Biography

When Heidi Dening shares her empowering insights from stage, in workplaces or via virtual programs, she leaves people wanting to do more, give more, have more and be more. She is the author of a best-selling self-leadership book called ‘Her Middle Name Is Courage’, and has dedicated her career to empowering thousands of people across the globe with leadership, resilience and mindset strategies from small children on remote pacific islands to professional teams across 21 different industries.

Over the last 27 years she has started, scaled and sold an award-winning health and education business; founded an international not-for-profit with hundreds of volunteers across three countries; and delivered empowering presentations and programs to business leaders at Accenture, Westpac, ServiceNSW and Metcash to name just a few, on topics such as resilience, leadership and mindset.

Heidi often appears in the media as a resilience expert, including a recent segment on Channel Nine’s Weekend Today, a full-page newspaper article about the mental health pandemic following COVID-19 and a segment on SBS news.

She was named ‘Best International Keynote Speaker’ in the Asia Pacific region at the Influential Businesswoman Awards, listed on the NSW Government’s Inspirational Women showcase in the entrepreneurial and empowerment category and been awarded Westpac’s International Women’s Day Local Hero Award.

She has been a global advisor for the International WELL Building Institute since 2018. Her advisory group looks at how our workplaces impact our stress levels, resilience, productivity and mental health. This gives her access to cutting edge data on these topics.

Since transforming her own setbacks such as a paralysing illness where she lost the use of her legs, to gunpoint kidnappings, from tsunami terror, and narrowly escaping being burnt alive when petrol bombs were thrown at her bedroom while leading a team in the Pacific, she now empowers leaders and their teams to find the courage to keep moving forward during tough times.

This means her presentations and programs are a unique compilation of science-based facts from her degree, knowledge from the 27+years of business experience, and insights from rising above these real-life adversities.

Heidi believes that education changes lives and that is why she has made it her mission to empower as many people as she can on how to strengthen their resilience and embrace self-leadership strategies so they can overcome adversity and rise out of tough times stronger than ever.

She is humbled by the fact that her training and development programs, keynote presentations, virtual professional development programs, insightful content and regular contributions to global education projects have already transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people worldwide.