Steph Davis

Steph has dedicated her life to taking on huge goals, facing fears and managing risks: challenges we all face not just in the mountains, but also in business and in life. From an unusual start as a classically trained pianist with a Master’s degree in literature, Steph chose to leave law school in order to pursue climbing full time. She is best known for her free ascents of El Capitan in Yosemite and her free solo ascents of the Longs Peak Diamond in Colorado. She has made first ascents in Patagonia, the Karakorum, and the Arctic, and she was the first to make free solo BASE climbs (free climb up, parachute off) of freestanding towers in the Moab desert. Steph has written two memoirs: High Infatuation and Learning to Fly.

We are all asked to do impossible things, but pushing past the edge is what Steph Davis does on a daily basis: she climbs mountains and flies off them in a squirrel suit. The mountains demand extreme discipline, problem-solving skills and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, lessons that can be applied to any field. Steph uses her stunning climbing adventures to show that the biggest challenges in any arena can be broken into many small problems and solved one by one.

Sharing her journey from a not-so-adventurous suburban childhood to a self-made career of climbing and flying from high peaks around the world, Steph will inspire any group to rethink the meaning of "impossible," and to redefine change as opportunity.

Multimedia keynote presentation: 45 minutes with option for Q&A.

Themes: inspiration, innovation, managing fear, embracing change.