Conn Bertish
Build resilience and creative agility with Conn Bertish, adventurer and brain cancer survivor turned global keynote speaker. Conn has worked with organisations across 20 countries, including Google, Nestle, and Coca-Cola, to future-proof teams through purpose, mental resilience, and adaptability.
Cape Town, South Africa
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Conn Bertish is a South African adventurer, resilience trainer, and brain cancer survivor who uses lived experience and behavioural science to help people and organisations adapt under pressure.
A former Chief Creative Officer and Red Bull big wave surfer, Conn survived a brain cancer diagnosis in his 30s. He gamified his own recovery, earning the support of leading oncologists and science professors, and launched the award-winning Cancer Dojo resilience app, now used by patients worldwide. He later became the first person with hemiplegia to paddle unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean. During the 93-day expedition, he endured severe storms, isolation, equipment failures, and physical limitations that tested both preparation and mental endurance.
Drawing on survival psychology and neuroscience research, Conn shows audiences how to reframe adversity, build cognitive agility and develop resilience that holds up in real-world conditions. He has delivered keynotes and workshops to more than two million people across twenty countries, with clients including Google, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Standard Chartered Bank.
Audiences leave with a concrete framework for managing stress and anxiety using creative reframing techniques, a practical understanding of how to shift fixed thinking toward an explorer mindset, and tools drawn from Conn's medically supported methodology that have already been validated across thousands of corporate and clinical settings.
For teams navigating change, Conn delivers the kind of shift in perspective that sticks long after the room clears.
Conn brings hard-earned perspective and compelling storytelling to conversations around resilience, pressure, and uncertainty. He connects his inspiring experiences with workplace realities in a way that feels grounded, with every session supported by medical and scientific expertise.
Topics, Sessions And Talks
Conn Bertish's flagship keynote draws on neuroscience, psychology, and his own survival of brain cancer to make the case that happiness is not a soft aspiration but a measurable tool of resilience. Available in multiple versions tailored to specific team dynamics — from curious creative people and collaborative teams to purposeful organisations — the session addresses the conditions that make people genuinely harder to break. Audiences leave with practical tools grounded in Conn's medically supported methodology, and a renewed sense of their own agency to face uncertainty.
Rooted in a philosophy Conn Bertish learned from his father, one of South Africa's pioneering surfers, this keynote uses the ocean as a metaphor for navigating an unpredictable world. Rather than resisting change or challenge, Conn shows how moving toward the things that frighten us creates new neural pathways and builds lasting adaptability. The session is visceral, story-driven, and draws direct connections between surfing instinct and professional performance, leaving audiences with a concrete framework for using their challenges as forward momentum.
As the pace of change accelerates, the ability to pivot quickly, confidently, and without losing direction has become a core professional skill. Conn Bertish's keynote on pivotability equips delegates with the mindset tools to embrace disruption rather than resist it, drawing on creativity, neuroscience, and curiosity to show how the brain can literally be redesigned for agility. Part of a 10-part video series, the session is structured to produce immediate behavioural shifts alongside longer-term capability building.
Using his background as a multi-award-winning surfer, Conn Bertish shows how every person can develop the self-coaching instincts that elite surfers rely on to perform in an environment that never stays the same. The ocean becomes a classroom: how to fall with style, recover without panic, read conditions accurately, and choose the challenges worth taking on. The session translates these instincts into everyday leadership and performance behaviours, giving delegates a lasting framework for self-directed growth.
This session grounds the concept of resilience in peer-reviewed science, drawing on findings from neuroscience, psychology, and psychoneuroimmunology to explain why some people, and some organisations, recover from setbacks faster and more creatively than others. Conn Bertish presents the research underpinning his CancerDojo methodology alongside insights from working with over two million people across twenty countries. The result is a clear, practical understanding of how to reduce the body's stress responses, sustain productivity under pressure, and build the conditions for long-term wellbeing.
Looking for a custom keynote or workshop designed around your company’s goals and culture? The expert will create a tailored, interactive session that aligns with your objectives, values, and strategic priorities. From leadership and innovation to wellbeing and collaboration, each experience is built from the ground up to deliver measurable impact and lasting change.
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