Sarah Furness

Specialist Speaker Sarah Furness is a former RAF Combat Helicopter Pilot, Squadron Leader and speaker on leadership, resilience and performance under pressure.

• Former RAF Squadron Leader with more than twenty years of military service as a combat helicopter pilot, mentor and facilitator
• The first female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq
• Led operational tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, making critical decisions in some of the world’s most demanding environments
• Expert on resilience, leadership and performance under pressure, combining military experience with human factors and mindfulness training
• Bestselling author of Fly Higher and The Uni-Tasking Revolution
• Author of the Practise Scared methodology, helping leaders and teams perform under pressure and embrace uncertainty

Speaking

“Pressure does not reveal character nearly as much as it reveals preparation” – this is the insight at the heart of everything Sarah Furness brings to the stage. As a former RAF combat helicopter pilot and Squadron Leader who led Special Forces missions in Iraq and operational tours in Afghanistan, she spent more than twenty years operating in environments where the cost of poor preparation was immediate and unambiguous. Today, she helps organisations develop the habits, disciplines and cultures that allow people to perform consistently when the stakes are highest.

Her talks explore leadership, resilience, high performance, psychological safety, decision-making under pressure and leading through uncertainty and change. Drawing on operational stories from the cockpit and the battlefield, she combines military training, human factors research and mindfulness to deliver practical frameworks that translate directly into modern organisational life.

Human factors, the discipline that examines how cognitive and psychological conditions affect performance, gives Sarah a rigorous evidence base for understanding what works when intelligent people are under stress and why well-intentioned teams sometimes fail.

Sarah spent her military career in one of the most male-dominated professional environments in Britain. She navigated that world not by conforming to it, but by understanding it. The self-awareness, communication skills and leadership clarity she developed are now central to what she offers audiences exploring inclusion, psychological safety and modern leadership culture.

She has delivered keynote presentations for organisations across financial services, healthcare, technology, professional services and the public sector, and is equally effective addressing leadership teams, large conferences and development programmes.

Speaker Topics

• Practise Scared: Building competence and confidence under pressure
• Flying in Formation: How high-performing teams learn and succeed together
• Leading Through Change: Turning uncertainty into opportunity
• Leadership, communication and psychological safety
• Decision-making under pressure
• Human factors and performance
• Resilience, courage and self-trust
• High performance in demanding environments
• Women in leadership and inclusive cultures

Practise Scared

At the heart of Sarah’s speaking work is a framework she calls Practise Scared, a direct challenge to the belief that confidence must come before action.

In reality, confidence is almost always the result of action rather than the prerequisite for it. People who excel in high-stakes situations are rarely fearless. They have learned to respond constructively to uncertainty and discomfort by practising in challenging conditions long before the moment arrives. Drawing on military operations, psychology and human performance research, Sarah shows audiences how to stop treating fear as a weakness and start recognising it as useful information. She explores how leaders can build trust during periods of change and why mistakes, handled correctly, become valuable opportunities for growth.

The goal is not to eliminate pressure, but to develop the habits, skills and self-belief needed to perform when it matters most.

Why Book Sarah Furness

As a former RAF combat helicopter pilot and Squadron Leader who became the first female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq, Sarah Furness brings a unique perspective on leadership, resilience and performing under pressure. Combining extraordinary military experience with practical insights from human factors and mindfulness, she helps organisations build the confidence, communication and decision-making skills needed to thrive in uncertain environments.

Biography

After graduating from Cambridge University, Sarah Furness followed her lifelong ambition and joined the Royal Air Force as a helicopter pilot. Over the next two decades, she built a career in one of the most demanding environments imaginable. Rising to the rank of Squadron Leader, she led operational tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and became the first female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq. What those years taught her above all was that pressure does not reveal character nearly as much as it reveals preparation. The ability to make decisions, stay focused and support others in moments of uncertainty is not instinctive. It is built deliberately over time. Alongside her operational experience, Sarah trained in human factors and mindfulness, developing a rigorous understanding of how psychological and cognitive conditions shape performance when people are under stress.

Sarah is the bestselling author of two books. Fly Higher draws on her experiences of helicopter crashes, interrogation training and operational service to deliver what she calls HABITS (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios), a practical and military-tested approach to self-leadership, resilience and performing under pressure.

The Uni-Tasking Revolution, developed partly from lessons learned while meditating in a war zone, argues that focus is the most powerful productivity tool available and offers a set of science-backed, combat-proven techniques for reclaiming it.

She works with leaders and teams to build the habits and cultures that sustain high performance.

Away from the stage, Sarah is also a mentor and mother, experiences which continue to shape her understanding of leadership, resilience and human connection.

You can contact Sarah Furness through a Specialist Speakers agent on +44 (0)204 616 0868 or email Specialist Speakers to engage her worldwide for speaking and presentation in both in-person and in virtual settings.