Robyn Benincasa

Top Leadership and Teamwork Motivational Speaker, Full-time Firefighter, Adventure Racing World Champion, CNN Hero, and Bestselling Author

Robyn Benincasa is a top motivational speaker on leadership, adventure racing world champion, CNN Hero, founder of Project Athena, and bestselling author. She won two World Adventure Races and holds three Guinness World Records for long-distance kayaking. Her book on teamwork and leadership, How Winning Works, is a New York Times bestseller. Her entertaining keynotes show audiences the foundations of inspired leadership and how to win as a team.

Robyn Benincasa is the founder of World Class Teams, an adventure racing world champion, a CNN Hero, former corporate sales expert and a full-time firefighter who advises organizations on building World Class Teams of their own. One of the highest-rated, female motivational speakers who regularly shares the stage with world leaders and business icons, her customers include many Fortune companies like Starbucks, Deloitte, Aflac, Fast Company, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, ARAMARK, Siemens, 3M, Coldwell Banker, Ameriprise, Microsoft, AT&T. With a background in marketing, she was previously in corporate sales with Baxter and Allergan and is currently a full-time firefighter who was on America’s first all-female fire crew.  Eco-Challenge World Champion, CNN Hero, Founder of the Project Athena Foundation (Survivors to Athletes!), 3x Guinness World Record Distance Paddler and proud owner of 2 metal ‘bionic hips’, Robyn definitely knows a thing or two about creating Human Synergy – “that magic that allows groups of ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things together.” Her New York Times bestselling book How Winning Works, published by Harlequin has been reviewed as “an excellent resource for all business owners on approaching challenges with a team mentality.”

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 desert of Namibia – studying the good, the bad, and the not-so-pretty in extreme teamwork and mastering the skills required to inspire a group of semi-exhausted people through a seemingly endless series of checkpoints, in pursuit of a seemingly impossible goal, working against crazy deadlines, in constantly changing conditions and all in pursuit of a huge hairy audacious goal. Sounds a lot like your life as a business leader, right?

It is through these harrowing, life-affirming and often hilarious experiences in the world’s most grueling challenges that she has emerged with her refreshing and truly unique perspective on what it takes to build the kind of World Class Teams that succeed against all odds, that triumph in the face of adversity and that win as one in times of great challenge and change. Whether you’re trying to beat the competition to market, scale a looming mountain of a project or simply get your team all marching in the same direction, Robyn’s 8 Essential Elements of Human Synergy will coach you to the finish line of success.

NBC, ABC, CNN, ESPN, USA Network, The Today Show, Live With Regis, Dateline NBC, The Discovery Channel, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Runners World and Outside Magazine have all featured Robyn and her teams’ amazing accomplishments. Most recently, Robyn was named one of the Top 10 Speakers Featured by the Harvard Business Review and one of the Top 10 New York Times Bestselling Authors Who Can Better Your Company and Your Life in 2018. She has also been named a Top 5 Business Speaker for five years by Speaking.com and one of the 10 Highest Rated Inspirational Speakers for Business by Derek Sweeney. And Robyn 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: Robyn 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!

To some of Robyn’s rave reviews, check out her spotlight.