Meet Keynote Speaker

Robyn’s Accidental Path to Becoming a Top 10 Keynote Speaker

Robyn began her career in pharmaceutical and hospital supply sales for Allergan, Baxter and Medline. Then she traded pantyhose and heels for boots and a helmet and became a full time San Diego firefighter! 

Growing up, she competed in a variety of individual sports from gymnastics, diving, track and cross country in high school to springboard diving in college. When she moved to San Diego to start her sales career, she gravitated to Ironman Triathlons. After nine Ironmans (“I was like a Rottweiler competing with Greyhounds!” Robyn jokes), she was on a search for a sport with weight divisions :) and found judo, ultimately fighting on the U.S. team in international competitions. 

After 25 years of competing in multiple individual sports, Robyn found the team sport of adventure racing. Finally, she’d discovered the sport she was meant to do! It showed her that consistent success was the natural byproduct when everyone left their egos at the start line and completely committed to doing whatever it took to achieve the TEAM’s mission. 

After her adventure racing team won the Raid Gauloises World Championship in Ecuador, they were contacted by Fast Company magazine, who requested to interview her teammates for an article entitled “Extreme Teamwork.” The intent of the article was to help companies apply the winning strategies of Robyn’s team and other consistently high-performing extreme teams, , including NASA, Navy Seals, and George Lucas’s Light and Magic to their own fast-moving companies. Evidently, the article created a buzz; Fast Company asked if someone from the team could speak at their upcoming reader conference. And as Robyn remembers it, she “drew the short straw.” She spent a few days thinking about the keys to her teams’ consistent success and created a keynote entitled “The 8 Essential Elements of Human Synergy”—which just so happened to be the perfect acronym for TEAMWORK.  

An introvert by nature, Robyn wasn’t too sure she ever wanted to undertake the adventure of speaking in front of people. Nervously, she presented “The Essential Elements of Human Synergy,” thinking this would just be a one-and-done experience, like skydiving. But the universe thought otherwise. After her presentation, a Zone VP from Starbucks came up to say hello. He told her that this exact message and culture was what he was trying to inspire in all his store managers. And Robyn suddenly found herself on a 15-city tour, inspiring managers to create exceptional experiences for their customers and teams through the power of a deep connection to one another and to the mission.  

And the rest, as they say, is history. The speaking tour never really ended. And Robyn feels so incredibly fortunate to share with others the power of the we-thinking that helps us become great leaders in every aspect of our lives. “Roping up to others” is the fastest, most efficient and most effective route she’s found to experience the satisfaction of living your dreams while pursuing huge hairy goals. As Robyn puts it, “When we drop our ego and our fear of being judged, weak or wrong, we create room for superpowers like connection, curiosity and creativity, which allows us to climb higher together than any individual could ever rise alone.”