Anna Wardley

How to harness your inner strength, realise & maximise potential, promoting wellbeing & positive mental health.

Anna Wardley is a global inspirational speaker, record-setting endurance swimmer and award-winning charity fundraiser.   Anna inspires audiences around the world by sharing her story of how she overcame adversity and the fear of failure to be able to maximise her potential. 

Anna’s keynotes include the following themes: -

How to find your inner strength and maximise your potential
*Facing challenges like an endurance athlete:  Build resilience and a positive mindset
*Reframing failure: learn from your unsuccessful attempts
*Overcoming fear: how to transcend your fear and smash your goals

Promoting wellbeing and positive mental health
*Focus on wellbeing to unlock potential and performance
*How to start conversations about mental health to save lives
*Create healthy routines to cope with adversity and boost wellbeing

Living a purpose-driven life
*A deeply personal mission: creating a not-for-profit in a pandemic
*My international research to create a web of support for children impacted by parental suicide
*Turning the tide: harnessing a traumatic childhood to create lasting change

Her lessons stem from a traumatic childhood, marked by the loss of her dad to suicide when she was nine, that left her doubting her own self-worth until the tide started to turn  in her mid-20s when  she sailed  38,000 -miles  in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. 

She then  she  taught  herself  to swim front crawl in her  30s  and went on to complete a series of the toughest swims on the planet  including swimming from Asia to Europe, Europe to Africa, the  English Channel, and her  103-km swim around the Isle of Wight, a feat which took more than 26 hours non-stop.

Anna has been awarded the title of ‘Inspirational Woman of the Year’ in recognition of her ‘incredible swimming achievements and outstanding efforts raising money for charity’.  

Anna  talks  passionately about creating a life with purpose;  her philanthropic  endeavours began with raising more than £150,000 for suicide-related causes through her audacious swimming challenges. Then in 2019  she was awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship to carry out international research to  improve  the support for children  left  behind after suicide. This inspired  Anna  to  create  Luna, a social enterprise dedicated to transforming the support for children after a parent ends their own life.  

In May 2022 she was selected as a Shackleton Leader by the Shackleton Foundation’s unique leadership investment programme, which backs social entrepreneurs who embody the leadership spirit of Sir Ernest Shackleton, namely courage and resilience in the face of adversity.  

Anna is a world-renowned inspirational speaker who has the ability to  tailor her key note to the theme of your event, and her memorable yet relatable delivery inspires positive shifts in mindset, self-belief and performance. 

‘Anna is an inspiring person who has incredible willpower. She really is quite extraordinary and it’s rare to meet a person who is so focused, so driven and so able.’
Dame Ellen MacArthur, record-setting solo round the world yachtswoman  

‘Anna has amazing inner strength and determination.’  
Davina McCall, British television presenter

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