Motivational Keynote Speaker: Resilience in Action

Nancy Sharp is a nationally recognized speaker on resilience and making bold change. Her live or virtual keynotes and training programs are ideal for conferences, leadership and educational symposiums, and retreats. With her warm and genuine presentation style, Nancy emboldens audiences through far-reaching wisdom, humor, and exercises that yield transformative results.

Nancy never set out to change people’s lives, but hard experience led her on a journey of resilience to do just that. Today, she draws upon her story of loss and the power of choice–along with proven research and practical tools—to help individuals, teams, and organizations push beyond disruption toward growth and change. “There is the story you tell yourself and the story you own. I teach people the skills to move beyond adversity so that they can live and lead with greater optimism, success, and well-being,” says Nancy.

Nancy holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College and is a certified instructor in Guided Autobiography. In her popular online workshops, she teaches hundreds of individuals how to reflect, make meaning, and share their stories, sometimes as a legacy for loved ones.

Nancy’s debut memoir Both Sides Now: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Bold Living received eight literary honors including Books for A Better Life and the Colorado Book Award. Both Sides Now offers hard-won insights for anyone looking to rise strong after life hands you the unthinkable. Dr. Mehmet Oz featured excerpts of the book in the premiere issue of The Good Life and had this to say: “I adore Nancy’s story because it speaks to something so important in being healthy, which is resilience. Nancy could have become stuck in her sadness but decided to move forward instead. That takes courage.”

Nancy’s second book, Because the Sky is Everywhere, helps children and families accept that even though someone close to them dies, the love they feel can be everlasting. Her work been published in The New York Times, The Denver Post, The Best Advice in Six Words, ESME.com (Empowering Solo Moms Everywhere), and many other national media and anthologies. She also lent her skills to the Cancer Support Community where she wrote a series of award-winning columns on caregiving and resilience that can viewed here.

A bit more about Nancy’s personal story: After a decade of caregiving and mourning the death of her young husband in Manhattan, Nancy Sharp recast her life in Colorado with only the couple’s five-year-old twins in tow. People everywhere commented on her boldness. But it wasn’t the physical act of leaving New York City and her support network that was bold. The boldest part was that she put herself in the path of opportunity again. She refused to be defined by her widowhood, or her children’s special needs. She learned to re-frame the old narrative keeping her stuck, and to author a life of her own design.

Against the healing backdrop of the Rocky Mountains and Colorado’s sunny skies, Nancy committed to taking one step forward after the next…in business and life. This is what led her to becoming a professional writer, teacher, and motivational speaker, and also how she came to pluck her second husband Steve Saunders, a widowed TV news anchor with two children, straight from the magazine where he was featured as one of Denver’s most eligible singles. With four children between them, Nancy and Steve consider themselves lucky to have found love again and the desire to live each day to its fullest.

MOST POPULAR PROGRAMS- Live or Virtual

In a Nutshell 

Join Nancy Sharp for her empowering talk Own Your Story. Together we’ll learn how owning the stories we were meant to live, not just the story thrust upon us, allows us to become our most resilient, capable selves. By drawing upon Nancy’s own Resilience Framework™ and popular storytelling exercises she teaches in her Guided Autobiography workshops, we’ll learn insightful and practical tips and tools to: exercise greater self-leadership, take a more creative approach to problem-solving, re-frame and push beyond limiting beliefs; and thrive amid challenging times. Audiences come away ready to leave their mark in the world.

Own Your Story: Everyday Resilience and Vitality 

Nobody is born resilient. But why then are some individuals better able to navigate daily stressors large and small with little disruption? How is it that some people thrive amid uncertainty and challenge while others feel paralyzed? Together we’ll explore how people who own a resilient mindset move forward while those who fear change and fear the unknown, stay stuck. In a world that is increasingly fraught with hassles and crises, cultivating everyday resilience, strength, and vitality is key. Audiences learn how to:

• Discover untapped resilience
• Lean into challenges instead of avoiding them
• Apply the three central questions from The Resilience Framework™ to position oneself for everyday growth
• Live with greater well-being and optimism in spite of surrounding stress and setbacks
• Transcend challenges
• Be more curious about the world and others
• Cultivate greater empathy and more meaningful connections
• Identify hands-on experiences that boost confidence and skills

Own Your Story: The Good. The Hard. The Whole Shebang.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
– Oscar Wilde

The world is more complex and interconnected than ever before. This means that there isn’t just one way to view a problem, one right solution. Sometimes the only way through the problem is to embrace the “both sides now” with all its inherent contradictions. We’ll learn that only by looking at the whole shebang—the good, the hard, and everything in-between—can we come to own the stories we were meant to live and achieve peak success. Specific learning outcomes:

• Write a more nuanced, truthful narrative for yourself and your busines
• Develop more flexible thinking
• Apply new creative solutions to existing problems
• Challenge limiting beliefs
• Experience greater confidence and self-mastery
• Achieve higher emotional intelligence by applying the four foundational pillars of The Resilience Framework™: self-awareness, empathy, reasoned decision-making, and the willingness to grow and change
• Builds compassionate, thoughtful, holistic leaders

For Leaders and Emerging Leaders

Own Your Story: Boldly Push Beyond Challenges and Thrive 

What happens when you or your people don’t bounce back from setbacks and disappointments? Does adversity inhibit or propel you forward? What’s the cost to you and your business of diminished resilience? Imagine the gains in performance and bottom-line growth if you learned to be an expert on resilience. Imagine fostering bold and engaged teams who tackle challenges small and large. No matter where you or your team stand on the spectrum of resilience, you will leave this impactful program with the awareness, confidence, and concrete tools to move past obstacles and embrace positive growth and change. Audiences learn how to:

• Lean into challenges instead of avoiding them
• Ask, answer, and apply the three questions needed to summon resilience from The Framework ™
• Use affirming language to break through barriers
• Apply the four foundational pillars of resilience: self-awareness, empathy, reasoned decision-making, and the willingness to grow and change to everyday situations
• Exercise collective resilience
• Develop specific steps to immediately put into action

Own Your Story: Reimagine the Possibilities 

“The most effective way to transform your life, therefore, is not by quitting your job and moving to an ashram, but, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, by doing what you can, with what you have, where you are.”  Susan David, Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life.

We live in a culture that praises immediate gratification. Which means that today’s leaders are so focused on outcomes that they sometimes bypass the important lessons embedded in the journey—lessons that position them for sustained growth. Hard can be good, and change is possible no matter the circumstances. Only be reimagining the possibilities and asking tough questions can leaders develop the resilient mindset necessary to expertly navigate uncertainty and achieve lasting success. Audiences learn how to:

• See themselves with new clarity
• Become a more flexible thinker by viewing challenges through the expanded prism of gray—the unbounded, limitless place between black and white
• Appreciate adversity
• Welcome change
• Advance a growth mindset
• Ignite their creativity
• Embrace diverse perspectives
• Apply the principles of The Resilience Framework™ to help them establish a foundation for greater well-being and success