The Olympic medalist who teaches teams how to perform under pressure

When I started Silicon Valley Speakers, I knew its foundations would be in technology as I'd spent two years exclusively booking AI keynotes and knew that world inside out.

But the vision was always bigger than AI.

The through line of every speaker I manage is the same: they imagined something impossible and made it happen. Sometimes that's building a product that reaches a billion users. Sometimes it's standing on an Olympic podium after 13 years of setbacks, injuries, and competitors who were cheating.

Shannon Rowbury is the kind of speaker I started this company to represent. She's now one of my exclusive speakers, and I just launched her brand new speaker reel that I wanted you to see first.

🏆 Speaker Spotlight: Shannon Rowbury

Shannon is a three-time Olympian (2008, 2012, 2016), an Olympic bronze medalist in the 1500m, and a two-time World Championship bronze medalist. She's a six-time U.S. champion and former American record holder.

Those are the stats. Here's what they don't tell you.

Shannon spent 13 years chasing an Olympic medal. During that time, she raced against competitors who were later caught doping, athletes who had an unfair advantage that she didn't know about while she was losing to them. She kept showing up anyway. She kept training. And she eventually won that bronze medal clean.

That story alone would make her a compelling speaker. But what makes Shannon genuinely useful for corporate teams is what she did with that experience after retiring from competition.

She built the Medalist Mindset™ framework, a practical system for goal-setting, resilience, and performing when the pressure is highest. It's not a "believe in yourself" talk. It's a structured set of tools she developed from years of competing at the highest level and refined through corporate workshops for organizations like Abbott, Microsoft, Strava, Cyera, and Lloyds Bank.

What she talks about:

Her keynotes cover peak performance under pressure, building resilient teams in uncertain times, and mind-body reset tools like breathing, visualization, and power poses that audiences can actually use before their next big meeting or presentation. She also runs a three-part workshop series for teams going through transitions, with optional pulse check-ins between sessions.

One of her clients at Abbott put it well:

"The Medalist Mindset had my team using soundbites and mentioning lines from their talk the rest of the day. It was both inspiring and practical."

The thing that sets Shannon apart from most keynote speakers:

Shannon lived the stories she tells. As an Emmy Award-winning sports broadcaster, she was an NBC Sports Track & Field analyst for the Paris 2024 Olympics and has worked with CBS, World Athletics, and the NCAA.

She knows how to hold a room. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from Duke (magna cum laude) and a certificate from Harvard Business School. And she co-authored Strong as a Mother, a pregnancy-to-postpartum health program built by Olympic athletes and pelvic health experts.

Most motivational speakers talk about pressure in metaphors. Shannon experienced it firsthand at three Olympic Games, rebuilt her career into broadcasting, authored a book, and now teaches the actual tools she used along the way. That combination of experience, framework, and stage presence is rare.

If you or someone you know is planning a sales kickoff, leadership retreat, or offsite and want someone who can really move the room, check out Shannon's full profile here or just reply to this email and I'll tell you more.

Till next time,

Noah Cheyer

Do More With Less Using AI

PS: If you know someone planning a leadership event or SKO who's tired of the same recycled motivational speakers, forward this their way. Shannon is the real deal.