Travels From Victoria
Categories
Adventure & Challenge,Business Speakers,Military Speakers,Mindfulness & Mental Health,Motivational Speakers,Resilience,Team BuildingSpeaker Topics
Adaptive Organisations: Learning, Debriefing, and Evolving
Organisational Agility & Continuous Improvement
In rapidly changing environments, the most resilient organisations are not the ones that avoid failure — they’re the ones that learn fastest. In this keynote, Mark shares how elite teams use structured learning rituals like pre-mortems, after action reviews, and real-time debriefs to continually evolve. He explores the power of a debriefing culture — where honest reflection replaces blame — and how this can transform performance, agility, and trust across an organisation.
Building Elite Teams: Culture, Safety & Execution
Team Culture & Psychological Safety
The best teams in the world — from special forces to successful organisations — have one thing in common: deep trust and shared mission. Mark reveals the operating system behind elite teams, including how to build psychological safety, drive accountability, and create a culture where people perform at their best because they feel safe to be real.
Get It Done: Why Execution Beats Intention Every Time
Execution and Agile Teams
This powerful sequel builds on Mark’s keynote: Who Dares Wins — a deeper dive into how elite teams execute under pressure and deliver results. Mark Wales reveals how Special Forces simplify complexity, build debriefing cultures, and codify lessons fast. More than motivation, this is a framework for leaders who need their teams to adapt fast, move with clarity, and get the work done.
The Resilience Trifecta: Rest, Fuel, and Purpose
Burnout Prevention & Personal Sustainability
Burnout is often a sign of misalignment. In this keynote, Mark shares the three foundational pillars of sustainable high performance: quality rest, clean fuel (nutrition + movement), and a strong sense of purpose. Backed by science and lived experience, this session gives leaders and teams a practical system for building resilience and high-performance habits.
Who Dares Wins
Leadership & High Performance
This high-impact keynote equips leaders with the mindset and tools to stay calm, think clearly, and execute under pressure. Based on real-world lessons from combat, corporate strategy, and extreme environments, it’s a masterclass in leading through chaos and delivering when it matters most.
Mark Wales
A respected war veteran who has learnt to build resilience through his Special Ops training.
Mark’s military experience has taken him deep behind enemy lines in Afghanistan as a Troop Commander. In an environment as hostile and challenging as this, Mark solidified his leadership and teamwork skills, allowing his troop to maintain their high performance on the battlefield.
In spite of this, Mark’s post-military experience presented him with his own set of challenges. Battling depression and stress disorders, Mark sought intensive research to identify the neurobiological factors underpinning the mental health concerns many veterans faced. Using the same military intensity that he learnt prior, Mark emphasised the importance of skill development and personal growth, allowing him to make a strong recovery in his personal career.
Since then, he has embarked on a successful career in business. After four attempts at the GMAT, he was finally accepted into an Ivy League college in the U.S.A, and would later go on to join the respected consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Outside of this, he is also the founder of the e-commerce fashion startup Kill_Kaptur, and was even a competitor in the 2017 Australian edition of Survivor.
Mark prides himself on his ability to bounce back from some of life’s most challenging obstacles. Whether it’s life-or-death on the battlefield, or gaining entry into college admissions, Mark’s resilience has made him a force to be reckoned with in any field he applies himself to. Many of his motivational topics share values that he picked up from the military, including the importance of a growth mindset and teamwork in challenging circumstances.
In his spare time, Mark likes to stay active and explore different hobbies. He considers himself an avid surfer, boxer, and cook, but is always looking for new experiences to challenge himself with.
Mark is passionate about helping you and your team achieve the best results possible by being your best selves, especially when the going gets tough.
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