Carey Lohrenz

First Female F-14 Tomcat Fighter Pilot in North America

World’s 1st Female F-14 Tomcat Fighter Pilot, Flew Missions Worldwide as a Combat-Mission-Ready United States Aircraft Carrier Navy Pilot; appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, TIME Magazine, Huffington Post, Author of Fearless Leadership: High-Performance Lessons from the Flight Deck (2014)

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Bio

Carey Lohrenz knows what it takes to win in one of the highest pressure, extreme environments imaginable: in the cockpit at Mach 2.

As the first female F-14 Tomcat Fighter Pilot in the U.S. Navy, having flown missions worldwide as a combat-mission-ready United States Navy pilot, Lohrenz is used to working in fast moving, dynamic environments, where inconsistent execution can generate catastrophic results.

The same challenges are found in business: markets change, customer needs evolve and if you do not adapt quickly your company is at risk.

In her motivating and engaging keynote presentations, Carey shares her fascinating experiences operating in one of the world's most challenging environments - an aircraft carrier. She is uniquely qualified in the fundamentals of winning under pressure, reducing errors and overcoming obstacles. Her mastery of these fundamentals can help your team triumph in this high-risk, time crunched world.

Carey Lohrenz's timely message about High Performing Teams and developing a Culture of Learning is based on the best-practices of high reliability organizations. The process Prepare, Perform, Prevail helps businesses manage risk while becoming a High Performing Organization. This message resonates with diverse audiences at every level of the company.

Carey has been requested by name from some of the top Fortune 100 businesses. Her ability to connect with both an audience and on a one-on-one level, coupled with her knowledge and experience in leading high-performing, diverse teams, has made her highly sought after as a business consultant and speaker.

Carey is a powerhouse in the field of delivering engaging Leadership, High Performing Organizations and Diversity Training that directly impacts a company’s ROI and bottom line. Her experience in the all-male environment of fighter aviation and her ability to pass on the Lessons Learned in her career allow her to deliver insight and guidance from a credible platform on Women’s Leadership Issues.

Carey has delivered her leadership and strategy experience to such companies as Cisco, Dell, TEVA, Deloitte, Underwriters Laboratories, Verizon, AT&T, Kimberly Clark, State Farm Insurance and Sea Ray Boats, to name a few.

Carey graduated from the University of Wisconsin where she was a varsity rower, also training at the pre-Olympic level. After graduation, she attended the Navy’s Aviation Officer Candidate School before starting flight training and her naval career. She is currently working on her Master’s in Business Administration in Strategic Leadership.

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Keynotes

Featured Keynote

Span of Control: What To Do When You're Under Pressure, Overwhelmed, and Ready to Get What You Really Want

We live in an age of overwhelming chaos—and it’s taking a toll on all of us. Every day, there’s more to do and less time. We make to-do lists and are lucky if we cross off a few items daily. We struggle to keep up with overflowing inboxes and get pulled in a million directions by work, family, and social obligations. At our core, we've lost our grip on what we want, and who we really want to be.

As the first female F-14 Tomcat Fighter Pilot in the U.S. Navy, as well as a mom of four, wife, business consultant, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and speaker to audiences across the globe, Carey Lohrenz knows the stress here on land, can be just as intense as the stress 40,000 feet up in the air. Now you can take advantage of her years of training to overcome pressure, stress, chaos, burnout, and anxiety.

In the corporate world, your “span of control” is the number of direct reports you can effectively manage. In the Navy, it's determined by the things you can and should control at any given time. It reminds you what to focus on right in the moment, knowing that any other stuff is uncontrollable and should not take up precious mental space. For Carey, recognizing her span of control kept her focused on what mattered and became a primary tool in taming the distractions and pressures of flying demanding, high-pressure missions.

This program is a high-octane dose of encouragement and practicality. Through eye-opening science, gripping personal stories, insightful interviews, prescriptive advice, and helpful tools, your audience will be empowered to create positive change in their own lives and the world around them.

Learning Objectives:

• Move away from our knee-jerk desire to do and control everything
• Identify and overcome stress, anxiety and burnout
• Befriend and learn from your pain and failures
• Discover your biggest, scariest, most exciting goal and how to effectively tackle it
• Manage competing demands and feel encouraged to live your own version of success
• Navigate fear, discover focus, and implement useful prioritization tools
• Go beyond what you ever thought was possible for your life

Lessons in Leadership: The 4 Fundamentals to Help you Win in Business & Life
Lessons in Leadership: The 4 Fundamentals to Help you Win in Business & Life
As the first female F-14 Fighter Pilot in the U.S.Navy, Carey Lohrenz knows what it takes to win in one of the highest pressure, extreme environments imaginable. In 1994, when Carey “Vixen” Lohrenz was deployed to the USS Abraham Lincoln, there were fewer than 5 female aviators on a ship of 5000 male crew members. Facing uncharted waters in an intensely male-dominated environment, Lohrenz learned vital lessons in leadership that followed her into the corporate world. The most successful leaders share a common foundation of principles used from the flight deck to the front office. The greatest leaders from all corners of the world know how to inspire, use good judgment, take initiative and make powerful decisions – with integrity. In this program, Carey shares the fundamentals that helped her win in the cockpit at Mach 2, and can help your team win in business:

Be a Catalyst: Make change happen by focusing on what matters most

Be Tenacious: Overcome your fear of failure

Be Committed to Excellence: Prepare, Perform and Prevail to accomplish seemingly impossible missions every day

Be Resilient Turn adversity into success

An industry pioneer and team performance accelerant, Carey is uniquely qualified in the fundamentals of Leadership, Teamwork, Winning Under Pressure, Reducing Errors and Overcoming Obstacles. This highly popular leadership program will challenge, inform, and inspire your team to move to higher levels of performance in these difficult economic times. Lohrenz offers bottom-line expertise with clear, realistic takeaway items for audiences that can produce both short-term and life changing results.
High Risk Into High Reward: Succeeding in High Pressure Environments
High Risk Into High Reward: Succeeding in High Pressure Environments
Carey Lohrenz knows what it takes to win in one of the highest pressure environments imaginable, where inconsistent execution can generate catastrophic results. When it comes to managing risk, carrier aviators have it down to a science. With zero tolerance for error, they rely on every crewmember, regardless of rank, to work as a team. The key to establishing a culture of innovation is the ability to focus on what matters during times of change, to adapt and thrive. In this keynote, your attendees will learn how apply the standards of carrier aviation with tactical, high-impact takeaways and next steps that they can apply immediately in their business.

Simple, rigorous checklists

A culture that doesn’t tolerate complacency

Sound critical decision making skills

Clear communication for transformation

A collaborative model to unlock potential

An industry pioneer and team performance accelerant, Carey is uniquely qualified in the fundamentals of Leadership, Teamwork, Winning Under Pressure, Reducing Errors and Overcoming Obstacles. This highly popular risk management program will challenge, inform, and inspire your team to move to higher levels of performance, even during times of disruption and chaos. Carey Lohrenz offers bottom-line expertise with clear, realistic takeaway items for audiences that can produce both short-term and life changing results.
Patient Safety: 6 Risk Planning Strategies for Operational Excellence
Patient Safety: 6 Risk Planning Strategies for Operational Excellence
Carey Lohrenz is a dynamic healthcare speaker whose passion for improving patient and staff satisfaction in the fast-paced field of healthcare brings results. With her authentic, highly motivational personality, she is in demand as a patient safety keynote speaker nationwide. Not only is she sought after by medical and pharmaceutical professionals for her risk management solutions, but small businesses and large corporations appreciate her “flight plan” for success. She will challenge, inform, and inspire your employees to higher levels of performance and operational excellence in high-risk and sometimes dangerous environments. Carey shares her leadership risk planning strategies and training to:

Improve leadership, communication, and teamwork among your physicians, nurses, staff and patients

Enhance the patient experience

Demonstrate simple root cause analysis that will highlight “what” is right, versus “who” is right

Create a positive safety culture

Reduce human error and the chance of a mishap

Encourage a commitment to safety from all of your healthcare providers, while maintaining clinical quality

These tools will allow your team to survive and succeed, with superior results consistently, just as Carey did in the demanding world of fighter aviation.

An industry pioneer and team performance accelerant, Carey is uniquely qualified in the fundamentals of Leadership, Teamwork, Winning Under Pressure, Reducing Errors and Overcoming Obstacles. This highly popular risk management program will challenge, inform, and inspire your team to move to higher levels of performance, even during difficult economic times. Lohrenz offers bottom-line expertise with clear, realistic takeaway items for audiences that can produce both short-term and life changing results.
Lessons in Partnership: The Leading Edge to Optimizing Relationships

Lessons in Partnership: The Leading Edge to Optimizing Relationships

Just like in aviation, in a rapidly changing global environment, speed is life. Collaboration is critical to business success and managing successful strategic partnerships is crucial. Competitive advantage is gained when your organization can optimize partnerships and strategic alliances. Deeper relationships with partners can be the key to long term success and growth. In this inspiring and engaging program, Carey shares what it takes to be on the leading edge. The things that helped her succeed in one of the most extreme environments on earth, will help elevate your team, gain advantage, and uncover opportunities.

An industry pioneer and team performance accelerant, Carey is uniquely qualified in the fundamentals of Leadership, Teamwork, Winning Under Pressure, Reducing Errors and Overcoming Obstacles. This highly popular risk management program will challenge, inform, and inspire your team to move to higher levels of performance, even during difficult economic times. Lohrenz offers bottom-line expertise with clear, realistic takeaway items for audiences that can produce both short-term and life changing results.
Remaining Relevant: How to Eliminate Complacency in Your Business
Remaining Relevant: How to Eliminate Complacency in Your Business
In a challenging economic environment, remaining relevant to your customers and within your organization is critical to your survival. Those who fail to deliver value to their consumers, shareholders, clients, and teammates become extinct. Could that happen to you? In aviation, complacency kills. Same is true in business: if you become complacent and fail to ignore the warning signs of disruption in the marketplace (shifts in culture, trends, global demands, budget restrictions), and you fail to keep up with the pace of innovation, you could be facing extinction. In this energizing and empowering program, Carey shares the fundamentals that helped her manage change, and win in the cockpit at Mach 2, and can help your team win in business.

Recognize the importance of remaining relevant

Identify strategies to accelerate performance, to accelerate innovation

Develop a mindset to stay agile and adaptable

Understand how high performing teams pursue excellence, every day

An industry pioneer, an expert in change leadership, and a team performance accelerant, Carey is uniquely qualified in the fundamentals of Leadership, Teamwork, Winning Under Pressure, Reducing Errors and Overcoming Obstacles. This highly popular innovation keynote will challenge, inform, and inspire your team to move to higher levels of performance in these difficult economic times. Lohrenz offers bottom-line expertise with clear, actionable takeaway items for audiences that can produce both short-term and life changing results.
Striking a Balance: Life Hacks from the Cockpit A
Striking a Balance: Life Hacks from the Cockpit A
A successful career, a happy family, and a balanced personal life leave little time for many people to nurture their dreams. As a former Naval Aviator and corporate executive, and as a busy mother of four, Carey “Vixen” Lohrenz knows first-hand the challenges of navigating the many demands of daily work-life balance. In this riveting inspirational program, Carey will inspire you to be the catalyst and look beyond your circumstances.

Just as pilots do a “systems check” before takeoff, Carey will walk you through a Pre-Flight Check on your journey towards success.

Belief in Yourself and Your Abilities: To be successful and ultimately take charge of your life, overcoming lack of self-belief is one of the biggest hurdles you need to overcome.

A Firm Commitment: Be unwavering and purposeful in your actions.

Clarity of Purpose: A clear picture of precisely what you want to achieve.

Make a Plan to Stay Focused: Keep life’s distractions and interruptions at bay by creating your plan – and sticking to it.

This highly popular program will inspire and energize, while providing work-life balance tools to help audience members regain control of their personal and professional lives.

An industry pioneer and team performance accelerant, Carey is uniquely qualified in the fundamentals of Leadership, Teamwork, Winning Under Pressure, Reducing Errors and Overcoming Obstacles. This highly popular risk management program will challenge, inform, and inspire your team to move to higher levels of performance, even during difficult economic times. Lohrenz offers bottom-line expertise with clear, realistic takeaway items for audiences that can produce both short-term and life changing results.