Anna Hemmings
High Performance Speaker & Motivational Speaker
Anna Hemmings MBE, OLY is best known as Britain’s most successful female marathon kayaker, a 2 time Olympian and 6 times World Champion.
Anna inspires audiences with anecdotes from the World Championship and Olympic Games; hers is really a tale of triumph over adversity… At the peak of her career, Anna was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and told by medical experts she might never race again. But she battled her way to full recovery and between 2005 and 2007 she went on to win three world titles in a row and compete at her second Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. Anna has a staggering eleven World and European Championship medals.
After retiring from the world of sport she founded Beyond the Barriers, a high performance training consultancy. Anna works globally as a training consultant, executive coach and keynote speaker. She is adept at translating the lessons that she learned in sport into the business world and has developed a reputation for helping individuals and teams unlock potential by breaking down those barriers that may prevent change and improvement.
Anna’s unique combination of experience in sport combined with 10 years leading a successful training consultancy gives her a broad understanding of the challenges that individuals, teams and leaders face and how to overcome them to maximise performance.
Anna’s achievements were recognised at the Sunday Times Sports Woman of the Year Awards, where she won the 2005 Champions Award and then again in 2007 when she was voted BBC London Sports Personality of the Year. She was then awarded an MBE in the 2010 New Year’s honours list for her services to sport.
SPEAKING TOPICS
Anna has a proven track record as an accomplished, entertaining and humble speaker. Her fascinating journey has been enjoyed by thousands across different industries from banking and telecoms, to healthcare and retail. Anna shares the insights and strategies that helped her reach the highest level, deal with adversity and return to the pinnacle of her sport again. Key themes include –
Achieving and sustaining high performance
Resilience
Cohesive teams
Motivation
Mindset and performing under pressure
If you want a speaker who motivates, captivates and engages then Anna is your lady. Her inspirational story makes audiences walk away feeling energised with a renewed desire to improve, teams want to connect and collaborate and leaders want to challenge and engage. Anna makes sure that she has a clear understanding of the audience, the company and their industry; ensuring that each speech is designed and made specifically for the client. Anna’s story translates well into every arena because she has the ability to interact with a wide range of individuals and inspire all types of audiences.
As well as leadership and team development Anna is also a speaker on Health and Wellbeing. Having had her own health challenges she talks from personal experience combined with scientific research on the following subjects:
- Energy management – managing your energy for optimal performance and health
- The Resilient Performer – building resilience for optimal performance and wellbeing
“Anna's session yesterday was fantastic and inspirational. We have received excellent feedback from staff across our locations. She had the audience captivated, linked everything she learned in sport into the business world and they are definitely more determined to succeed now.”
— Avril Jenkins, Risk Function, RBS
“Anna was just wonderful! Absolutely delivered the right messages and inspired the passion we wanted! Hope she enjoyed being with us as well! It was lovely working with Anna.”
— Christina Vrentzou, Europe Perfect Store Marketing Manager, Unilever
“Congratulations on organising this fabulous event and getting such an excellent speaker. I have heard several other top sports people give this type of talk before Anna was easily the best I have heard. Most people are entertaining but either have no idea how to really relate their sports success and learning to business or they have some ideas, but it’s not that powerful. This was really excellent so well done, and I’m looking forward to seeing the recording!!”
— Jocelyne King, Sony
“Your presentation was highly motivational and appealed to a wide audience in a variety of different ways. You presented a number of techniques that can be applied to our business environment – for example, clear vision and goals, visualisation, focus, preparation….a compelling story. You maintained a wonderful rapport with the audience. Thank you for a very engaging presentation.”
— Jan Mayne, Head of IS Strategy, Centrica Energy
