Michelle "Mace" Curran USAF Thunderbird Pilot '19-'21, Fighter Pilot, National Bestselling Author

In today’s high-pressure workplace, teams are not held back by a lack of talent — they are held back by hesitation, self-doubt, and fear of getting it wrong.

In this powerful and deeply relatable keynote, former F-16 fighter pilot and USAF Thunderbirds Lead Solo, Michelle “MACE” Curran, takes audiences inside the real, human side of high performance — where confidence is built, doubt shows up, and bold action changes what becomes possible.

Through gripping stories from the cockpit and surprisingly vulnerable moments behind the visor, MACE reveals how even elite performers wrestle with the same internal fears, second-guessing, and imposter syndrome that exist in every workplace.

Audiences leave with a renewed sense of clarity and focus to quiet self-doubt and take bold action in their work, leadership, and life.

This keynote empowers teams to stop waiting for confidence and start building it through action — by focusing on the small, daily decisions they can directly control and using those choices as the building blocks of a high-performing team.

In this powerful and deeply relatable keynote, Michelle “MACE” Curran explores what happens in the critical space between fear and response—and how learning to use that space on purpose changes everything about how we lead, decide, and show up under pressure.

Drawing on her journey from a shy, overthinking kid to F-16 fighter pilot and Lead Solo for the USAF Thunderbirds, MACE weaves together entertaining, edge-of-your-seat stories from the cockpit with the quiet, universal fears most people carry inside—the inner critic, self-doubt, and the fear of getting it wrong.

She reveals how the brain often reacts to imagined fear and real danger in the same way, and why learning to pause in that space before reacting is the difference between clarity and chaos, confidence and collapse.

Audiences leave with a new mental model for fear, shared language for navigating pressure, and simple, sticky tools they can use immediately to reset, make better decisions, and build trust when everything feels urgent and uncertain.

This keynote equips leaders and teams to respond deliberately instead of emotionally—and to perform at their best when the stakes are high.