When a wave is 30 metres high, it’s not just courage that counts.

Imagine a wall of water, as tall as a ten-storey building, rolling towards you off the Portuguese coast. Information is sketchy, time is running out, and there’s no going back if you make a mistake. Anyone who survives in this situation rarely does so through luck alone or exceptional courage. They have done something beforehand that hardly anyone in the spotlight realises: built a team in which everyone knows exactly what they have to do at any given moment.

It is precisely this insight that Alex Wippel brings from the world’s biggest waves to the corporate stage.

Who is Alex Wippel?

Alex Wippel, born in 1974 into a family of surfers and having spent most of his childhood on Maui, has been surfing the world’s biggest waves professionally since the mid-1990s. In 1994, he became the first European to surf the legendary giant wave ‘Jaws’ in Hawaii. This was followed in 2017 by Nazaré in Portugal, where walls of water up to 30 metres high crash onto the coast: he was the first Austrian to surf the wave on a so-called ‘XXL day’ and, in the same year, founded an international big-wave team with which he developed and trained safety procedures.

But that is only half the story. Since 2000, Wippel has also been working in leadership development and organisational development, both in the public sector and at an international technology group, where he was responsible for leadership and talent programmes for around 1,000 managers. He holds a PhD in Business Administration, advises and coaches executives at all levels, and furthered his knowledge of the role of AI at Stanford University. That is why, in his keynote speeches, he speaks the language of leadership teams and not just that of sport.

A response from an interview with Surfers Mag illustrates just how level-headed he is when dealing with the subject of fear: “Fear is my companion, and I never want to remove that filter.” For him, fear is not a weakness, but a signal that mobilises strength, provided you learn to manage it and do not succumb to panic. On his own website, however, he describes himself in deliberately unassuming terms: “I am an ordinary person with an extraordinary passion.”

What Alex Wippel talks about on stage

Wippel’s topics revolve around one question: How do teams make good decisions when the old rules are no longer enough?

• Decision quality when old standards are no longer enough
  A true story spanning from Jaws in Hawaii to Nazaré shows how a team evaluates incomplete information, remains capable of acting under time pressure, and recognises when a tried-and-tested standard needs to be changed. This is explicitly not about motivation, but about a clear approach: setting priorities, testing assumptions, changing standards.

• AI-ready does not mean decision-ready
  What big-wave surfing teaches us about data, risk and decision quality. When tow-in surfing made big waves accessible, the technology was never the shortcut: skills, roles and responsibilities had to evolve just as quickly. Wippel applies this to AI in business: speed without maturity increases risk, and teams must first become ‘decision-ready’.

Both keynotes last 60 minutes. The Nazaré keynote begins with a ten-minute film that Alex Wippel shows exclusively at events, followed by questions and a discussion, in the form of a fireside chat if desired. It can be delivered in German or English, either in person or online.

Those wishing to explore these topics in greater depth can do so through a half-day or full-day workshop, comprising three modules that can be combined: Leading Myself, Leading Others and Leading as a System.

They are based on a single principle: if you want to lead others, you must first be able to lead yourself.

Participants take away practical tools, including a decision-making checklist, a team communication protocol, an escalation chart and a debrief template.

Why it’s worth booking

Many keynote talks featuring extreme sports athletes rely on spectacular images and a motivational boost that fizzles out after two weeks. Alex Wippel delivers both – the images and the story – but with a different aim: the audience should not simply be impressed, but should go home better equipped to take action.

His key insight from Nazaré – that it is not the courage of the individual that matters, but the preparation of a team with clearly defined roles, processes and responsibilities – can be directly applied to leadership teams, change processes and the use of AI.

For companies facing decisions where information is lacking, time is short and mistakes prove costly, he is therefore exactly the right source of inspiration. He delivers keynote speeches and leads workshops for executives in Europe, the USA and Asia, tailoring the content to the client’s industry and target audience.

Interested in booking Alex Wippel for your event?

Our team at LEADING MINDS will be happy to advise you on topics, formats and availability – please get in touch: +49 (0)30 640 777 42 or [email protected]