Heidi Dening

Heidi Dening is an award-winning business owner and best-selling author who believes that education changes lives. She has dedicated her career to empowering thousands of people across the globe with resilience, self-leadership and wellbeing programs from small children on remote pacific islands to C-suite executives in billion-dollar companies.

She is currently on a crusade to make sure leaders and their teams are resilient enough to come out of these stressful, uncertain and changeable times.

This has meant she has delivered onstage and online programs and presentations to thousands of leaders from across the globe. Some of the Australian companies have included Financial Planners Association, Metcash, University of Sydney and MLC Wealth.

Heidi’s empowering education content is a unique compilation of:

• Science-based facts from her degree;
• Over 22yrs of experience educating organisations and their people with performance-enhancing programs;
• Insights from rising above real-life adversities such as a paralysing illness, gunpoint kidnapping, tsunami terror, and narrowly escaping being burnt alive.

Heidi often appears in the media as a resilience expert, including a recent segment on Channel Nine’s Weekend Today, a full-page article on the front page of the Daily Telegraphs Hibernation lift-out about the mental health pandemic following COVID-19, plus numerous radio interviews.

She has been named Best International Keynote Speaker in the Asia Pacific region at the Influential Businesswoman’s Awards 2020, is the author of an Amazon best-selling self-leadership book called ‘Her Middle Name Is Courage’ and an expert at supporting leaders to find the courage to keep moving forward during tough times.

Speaking topics

Tough Times Don't Last, Resilient People Do.

To have a resilient organisation we first need resilient leaders and teams. This presentation is designed to help you build your professional resilience so you can better deal with the curveballs and cannonballs that we can’t control. Whether you are experiencing changing business models, financial challenges, disengaged teams, or feelings of overwhelm in this uncertain world, this impactful session will empower you with practical strategies that you can immediately implement.

You will learn about:

• Priorities – Gain an insight into which of your professional strengths and capabilities are decreased when there are too many rusty holes in your resilience bucket.
• Performance - A strategy on how to flip your automatic response to stress into a powerful process so you can perform at your fullest potential.
• Perseverance - To proactively build your resilience with a 5-part formula so you can bend rather than break during high-pressured times.

This inspiring presentation is based on the resilience and perseverance insights Heidi learned from hitting rock bottom after petrol bombs were thrown at her room during an overseas volunteer mission, with the intention to burn her and her team alive while they slept. 

Courageously Bounce Forward During Uncertain Times

This presentation is designed to give you the courage, confidence and capability to lead yourself, your organisation, your colleagues and your remote teams during uncertain times. Learn how to better deal with our ever-changing business environment by embracing challenges so you can continuously bounce forwards, not backwards.

You will learn about:

• Collaboration – How to achieve the impossible through connecting and partnering with the right people.
• Comfort Zone – How to be brave enough to learn from your challenges and step outside your comfort zone to find new solutions.
• Celebration – How to keep your momentum by acknowledging the small milestones along the way.

This inspiring presentation is based on the insights Heidi learned from leading the planning, building (and eventual destruction) of a community library on a remote pacific island, and the impact that courage has when striving to achieve professional goals.

Stop. Revive. Thrive: Master the Art of Rejuvenation

This wellbeing presentation is designed to show you practical micro-changes that you can make in life, to transform daily stress and feelings of overwhelm into productivity and performance. These mindset and self-care strategies will help you take back control of your physical, mental and social health even when family, flatmates, fur-babies and frequent work distractions are preventing you from reaching your professional goals.

You will learn about:

• Boundaries - The five 'non-negotiable' boundaries to incorporate that will improve your mental health and ability to cope with setbacks.
• Burnout Buffer - A work de-stress formula ensure you can effectively create a buffer between your work life and your home life (even if you WFH) so you don’t burn out.
• Body and Brain Reboot - Structured self-care habits to help you focus and concentrate when it matters, and rest and rejuvenate when it is needed.

This inspiring presentation is based on the mindset and self-care insights Heidi learned after contracting two random viruses – one that left her without use of her legs for eight months and one that caused so much pain when she moved it felt like every bone in her body was smashing.