John Amatt is Founder & President of One Step Beyond WorldWide, an innovative educational and motivational company, whose mission is to encourage people to push beyond their self-imposed limitations, to be more personally accountable for the results of their own actions, and to embrace effective teamwork by valuing the contribution of others. In this capacity, he has delivered more than 1,700 presentations and seminars in 35 countries and has been called “The World’s Best Adventure Speaker”.

A native of Great Britain, for the past 25 years he has been a resident of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and is the Founder of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, widely recognized as the world’s premiere showcase of adventure documentary films.

John is renowned in the international mountaineering community for making the first ever climb of Europe’s highest and steepest mountain face – the 5000 foot “Vertical Mile” Troll Wall in Norway. He was leader of an early climbing expedition to Western China, which used camels to approach a 24,757-foot mountain before skiing to the summit, this being perhaps the highest peak in the world to have been ascended and descended entirely on skis. And more recently, he was the principal organizer and a leader of Canada’s first successful expedition to reach the top of the world – the 29,035 foot summit of Mount Everest – a climb that was televised live throughout Canada and on ABC Nightline in the United States.

John’s adventures are related in his autobiography, Straight to the Top and Beyond, in which he uses the metaphor of his own adventures to develop a nine-step approach for scaling the heights in today’s unpredictable global business environments.

John Amatt knows about tough times and the value of struggle in bringing out the best in teams of people! After all, he was a leader of an Everest team, which suffered four tragic deaths in two unpredictable accidents before putting six climbers on top of the world. His experience on Everest taught him about the danger of falling into the trap of complacency and the importance of always questioning the status quo in seeking new ways of succeeding in a rapidly changing world. He is the perfect speaker to assist your team in navigating through the turmoil of today’s global economic crisis.”