Mark Wales - Guest Keynote & Event Speaker

Mark Wales Book as a speaker/entertainer for your next event

Key Points for Mark Wales

Mark Wales was a Special Operations team commander (SAS–Major), 10 tours of duty, 4 tours in Afghanistan.
He suffered with depression and stress disorders after war fighting in Afghanistan, and worked hard to overcoming this common struggle.
Alumni of prestigious Ivy League college in the U.S.A (Wharton).
Mark is an Associate at McKinsey & Company #1 consulting firm in the world AKA ‘The Firm’.
Mark Wales was a popular contestant on Survivor Australia 2017 - #1 Reality TV show.
Founded fashion start-up Kill Kapture, a tough-luxury ecommerce brand.
Mark is the bestselling author of Survivor, Life in the SAS (published 2021). His new novel, Outrider, a lightening paced thriller will hit the shelves 25 June 2024.
Mark won Network 10's Australian Survivor Season 7 2022 - Blood v Water.
He is a outstanding speaker on leadership and mental resilience.

Topics for Mark Wales

Elite leadership keynote
- Mark believes that leadership can be taught, and the aim of this keynote is to outline the fundamentals of elite leadership.
- Mark draws on his experience at the top levels of business and Special Operations to show you that the basics done well, are the foundations of mission success.
- Any endeavour requires applying the basics of mission focus, a supportive team, and self-care.
- Self-care fundamentals such as rest, nutrition, exercise and growth are the basics needed for elite performance.
- Mark draws from neurobiology and uses personal examples to illustrate a proven approach to prevention, recovery and growth.
- Outlines the importance of simplicity, focus and agility in planning to achieve mission success.
- Lasts for 60 minutes, including 15 minutes discussion / Q&A.
Self care for leaders
- Mark addresses increasing demands and pressures on team leaders and how self-care is critical to elite performance, mental health and thriving under pressure.
- Mark discusses team mission, team norms and personal boundaries needed for optimal performance.
- Addressing overwhelm and learning how to triage tasks in a high pressure environment.
- ‘Leading in chaos’ tips. Mark uses an example of a failed combat mission in Afghanistan to outline the importance of simplicity, focus and agility in planning.
Pre-mortems: Wargaming your plans and teams for improved resilience workshop
- The aim of this series is to show the pre-mortem framework for stress testing initiatives to increase chances of mission success.
- Perfect for an annual kick-off, launching a project, or forming a new team.
- This workshop promotes collaboration, candour and removes bias, all while building better plans.
- Focused on skills and mindsets needed to lead teams under extreme uncertainty, in a highly interactive environment.
- Using examples from Special Operations, startups, and McKinsey & Company, Mark focuses on tactical tips you can use from Day 1 to improve your chances of a win in your new project or team.
- Workshop lasts for 90 minutes, with an optional 60-minute follow-up.
Pre-mortems: Wargaming your plans and teams for improved resilience workshop
- Learn how to review a completed task to after execution with the intent of improving your team processes.
- This session promotes a framework to ‘learn from failure’ that you and your team can adopt for each session.
- Mark helps illustrate the importance on this with combat stories about failure in the field and how to improve from it.
- Great for training new and emerging team leaders with skills they need to gather and action feedback after each initiative.
- This session includes processes and tips to apply from Day 1.
- Workshop lasts for 90 minutes, with an optional 60-minute follow-up.

Testimonials for Mark Wales

Mark Wales was fantastic, he has a great story and is extremely professional and well spoken.
TAL

Mark Wales was an outstanding Guest Speaker at our regional health service AGM. With a mixed audience of over 200 people including staff and community members, Mark’s fabulous presentation and his very powerful messages resonated with all. The feedback from those attending was exceptionally positive. A truly inspirational man. I could not recommend him more highly as an inspirational and motivational guest speaker.
Northeast Health Wangaratta

Mark Wales delivered a thought-provoking and insightful presentation. He displayed a level of vulnerability which was refreshing and enabled the audience to connect with him and his story. Mark also provided some very practical tips and was able to inspire others to make positive changes for both to improve mental health and perform better in the workplace. Mark made himself available during breaks and lunch to speak with individuals and answer questions and this was appreciated by many. On an administrative note, Mark was easy to contact, engage with and he was punctual and well prepared.
Department of Defence

Wanted to thank you for your presentation to the team on Friday. The feedback from the team was fantastic and certainly hit the right cord in terms of personal and professional challenges. Congratulations on what you have achieved with your business venture to date and if you don’t mind I may get in touch closer to my trip to NY at Christmas for some places to check out. Until then, all the best and ‘who dares wins’!
Director
Design and Build

Mark Wales was very engaging and provided the perfect message that the team required as we head into another year of selling. Mark delivered a message that demonstrated mental strong, commitment, ownership and emotion. I would highly recommend Mark.
Mimecast Aust. Pty. Ltd.

Mark Wales spoke to our group of approximately 100 executives at a high profile leadership offsite. He led topics related to mental health and effective techniques for stress management in the workplace. He was deeply credible and highly engaging, drawing on his experience from both the battlefield and the boardroom. We would be thrilled to have Mark join us again in the future and would certainly recommend him for other engagements.
Associate Partner
McKinsey & Company, Dallas

In his ‘Peer Perspectives on Leadership’ keystone speech at Wharton, Mark Wales passed on thrilling lessons about life and leadership as a Troop Commander in the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. The unit specialized in sensitive strategic operations, hostage recovery, counter terrorism, and precision air strikes. Mark completed 10 tours of duty overseas, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands. Experiences in each of these countries taught Mark about the importance of how personal values and your perspectives on life can shape your approach to leadership. An unforgettable talk.
MBA
Wharton School of Business

I engaged the speaking services of Mark Wales to talk to a team of 30 high level sales consultants about teamwork, resilience, persistence & high performance. Mark not only did this with eloquence t ease & professionalism, he also had the sales team actively engaged throughout his talk by way of questioning and group activities/discussions. I would highly recommend engaging Mark to talk to your staff if you want them to move from good to great.
Sales Team leader

Mark Wales' engaging talk stood out from all the other corporate presentations our team has seen. There were slides filled with personal pictures that helped enhance the stories he was sharing from his time in Special Ops. His unique and interesting experience had takeaways that were directly relevant to our work in business. It was a great way to learn some great tips around working on teams, stress management and doing what you love. I would highly recommend him to any audience looking for a unique and interesting presentation!
Operations Leader
McKinsey Academy