John Amatt

Podium Intro

A longtime resident of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, John Amatt is 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.

He is the Founder of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, a world-renowned annual event in the Canadian Rockies which OUTSIDE magazine calls "North America’s premiere showcase of adventure documentaries", and has been called "The World’s Best Adventure Speaker" by International Celebrity Management of Australia. In a 20-year speaking career, he has delivered more than 1,500 keynote presentations and seminars to corporate and professional audiences involving more than 750,000 people in 35 countries worldwide.

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. In 1981, he was leader of the 1st Canadian 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 rapidly changing, unpredictable global business environments.