Keynote Speaker | Leadership Coach

About Steve Annear

Steve Annear is a business leader and a keynote speaker who has overcome significant challenges, including having his left leg amputated at age 11 due to a blood circulation disorder. Despite this, he has achieved great success, including attending Harvard Business School and completing the 2022 Detroit Marathon.

A Unique Approach

With his ability to use adversity as fuel for growth, Steve has learned to view challenges—whether personal or professional—through a unique lens. As a CEO, a father and a husband, Steve’s life experience is rich with challenges that have propelled his personal growth.

Steve’s success in driving both cultural and professional change in a variety of organizations is a testament to the strength of his perspective and his values-based approach to driving improvement.

Today, Steve shares his unique approach to life and business as a keynote speaker, leadership coach and strategic development partner.

A Lifetime of Transformative Change

Steve Annear has a unique perspective on adversity. At age 11, Steve lived in a mining camp in outback Western Australia, attended school in a one-room schoolhouse and had his left leg amputated due to a blood circulation disorder, a condition he had battled since birth.

Steve went on to represent Australia as a coxswain, climbed the corporate ladder and has led a life focused on self-improvement, as he has set out to achieve his personal and professional goals. Through his journey from the Australian desert to Harvard Business School, he has spent years redefining what others have thought possible for him and building his own definition of what is normal.

Steve’s story is one of tenacity, focus and a mindset driven by attitude and purpose, most recently completing the Detroit Marathon in 2022, on crutches, in just 8 hours and 47 minutes.

A Turnaround Specialist

For the past 30 years, Steve has led a wide range of organizations, including his role as a turnaround specialist in the Australian steel industry. In organizations damaged by entrenched cultures of underperformance and resistance to change, Steve drove strategic change where leadership teamwork and cultural alignment were paramount to the critical changes needed to reset business performance.

Steve’s personal attitude and mindset underpin a leadership style that is both positive and relentless in its approach to improving organizational outcomes. His ability to galvanize large organizations around new strategies, and to embrace change, rested as much on his process as it did his style.

What is his core strength? Steve has always used adversity to his advantage—allowing challenges to fuel his personal growth. Steve’s success is underpinned by two primary drivers: his determined approach to life and the importance he places on his core values. He believes that every life experience provides the opportunity to learn, to be better, and to be stronger.

Services