AMY PURDY
About Amy Purdy
Amy Purdy is a three-time Paralympic medalist, a New York Times bestselling author and one of the most in-demand motivational speakers in the world. Planners bring her in for one reason above all others. They want the room to feel something, and Amy delivers that better than almost anyone on a stage today.
At 19, after what felt like the flu, Amy was rushed to the hospital in septic shock. On the way she went into respiratory and multiple organ failure, and circulation to her extremities was lost. She was given less than a two percent chance of survival, put on life support and placed in a medically induced coma. Doctors diagnosed meningococcal meningitis, removed her ruptured spleen, and amputated both of her legs below the knee. Her kidneys failed, and a week before her 21st birthday she received a donated kidney from her father.
Three months after that transplant she entered the USASA National Snowboarding Championship and won medals in three events. She went on to help pioneer the U.S. Paralympic Snowboarding Team and became a three-time Paralympic medalist, one of the most decorated adaptive snowboarders in the history of Team USA. When she could not find prosthetic feet made for snowboarding, she worked with her leg maker and built them herself.
Her speaking career began in 2011 at TEDx Orange Coast, where a nine-minute talk called Living Beyond Limits was chosen for the homepage of TED.com and went on to millions of views. Since then she has toured the country alongside Oprah Winfrey as part of The Life You Want Tour, starred in a Toyota Super Bowl commercial narrated by Muhammad Ali that has been named one of the top 20 Super Bowl commercials of all time, appeared in a Madonna music video, competed on The Amazing Race with her husband, and finished as runner-up on season 18 of Dancing with the Stars with partner Derek Hough.
Her memoir On My Own Two Feet became a New York Times bestseller and has been published in ten languages. In April 2026 she released her second book, Bounce Forward: 21 Tools to Live a Life Beyond Limits, which opens up a later injury that once again threatened her ability to walk, and the twenty-one tools she used to rebuild.
Away from the stage, Amy and her husband Daniel Gale founded Adaptive Action Sports, a nonprofit that introduces youth, young adults and wounded veterans with disabilities to action sports. She has partnered with the World Health Organization and the International Olympic Committee on the role of sport in health, inclusion and peacebuilding, and she is currently featured on nearly a thousand billboards nationwide as part of the Pass It On campaign from The Foundation for a Better Life.
What planners remember afterward is the room. Audiences laugh, they cry, and they stand up. She has earned standing ovations in the middle of her keynote, not just at the end. She stays for the book signing, talks to everyone who walks up, and leaves an event feeling different than it did when she arrived. Amy lives in Denver.
- Three-time Paralympic medalist and one of the most decorated adaptive snowboarders in Team USA history
- New York Times bestselling author, published in ten languages, with a second book released in April 2026
- Named to Real Leaders' Top 50 Global Keynote Speakers and Oprah's SuperSoul 100 Thought Leaders
- Toured with Oprah Winfrey on The Life You Want Tour and starred in a Toyota Super Bowl commercial narrated by Muhammad Ali
- Booked by Microsoft, Pfizer, Salesforce, Toyota, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Lululemon and UnitedHealth Group
- Co-founder of Adaptive Action Sports and a partner to the World Health Organization and the International Olympic Committee
Audience Ratings
Amy does not just rate well. She outperforms the events she speaks at. From two client surveys:
Ratings from the Club Managers Association of America annual conference and a Microsoft partner summit. Full survey data available on request.
Watch Amy In Action
Speaking Topics
Amy's signature keynote. 45 to 60 minutes, opening or closing. Ideal for annual conferences, sales kickoffs, leadership summits, healthcare and association events, user conferences, employee appreciation events and any room that needs lifting.
If your life were a book and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?
That is the question Amy asked herself in a hospital bed at 19, and it is the question she hands the audience. She takes them from the night she lost her legs, through learning to walk again, to building the snowboarding feet that did not exist yet, to a Paralympic podium and a ballroom floor on national television.
This is not a highlight reel. It is a working demonstration of how a person moves through the moment when the plan stops working, and what it takes to keep going when the way forward has not been invented yet. Amy is a master storyteller, and she uses her own story to give people a way of seeing their own.
Program Takeaways
- Treat obstacles as the thing that shapes you rather than the thing that stops you
- Use creativity and improvisation when the standard solution does not exist
- Picture the outcome you want clearly enough to work toward it every day
- Draw on the people around you, because nobody rebuilds anything alone
- Find the purpose inside a setback instead of waiting for the setback to pass
- Leave with the energy to do the thing they have been putting off
Based on Amy's 2026 book. 45 to 60 minutes. Ideal for organizations in the middle of change, healthcare and frontline workforces, wellbeing and burnout programming, leadership development and teams being asked to do hard things for a long stretch.
Bouncing back means returning to who you were. Bouncing forward means becoming someone stronger than you were before.
Years after her first recovery, a serious injury threatened Amy's ability to walk again, and she had to rebuild a second time. That chapter became Bounce Forward, a book of twenty-one practical tools drawn from her own experience and grounded in current research on resilience.
In this keynote Amy shares the tools she actually reaches for, and makes the case that resilience is not a personality trait some people are lucky enough to have. It is a set of things you can practice, which means it is available to everyone in the room.
Program Takeaways
- Understand why resilience is a practice rather than a trait
- Move from stuck and stagnant to creating momentum
- Work through grief and loss without pretending to be fine
- Build a personal toolkit to reach for on the hardest days
- Shift from resisting change to using it
- Turn pain into purpose in a way that holds up over time
Amy customizes every keynote to your theme and audience, and is also available for fireside chats, moderated Q&A, book signings and VIP meet and greets.
What People Say
Amy Purdy is one of the most inspiring speakers I have ever heard.
Oprah WinfreyOut of all the speakers we bring in each year Amy was by far the best. You could hear a pin drop in a room of 10,000 people.
Intuit QuickBooksYour message of perseverance, and relentless pursuit of greatness, was exactly what our people needed to hear.
Calvin McDonald, CEO, LululemonShe does not give a speech so much as she delivers an entire experience. In 30 years, Amy is one of the finest presenters we have ever had on our stage.
Greg Anderson, Managing Director, Crown Council PartnersYou clearly did the work to customize your presentation to our audience. It was simply a sensational hour. We were all riveted by your story of resilience.
Colleen Edwards, SVP Marketing, NextGen HealthcareShe had thousands of people on their feet for a standing ovation, not only at the end of her presentation, but in the middle of it.
Liz Reuth, Digital Marketing Senior Manager, Le-Vel BrandsShe resonated with our audience like few speakers I have ever seen in my 25 years of producing events. I am so grateful we found her.
Event Producer, Microsoft Partner SummitThese are some of the best ratings we have ever had for a speaker. She could not have been nicer to everyone who met her.
David McCabe, Senior Director of Education, Club Managers Association of AmericaSelected Clients
Where Amy Appears
Amy Purdy is featured on these Amplify Speakers rosters: