<p>Sharing her extraordinary story, Jessica Buchanan inspires audiences to overcome their own obstacles and access their own strength and resilience—no matter how “impossible” the odds.</p><p>On October 25, 2011, while working in Somalia on a routine field mission for her NGO, Jessica Buchanan was abducted at gunpoint and held for ransom by a group of Somali pirates for 93 days. Forced to live outdoors in deplorable conditions, starved, and terrorized by more than two dozen gangsters, Jessica’s health steadily deteriorated until, by order of President Obama, she was rescued by the elite SEAL Team VI on January 25, 2012. </p><p>Through this experience, Buchanan learned that the human spirit is indomitable and that we are more resilient than we could ever imagine. Today she shares the tools she quickly learned to find strength and resilience, inspiring audiences to face any situation, no matter how large or small their challenges or obstacles. </p><p>Jessica chronicled her story in the <em>New York Times</em> bestseller and 2013 USA Best Book Award/Autobiography<em>, Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six</em>. She has been named one of the ‘150 Women Who will Shake the World’ by <em>Newsweek</em>, and her story was the most highly viewed 60 Minutes episode to air, to date.</p>
Change and resilience expert, <i>NYT</i> bestselling author of <i>Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six</i>
<ul><li><strong>Change Is Your Proof of Life: How to Choose Opportunity in the Impossible</strong></li><li>Most of the time, when faced with difficulties, we feel we are backed into a corner, with no options. We will say to ourselves and to everyone around us, “I had no choice!” In this keynote presentation, Jessica breaks down the semantic differences between the state of OPTIONS as opposed to CHOICES, and through her dynamic teaching and storytelling, will show her audience that while they may have few options, they ALWAYS have a choice. With each step, Jessica highlights her objective with examples of how she identified her choices when she had zero options during her 93-day captivity. This particular message can be broken down into a workshop format with corresponding companion guides and workbooks.</li><li><strong>Impossible Odds: A Story of Strength and Survival</strong></li><li>In this keynote, Jessica moves audiences from all backgrounds with the details of her 93-day captivity in the Somali desert, with how she managed to survive regular torture, starvation, and threats on her life, from a gang of pirates who wanted a 45-million-dollar ransom demand for her freedom. If there is one thing Jessica understands, it is the impossible, as it doesn’t get much more impossible than being a woman, surrounded by armed men, who want tens of millions of dollars for your freedom, and living through the ordeal. </li><li>Jessica, a teacher by profession and a humanitarian at heart, is a gifted storyteller who is able to lay out practical tools she used during her captivity in a way that can also be applied in one’s everyday challenges. Jessica will invite her audience to focus on their choices embedded within life’s options and call them to gratitude, all while demonstrating how one can find a commitment to purpose, even in the darkest moments of our lives. Jessica’s keynote offers her listeners the opportunity for real transformation as they take inventory of the goodness in their lives, are inspired and motivated to turn their pain into purpose by realizing no hardship is impossible to overcome.</li><li><strong>Deserts to Mountaintops: The Journey to Reclaiming My Voice</strong></li><li>This keynote is crafted specifically for female audiences, and draws from Jessica’s latest bestselling book: Deserts to Mountaintops: Our Collective Journey to (re)Claiming Our Voice, an anthology of 25 women’s stories of how they have journeyed from their own desert and overcome incredibly daunting circumstances to reach their own mountaintops.</li><li>In this keynote, Jessica will offer her audience:<ul><li>Tools for honing their intuition in every area of their lives</li><li>Real life examples that drive home the life and death situation that not listening to their intuition can cause</li><li>Exercises that will bring them into greater self-awareness and alignment into what they want for their future</li><li>Feelings of empowerment that will bring them to decisions more quickly, ultimately getting them to their next steps in an effective and efficient way</li></ul></li></ul>