Stories that make you become a better version of yourself
UK
The Farmers girl who captured the hearts of a nation. She remains the only woman ever to hold four major track titles concurrently – Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth. Since retiring from international athletics, Sally developed a new career path as a keynote speaker and wellbeing advocate.
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About Sally
Keynote
References
“Raw talent is no substitute for single mindedness and hard graft”
Sally remains a towering figure in British athletics. She has more than 15 years’ experience in addressing a wide variety of corporate audiences. She has covered global conferences of thousands and senior leadership teams of just 6. Her natural, easy-going style belies her relentless focus on achieving and sustaining excellence.
Sally effortlessly weaves the secrets of sporting achievement with the valuable components that underpin success in business. Her key themes hold resonance for senior decision-makers and junior staff alike. No corporate speaks, no clever-sounding management models. Just tried-and-tested solutions and techniques that took a farmer’s daughter from the hay bales of Essex to the winner’s podium at the Barcelona Olympics.
Sally’s honest, down-to-earth approach has won her many admirers over the years. She has written four books and her latest gets right under the skin of what makes a successful, fulfilled person. For the first time, she brings together in one place all the themes that have brought success in her sporting, business and family lives. ’10 hurdles for life ‘is for anyone who knows they have something to accomplish in life and is focused on enabling it to happen. The only limit is our imagination, understand this and the game of life becomes more fun and less hard work.
See keynotes with Sally Gunnell OBEWhen Sally won the gold, re-defining success was hard. where do you go from there. At 26 she needed new goals and a way of sustaining her appetite to be the best version of her.
Audience Takeaways:
The new Hybrid way of working requires us to push on to greater heights of achievement. This requires a strong focus on key components.
Sally explores:
Failure is a fact of life in business and in sport. Dealing with it is a skill. And a valuable one at that.
Sally examines:
The Mind, body, spirit connection is more important than ever and learning to be self-aware enough to know when to stand alone yet vulnerable enough to ask for help is part of both being human and staying well. In this interactive talk, Sally explores the importance of movement along with our need to remain resilient.
Being one of the lesser talents on the start line of major races would only have been a problem for Sally if she had let it. She spent years working her mind as well as her body to ensure this was not an issue. Sally addresses:
"Sally was extremely natural and engaging which helped our colleagues and clients immediately settle into the event. There was a feeling of familiarity right from the start with Sally but also something very special having a national sporting icon talk to us directly and honestly. The subjects discussed touched diversity, racism, motivation and determination, mental well-being, the Olympics, coming up in sport. Varied and inclusive for all with some nice overlaps into the corporate world. I obviously loved having a special audience for 5 minutes at the start with a sporting heroine from my sprinting days at Loughborough and curly hair chat!"
Elena Folkes - Director, Strategy & Market Development
"Sally is one of the most inspirational and motivating speakers we’ve ever had join us on our TechWomen programme, one of BT’s key diversity programmes. Throughout the past 12 months, Sally has joined us numerous times on our programme and our TechWomen always love her stories. More recently, Sally created a bespoke session for us around mental fitness which went down a storm. Sally always gets on board with your goals and objectives to make sure your attendees get the most out of their time with her and is an absolute joy to work with!"
Rachel Brackenbury - Talent Programme Manager
"Sally joined us for our 2021 kickoff meeting and it was the perfect way to start the new year with the team. It was over zoom, of course, but that did not take away one bit. She was so engaging, funny, and extraordinarily inspirational. We're an HR tech company but Sally did a wonderful job of tying her Olympic experience to ours as individuals. We highly recommend having Sally join you for a speech!"
Amanda Cianni - Project Manager
"Sally’s speech was highly inspirational and motivational. Her story, while unrelated to our profession, was easily translatable to our line of work. She went down a storm with our delegates and would be an ideal speaker for virtually any audience."
Matthew Stephenson - Chair
"The girls were full of Sally Gunnell’s talk after the event. Girls have told their teachers they have been inspired in their sport and academic studies to aim high. At a Parents’ evening two days later, parents were volunteering positive comments about the visit and explaining that their daughters had recounted the messages given by Sally. I have no doubt that Sally’s wise words will stay with the girls for many, many years."
Headmistress
"Sally Gunnell is a big name, who has achieved so much by working hard. Sharing her personal experiences with us was priceless. I was very impressed when she spoke about mindset; how we can achieve anything if we are mentally strong and put all of our hard work in the right direction. I felt like I could relate to her and her sporting experiences; she spoke my language. I found her inspirational and awesome!"
Delegate
"Sally was the ideal speaker to engage our audience of HR Directors. Our company regularly engages with HR Directors and are always trying to find a topic and speaker who will resonate with them. Sally delivered a highly interactive talk on 'resilience' explaining to our audience of HR Directors the challenges she overcame in her athletic career and how this translated into her business career. Sally provided an ideal blend of theory and practice, which resonated perfectly with the audience. I would thoroughly recommend Sally to other organisations.”
Kevin Matthews - Global Head of Marketing
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