Luke Tyburski
Burnout, anxiety and depression now sit on the executive risk register, but most corporate wellbeing programmes still rely on awareness campaigns and apps. Senior teams want content that names the harder ground: how someone keeps performing while quietly unwell, and how organisations build cultures where that conversation is possible without it becoming a crisis.
Luke Tyburski is an ultra-endurance adventurer and former professional footballer who uses his lived experience of depression and extreme performance to help organisations turn mental health and resilience from policy language into daily practice.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Luke Tyburski
- He talks about depression, eating disorders and suicidal ideation from the inside, which lets internal wellbeing leads open conversations that polished clinical content does not reach.
- He pairs the personal material with two named frameworks, K.E.N. for resilience and View-Think-Act for daily mindset, so audiences leave with a structure rather than a story.
- The 2,000km Morocco-to-Monaco Ultimate Triathlon is a documented world-first with an award-winning film attached, giving the proof point credibility that generic “extreme athlete” billing does not.
- He has been booked by national sporting teams, embassies and global companies across 16 countries, which signals he can read a senior corporate room as well as a sports audience.
- He is an accredited executive coach (ICF and EMCC), which means the resilience and mindset frameworks he delivers from stage are the same ones he uses in one-to-one work with senior leaders, not repackaged motivational content.
Biography highlights
- Former professional footballer whose career ended after seven surgeries.
- Created and completed the world-first 2,000km Ultimate Triathlon from Morocco to Monaco in 12 days, filmed as the award-winning documentary “The Ultimate Triathlon” (2016) and recounted in his book “Chasing Extreme”.
- 2023 TEDx speaker, “Generate Momentum With 1% Thinking”.
- Has spoken in 16 countries across five continents, including for national sporting bodies, embassies and global companies.
- Accredited executive coach (ICF and EMCC), working one-to-one with executives, founders and senior leadership teams.
- Featured on The Rich Roll Podcast and Michael Gervais’s Finding Mastery, and in The Guardian and The Huffington Post.
Biography
Most mental health content for executives lives in two registers: clinical advice from professionals who have not experienced what they describe, and motivational stories that stop at “I came through it.” Luke Tyburski works the gap between the two. He talks about his own depression, eating disorder and two moments standing on bridges in plain language, then turns the experience into corporate frameworks that wellbeing leads can use after he leaves the room.
The platform for that work is unusual. A football career ending in seven surgeries pushed him into ultra-endurance, where he ran the Sahara, descended Everest, crossed a Chinese forest without food or water, and built a 2,000km, 12-day triathlon from Morocco to Monaco that became the basis of the 2016 documentary “The Ultimate Triathlon”. He wrote about the project in his book “Chasing Extreme”.
The speaking work draws on that material but is structured around two named tools. As an accredited executive coach (ICF and EMCC), he uses the same frameworks in one-to-one work with executives and leadership teams that he brings to the stage. K.E.N. is his resilience framework for individuals and teams under sustained pressure. View-Think-Act, the spine of his “Mastering Mindset” keynote, breaks daily performance into how people read a situation, what they tell themselves about it, and what they do next. He presented the underlying ideas in a 2023 TEDx talk, “Generate Momentum With 1% Thinking”.
The audience has widened well beyond sport. Over more than a decade he has worked with national sporting teams, embassies and global companies across 16 countries on five continents. The through-line is the same: a usable language for performance and mental health that does not collapse when the conversation gets serious.
Key speaking topics
- Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace
- Resilience and recovery under sustained pressure
- Performance mindset and daily habits
- Self-leadership through setback and injury
- Lived experience of depression and suicidality
- Endurance and adventure as corporate metaphor
Ideal for
- CHROs and wellbeing leads designing serious mental health programmes beyond awareness campaigns
- Sales and high-performance teams operating under sustained targets and travel pressure
- Leadership offsites where the brief includes resilience and personal sustainability
- Conferences in sport, insurance, finance and professional services that want a credible mental health voice
Audience outcomes
- A clearer language for talking about mental health internally without it becoming a clinical or HR conversation
- The K.E.N. framework as a shared reference for how teams respond to setback and pressure
- View-Think-Act as a daily structure for individual performance
- Permission to acknowledge that high performers can be unwell, and a model for what to do about it
- A concrete account of what sustained recovery looks like from inside it
Talks
A keynote on treating disruption and uncertainty as a starting point rather than a threat to absorb, using frameworks drawn from his own experience operating in unstable conditions.
Key takeaways:
- How to read a period of uncertainty for the openings it creates, not only the risks
- Why teams that reframe change early move faster than those waiting for stability
- Practical routines for staying functional when the ground keeps shifting
A session on building psychological safety as a working practice that raises performance rather than a compliance exercise, with a focus on holding trust and accountability together.
Key takeaways:
- How psychological safety supports accountability instead of softening it
- The difference between a culture that performs and one that simply feels comfortable
- Where trust has to be established first for high-pressure teams to function
A working session that treats mindset as a trainable capacity to regulate emotion and make clear decisions under pressure, structured around his View-Think-Act model and grounded in neuroscience and psychology.
Key takeaways:
- The View-Think-Act model as a daily operating structure
- Why mindset is a trainable capacity rather than motivation or positive thinking
- How small daily patterns compound into team performance
A keynote on shifting the response to pressure from fear to curiosity, and using that shift as a practical tool for decision-making in a crisis.
Key takeaways:
- Why a curiosity response widens options under pressure where a fear response narrows them
- How to apply the shift in real operational setbacks, not just in hindsight
- The link between curiosity, adaptability and recovery
A keynote that treats energy, not time, as the resource that determines sustained performance, and shows leaders how to manage recovery deliberately rather than running to depletion.
Key takeaways:
- Why energy management predicts burnout risk better than workload alone
- Practical recovery routines that hold up under travel and pressure
- How teams can protect performance across long, demanding cycles
A framework session for individuals and teams building resilience under sustained adversity.
Key takeaways:
- The components of K.E.N. and how they apply to organisational pressure
- How resilience differs from endurance, and why both matter
- Where the framework has been applied with sporting and corporate teams
A keynote that separates mental health from mental performance and shows how leaders can hold both.
Key takeaways:
- Why high performers are often the last to disclose mental health difficulty
- Practical signals leaders should be reading in themselves and their teams
- How recovery and performance can sit alongside one another rather than in conflict
A keynote built around the Morocco-to-Monaco Ultimate Triathlon and the marginal daily decisions that made it possible.
Key takeaways:
- How marginal gains thinking translates from sport into commercial settings
- The difference between motivation and momentum
- Daily decision points that compound across long projects