Susan Ershler

  • World Record-Mt. Everest & 7 Summits

  • 25 years Fortune 500 Leadership

  • Co-Author "Together On Top Of The World: A Saga of Love and Courage"

Programs

Reaching New Heights: Everest & Beyond

Project, Prepare & Persevere

From Manager To Mountaineer: How To Achieve The Impossible And Realize Your Dreams

Mountain Climbers Biggest Obstacles Were At Sea Level

"Whenever we pursue big dreams, we must overcome tremendous obstacles. In our case, our biggest challenges were at sea level not high on a mountain." -Susan Ershler

On May 16, 2002, Susan and Phil Ershler achieved what no other couple ever had: they reached the top of Mount Everest and became the first couple in history to scale the fabled Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each continent.

What makes their accomplishment more remarkable, however, is the fact that Susan, a high-powered Fortune 500 business executive, had never hiked, climbed or even traveled abroad until she met Phil at age 36. And Phil, a professional mountain guide who climbed his whole life while hiding his battle with Crohn's Disease, a chronic, debilitating autoimmune illness, completed the climb after a struggle with colon cancer that threatened to end his climbing career. This was followed by Phil's latest setback, prostate cancer. So Phil and Susan were climbing mountains both literally and figuratively. And out of that came a story about hope and encouragement and the power of dreams.

Susan realizes not everyone is going to want to climb Mt Everest, but in everyone's life there are struggles and hurdles. She discovered that the approach she learned in business turned out to be so useful both in mountaineering and in facing Phil's health issues. She used a business based process that made a genuine difference. As an example, see yourself at the top of the mountain or at the end of the health struggle, with success...visualize that prospect every day. Susan lifts her audience's ambitions by showing them how hard work, dedication, perseverance and a total commitment to the vision can pay off in reaching seemingly impossible goals. She continues with techniques to improve focus and discipline and shows how essential teamwork is to achievement. And she concludes with a passionate affirmation of the value of life and the thrill of celebrating your success from the top of the world.

A love story, an adventure story, and a story about overcoming tremendous odds, their story is sure to inspire others to prevail over life's obstacles and achieve their dreams.

Speaker Information

Susan Ershler tours the world speaking about her life journey and sharing with others her secrets for success, determination, and achieving seemingly impossible goals.

Susan's record would be remarkable enough if it only detailed her business achievements. During her 23-year corporate career, she has held a series of increasingly responsible executive positions in the sales divisions of Fortune 500 companies. She led teams to sales records, beating quotas from $1 million to $600 million. Ending as a vice president of sales for a multi-national telecommunications corporation, she was responsible for their fast-growing Internet division. She also worked at US WEST, United Technologies, FedEx-Kinko's, and GTE (Verizon). During her business career, she earned 11 annual President's Club sales awards - the top honors awarded to the sales people in these companies.

But as she was marking these achievements, she and her husband Phil, a professional mountain guide, were climbing the Seven Summits - the highest mountain on each of the world's seven continents.

That remarkable journey culminated at the top of Mount Everest on May 16, 2002. With that climb, she and Phil became the first couple in history to climb the Seven Summits together. They are writing a book on their adventure, due out in 2007, Together on Top of the World: A Saga of Love and Courage, published by Warner Books.

That feat earned them world-wide media attention, including Good Morning America, CNN, The New York Times and many others. As Alex Ward of the The New York Times put it, "Surmounting Everest's 29,035 feet remains one of the great mythic achievements, an undisputable display of skill and courage against ice and rock, bottomless chasms, body-numbing temperatures and tent-shredding winds, all in an oxygen-deprived danger zone. Ms. Ershler worked hard to get there."

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Keynote Fee: $5,001 - $10,000 plus expenses

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Testimonials

"Susan, thank you for the fabulous presentation you delivered to our West Region team in Orlando. The audience of 600 attendees was thrilled with the tales of your quest to complete the Seven Summits. Furthermore, your ability to relate the challenges, risks, and rewards of climbing to the business world were invaluable. As we set out to reach new peaks as a team in 2004, we will reflect upon your words of encouragement and structured approach to reaching our goals. Thank you again for the value you provided to our team."

- IBM

"Sue's presentation was an outstanding story where we share the excitement of her journey to the summit and how this experience is related with our business, specifically in terms of setting goals and teamwork. Sue performed flawlessly and the team was pleased and really motivated by this absolutely great keynote. She is truly an inspiration for all of us!"

- Microsoft

"We are pleased to say that Susan exceeded our expectations and provided an excellent presentation. Susan's discussion on the Seven Summit experience, culminating with climbing Mt. Everest, was presented in a fashion of setting a seemingly impossible vision and then breaking down the task into manageable steps and activities. Susan integrated the highs and lows of making progress and experiencing setbacks and rewarding experience of maintaining focus on your goals, hard work and perseverance. The feedback from our customers was over-whelming positive citing both an entertaining and aspiration experience. From our perspective, Susan exceeded what we expected - being able to kickoff our global customer symposium by drawing the connection of Survival of the Fittest with industry challenges and strategic objectives. Susan has the highest recommendation from us and would be expected to deliver an excellent presentation for future events."

- Westinghouse Electric Company

"The focus of our meeting was geared to revisiting our goals. I chose Susan to be our keynote speaker for several reasons. Her recent Mt. Everest accomplishment would be very appealing to my entire staff and she is a very effective businesswoman with great communication skills. I wanted my staff to hear her story of what it took in terms of goal setting preparation, follow through and discipline in order for her to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Susan did a great job in her presentation of drawing the parallels of what it took for her to be successful in her climbing and relating it back to the successes in her business life. Her presentation was extremely well received by our management team and my entire staff. It was very beneficial as she took them through her goal setting process, gave them a good idea of the discipline in training required and perhaps the most important part was her determination."

- Safeco

"Susan, you were definitely the highlight of our meeting. You will be happy to know that people talked about you for the entire week. You left quite an impression. People were quoting and referencing you all week in their presentations."

- Nike