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John Amatt  

Mountaineer, Founder & President of One Step Beyond WorldWide

A long-time resident of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, John Amatt has been leading expeditions to remote regions of the world for over 35 years, making many first ascents of previously unclimbed peaks.

At the age of 20, Amatt spent two weeks sleeping on tiny ledges while making the first ever climb of Europe's highest and steepest mountain face – the 5,000-foot 'Vertical Mile' Troll Wall in Norway.

Amatt was the leader of an early climbing expedition to Western China, which used camels to approach a 24,757-foot mountain before skiing to the summit.

More recently, he was the principle organizer and a leader of Canada's first successful expedition to reach the top of the world—the 29,028-foot summit of Mount Everest—a climb that was televised live throughout Canada and on ABC's Nightline in the United States.

Building on these experiences, Amatt founded One Step Beyond WorldWide, an innovative educational and motivational company, the mission of which is to encourage people to push beyond their self-imposed limitations, to be more personally accountable for their own actions, and to embrace effective teamwork by valuing the contribution of others.

In his best-selling book, Straight to the Top and Beyond, Amatt uses the metaphor of his own adventures to develop a nine-step approach for scaling the heights in today's unpredictable global environments.

Speech Topics

Peak Performance

Teamwork: No Matter Who Stands at the Peak, The Team Achieved the Goal

Straight to the Top and Beyond: Nine Keys for Meeting the Challenge of Change

Climbing Your Own Everest: What it Takes to Get to the Top

No Mountain Too High: Challenging Change with the Adventure Attitude

The challenge of change is forcing us to rethink our values and to rekindle our spirit of adventure. It will take courage, resourcefulness and endurance to meet this challenge – the courage to try, to commit and to take more risks; the resourcefulness to be innovative and creative in finding new ways of doing old things; and the endurance to keep moving forward despite all the setbacks.

John Amatt knows about tough times and the value of struggle in bringing out the best in teams of people. After all, he was a leader of an Everest expedition, which suffered four tragic deaths in two unpredictable accidents before putting six climbers on top of the world. His experience on Everest taught him about the danger of falling into the trap of complacency and the importance of always questioning the status quo in seeking new ways of adapting to a rapidly changing world.

In his acclaimed keynote presentations, he addresses the following themes:

  • Setting Realistic Goals and Expectations
  • Taking Calculated Risk and Being Adventurous
  • Embracing Fear and Anxiety
  • Avoiding the “Trap of Complacency”
  • Understanding the Values of Commitment
  • Learning from Setbacks and Applying the Lessons
  • Questioning the Status Quo by always asking “WHY?”
  • Building Trust within an Effective Team
  • Remaining “Positively Dissatisfied”
  • Anticipating the Future and Being Prepared

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