Brendan Hall

Brendan Hall is a professional yacht racing skipper, author, and consultant. He captained a yacht in The Clipper Round the World Yacht race, the ultimate long-distance challenge. The race is a forty-thousand-mile circumnavigation of the globe, contested by amateur crews in identical racing yachts. Although Brendan was the youngest and least experienced skipper in the race, he and his team won it in convincing fashion.

Brendan’s leadership skills were put to the test when, he and his crew were tasked with the rescue of an incapacitated skipper on a competing yacht in the middle of a deadly North Pacific winter hurricane. He swapped yachts and skippered both vessels four thousand nautical miles, across the world’s most treacherous ocean to safety.

A natural storyteller, Brendan explores the driving forces behind his team’s extraordinary result, with an engrossing globe-spanning story that keeps the audience on the edge of their seat. His speeches are a mixture of psychology, teamwork & leadership practice, with a focus on embracing change, psychological safety, emotional intelligence, autonomy, trust and creating a culture of full ownership.  

He has delivered inspiration and outcomes to some of the world’s most exceptional organisations including PwC, Toyota, GSK, Nestle, Financial Times, Tesco and Lloyds Banking Group. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Ashridge Executive Education, and Cranfield Business Schools.

Brendan is the author of Team Spirit: Life & Leadership on The World’s Toughest Yacht Races. It has become a valuable resource for business leaders and has been featured in The Sunday Times and shortlisted for the prestigious Mountbatten Book Award.