah will share the essential mindset shifts that empower individuals and organizations to not just face adversity, but to use it as a catalyst for growth and innovation.
Sarah knows firsthand that success is not about avoiding hurdles but mastering the art of overcoming them. With her three powerful strategies, you’ll learn how to embrace life’s detours and turn them into stepping stones toward a reality greater than you ever imagined.
Through her engaging stories of resilience, grit, and excellence, Sarah will reveal how cultivating a mindset of adaptability and excellence helps you thrive in uncertain times.
This keynote offers more than just inspiration! It provides actionable tools and strategies that your audience can apply immediately. Sarah will show how excellence, resilience, and a willingness to face challenges head-on can transform obstacles into opportunities. Attendees will leave with renewed confidence, armed with the skills to embrace change with grace and turn setbacks into successes.
Key take-aways:
SUPERCHARGE YOUR ORGANIZATION WITH INNOVATIVE THINKING.
In today’s fast-paced world, true success doesn’t come from following the same path as everyone else, it comes from embracing what makes you unique and daring to think differently.
In “The 16 Stride Factor,” Olympian Sarah Wells shares the game-changing strategy that helped her defy the odds in athletics. She’ll show how individuals and organizations alike can apply this approach to supercharge their own goals and unlock new levels of success.
While most 400m hurdlers at the Olympics take 15 strides between hurdles, Sarah broke the mold by crafting a strategy that played to her strengths, taking 16 strides instead. This unconventional approach, tailored to her unique abilities, was key to her Olympic success.
In this dynamic presentation, Sarah will challenge you to embrace unconventional approaches, leverage your team’s distinctive abilities, and cultivate a culture that celebrates experimentation and exploration without fear of failure or a need for guaranteed outcomes.
Get ready to break away from tradition, harness your organization’s unique strengths, and discover how to achieve success in a way that only you can.
Key take-aways:
EQUIPPING YOUR TEAM WITH COURAGE TO CONQUER EVERY MILE.
What could your team do if they believed anything was possible? What if every setback fueled your next breakthrough? What if every challenge revealed a hidden opportunity? Sarah’s story is a testament to that possibility.
As an Olympian and an Amazing Race contestant, she has transformed trials into triumphs, mastering a 4-step system to help your team chart the course to an Amazing Race!
In this high-energy keynote, Sarah will reveal the proven system she’s used to transform fierce competition and unexpected roadblocks into unforgettable achievements. Through vivid storytelling and hard-earned insights from both the track and the world’s toughest race course, Sarah will guide your audience to:
This session is a game‑changer for any organization seeking to energize teams, accelerate performance, and achieve breakthrough results. Get ready to revitalize your ambition, ignite your passion, and set the pace for an amazing race—your race—toward a future where nothing can hold you back.
Key take-aways:
EMPOWER YOUR ORGANIZATION’S LEADERS BY UNLOCKING INSPIRATIONAL TRAITS AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF STORYTELLING
WHAT IS IMPACT LEADERSHIP:
The Impact Leadership Program is a transformative experience designed to empower leaders to harness their unique inspirational qualities and leverage the art of storytelling to drive meaningful, positive, impact within their teams.
Through engaging sessions, participants will identify their unique strengths and learn how to use them effectively to inspire others in their daily work.The program is highly personalized, using assessment tools and feedback from managers and colleagues to create a tailored experience for each individual.
A standout feature of the program is the “mini-keynote” exercise. This hands-on storytelling challenge allows participants to showcase their leadership brand, share inspiring stories with colleagues, and put their new skills into action.
IMPACT LEADERSHIP PROGRAM INCLUDES:
PROGRAM KEY LEARNINGS
Sarah Wells is an Olympian, Pan Am Games silver medalist and globally sought-after keynote speaker known for her high-voltage energy and deeply authentic storytelling. As a 400m hurdler who competed on the world stage, Sarah understands firsthand what it takes to pursue big goals, persevere through setbacks and redefine personal and professional excellence. Her athletic journey, including her appearance on The Amazing Race, positions her as a relatable and inspiring voice on resilience, mindset and peak performance.
Today, Sarah brings that same competitive fire and strategic focus to audiences around the world. She champions a simple but transformative mission: excellence is not exclusive, it is contagious. By blending personal narrative with research-backed performance principles, she empowers individuals and organizations to challenge limiting beliefs, cultivate unshakable confidence and outperform their previous best.
Sarah’s impact extends far beyond the stage. Whether working with corporate teams, high-growth organizations or emerging leaders, she unlocks a practical, repeatable blueprint for elevating performance in environments defined by change and pressure.
Sarah Wells is an Olympic 400m hurdler, Pan Am Games silver medalist, and powerhouse keynote speaker whose high-voltage energy and authentic storytelling have electrified audiences across the globe. From the track to the stage and even the set of The Amazing Race, Sarah’s journey is a masterclass in resilience, bold ambition, and redefining what excellence looks like.
Olympian | High-Energy Keynote Speaker | Excellence Architect
Excellence isn’t just what she does, it’s what she unlocks in others.
Her mission is simple yet transformative: Excellence is not exclusive, it’s contagious. Through her vibrant presence and research-backed strategies, Sarah helps individuals and organizations break free from limiting beliefs, cultivate unshakable confidence, and outperform who they were yesterday.
Sarah Wells doesn’t just talk about overcoming adversity, she hurdled it on the world’s biggest stage. She even raced across deserts, mountains, and international airports on The Amazing Race, proving once again that grit, adaptability, and a little bit of laughter go a long way.
Her mission? To prove that excellence is not exclusive, it’s contagious.
Sarah’s philosophy centers on the idea that excellence isn’t about perfection, it’s about breaking free from limiting beliefs and constantly striving to outperform who you were yesterday. She believes that when you dare to break the blueprint, chase crazy ideas, and focus on doing the small things exceptionally well, excellence becomes contagious, elevating not just your life but those around you.
Renowned for her practical strategies and compelling storytelling, and cell phone charging energy, SSarah Wells empowers audiences to find their own excellence, transform challenges into opportunities for growth, and achieve lasting success.
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A dynamic 4 minute and 58 second speaker reel where Olympian Sarah Wells shows how everyday excellence, belief and resilience shape high-performing teams and leaders.
This 4 minute and 58 second speaker reel showcases Sarah Wells’ signature message: excellence is not reserved for the elite. It is accessible to everyone and is built through consistent effort, belief and resilience. She opens by challenging the misconception that excellence is tied to outcomes. Instead, she frames it as the person we become while pursuing our goals. Her promise to audiences is clear: by the end of her programs, they will understand how to cultivate excellence daily, both individually and collectively.
Sarah shares her early experience believing she was the “least athletic person on the planet,” even getting cut from badminton. This vulnerability sets the stage for one of her central truths: true champions show up when it’s boring, difficult or when external circumstances create pressure. Excellence is not about outperforming others. It is about outperforming your former self.
She recounts the pivotal moment at the Pan Am Games, running beside the world’s top-ranked athlete. A split-second doubt at the second-last hurdle cost her the gold medal. She uses this story to illustrate how our greatest obstacles are the limiting beliefs we impose on ourselves. Audience testimonials in the reel highlight how her energy and message resonate deeply, describing her as magnetic, outstanding and one of the best speakers they have heard.
Sarah describes tattooing the word “believe” on her wrist—not as a guarantee of success, but as a commitment to going all in. She challenges leaders to believe in their teams before results appear, because belief fuels potential. She also reframes failure through her hurdling journey, explaining how hitting a hurdle is a necessary step, not a setback to avoid. Avoiding discomfort prevents growth, while resilience—getting back up—reveals new opportunities.
A 2 minute and 9 second keynote clip where Olympian Sarah Wells illustrates how effort, energy and collective struggle elevate performance far beyond individual limits.
This 2 minute and 9 second segment features Sarah Wells explaining why excellence spreads through teams and environments the same way effort does. She begins by sharing a lesson from her coach, who taught that effort is contagious. During the most demanding parts of training, athletes were never allowed to complain because negativity immediately drags the entire group down. But the opposite is equally powerful.
When someone in the middle of a grueling workout commits out loud to giving their next interval everything they have, that determination inspires others to match their effort. This shared push elevates performance in ways individual willpower alone cannot. Sarah connects this to marathon culture, explaining that runners never complete the full race distance in training. On race day, every runner is attempting something farther and harder than anything they have done before. Yet completion rates for major marathons remain extraordinarily high.
Sarah highlights statistics from the world’s largest races: New York at 98.9 percent, London at 98.7 percent and Berlin at 99 percent. These numbers reveal that once runners cross the start line, finishing becomes almost inevitable. It is not a measure of individual grit alone but a powerful reflection of the collective struggle, the effort happening all around them, the fans pushing energy toward the field and the shared moment of people rising above limitations.
She concludes by framing these results as evidence that collective effort changes what individuals believe they can do. The environment uplifts performance, making the idea of quitting unthinkable. In teams, workplaces and communities, excellence spreads the same way effort does. It is sparked by one person and amplified by everyone around them.
Speaker fees can vary depending on factors such as expertise, demand, and event specifics. While some speakers may charge a flat fee for their services, others may have hourly rates. It’s best to discuss fee structures directly with the speaker or their representative to understand the pricing model.
Keynote speeches typically range from 30 to 90 minutes, with the duration determined by the speaker’s expertise, the event’s agenda, and audience preferences. Keynote speeches often include a combination of inspirational stories, practical insights, and actionable advice tailored to the event’s theme or objectives.
The scale of the event and audience size can indeed impact a speaker’s fee. Larger events with a broader reach or higher attendance may command higher fees due to increased exposure and demand. Conversely, smaller events or niche audiences may offer opportunities for more flexible pricing arrangements.
Travel expenses such as transportation, accommodation, and meals are typically negotiated separately from the speaker’s fee. These costs vary depending on the speaker’s location, travel distance, and event duration. It’s important to clarify travel arrangements and expenses during the booking process to avoid misunderstandings.
Many speakers require a deposit to secure a booking, with the remaining balance due closer to the event date. Deposits are often non-refundable and serve as a commitment from both parties. It’s advisable to discuss deposit requirements and payment terms with the speaker or their representative when finalizing the booking.
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