Majka Burhardt | Author, Professional Climber, Filmmaker, Speaker

Speaker Profile

Majka Burhardt teaches teams how to build unusual connections with passion. As an author, professional climber, filmmaker, and entrepreneur, Majka has spent two decades exploring the globe—usually by hand and foot. Her stories of taking chances, thriving in uncertainty, and achieving results have electrified audiences worldwide. They emerge un-stuck from a traditional model of change and risk, embracing unchartered territory to maximize outcomes. She is the author of books Coffee Story: Ethiopia and Vertical Ethiopia, and Executive Producer of the 2010 film, Waypoint Namibia and the forthcoming Lost Mountain.

Majka gives keynotes and seminars at tradeshows, conferences, and company events around the world. She draws upon her 15 years of experience producing multi-stage international ventures focused on current issues of cultural and global significance. Majka engages audiences in new interpretations of leadership, teamwork, and global capacity building. Majka will have your team foregoing traditional safety, following their new intuition, and succeeding via complexity within ten minutes of her keynote. Download Majka's Speaking PDF | Watch Speaking Reel | (Full bio below)

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Contact Majka's team to discuss your event or learn about availability and fees: info@majkaburhardt.com

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Speeches and Keynotes

Majka gives keynotes and seminars at tradeshows, conferences, and company events around the world. She speaks to corporate, non-profit, organizational and academic groups.

Majka's presentations combine dynamic stories with images from award winning photographers and videographers. She is also available to work with smaller groups and in workshops and clinics in conjunction with her talks.

Majka crafts her presentations to match and challenge her audiences. Please see below for an expanded description of the following talks:

Leadership When it Matters
Triumph in Uncharted Territory
Adventure When It Matters- Beyond CSR There Are Additive Adventures
Additive Adventure, The Series
Coffee Story: Ethiopia, The Tour
Vertical Ethiopia and Waypoint Namibia Tours

Leadership When It Matters

What climbing in the wild can teach us about
teams, collaboration, and true grit

How do teams achieve impossible goals? How do stakeholders coalesce into powerful teams? In Majka’s Leadership When it Matters keynote she shares the vital commitments of cohesion that create innovative and successful teams. Majka’s astonishing stories and footage of successfully leading teams through poisonous-snake-infested grasslands, up crumbling sandstone spires, and into charged tribal politics galvanize leaders and team members into productive action.

Triumph In Uncharted Territory

How to Use Change to Thrive

Every day in modern business we each embark into unchartered territory, filled with change, uncertainty, and unpredictable outcomes. Majka can teach your audience how to not only succeed, but triumph through every step of the journey. Majka shares the keys of dynamic risk assessment honed from years rock and ice climbing in unknown corners of the world. Attendees will become master explorers with Majka and come away with simple, concrete ways to shift challenges into possibilities and the power to use their intuition to ignite passion for change.

Adventure When It Matters – Beyond CSR There Are Additive Adventures

Additive Adventure begins where most explorations end

Corporate Social Responsibility and Doing Well By Doing Good start with individual passion and fire. Stoke both and create a stronger corporate climate centered on innovation with Majka’s keynote on Additive Adventure. Majka incorporates tactile examples from her cutting-edge collaborations in Africa, pairing climbing with biodiversity, education, and enterprise development. She shows her audiences how to reach the full extent of their personal potential both locally and globally for their work adventures and beyond.

Additive Adventure, The Series

Ongoing series integrating Majka's Recent Projects with Global Citizenship

What’s Additive Adventure? It’s Majka’s term for when adventure extends beyond exploration to create cultural and environmental connection. From the roots of coffee, to rock climbing expeditions in the Horn of Africa, to an unflinching look at cultural use and misuse in Namibia, Additive Adventure takes a global look at the individual's role in larger issues and communities. Can the grandest adventure create the smallest conversation with the largest impact? Can being a global citizen begin with a question? Can your passion lead you to your greatest impact? Majka takes on these tough questions when she takes us on a journey to go local by going to origin; by going to Additive Adventure.

Coffee Story: Ethiopia, The Tour

It’s a simple question: What if a food crop—coffee—could change a nation’s future?

Be part of the answer with the Coffee Story Ethiopia Speaking Tours

Public Tour: A combined discussion of food anthropology, development, adventure, and the impact of coffee on world politics and global understanding. Event List Includes: Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Seattle Town Hall, and University of Minnesota. Learn More

Industry Speaking Series: The Coffee Story Ethiopia Industry Speaking Series offers a unique experience to companies and organizations in the coffee industry. Majka can address intimate executive sessions, company-wide meetings, large-scale conferences, public forums, and joint initiatives. Learn More

Previous Speaking Tours

Majka often gives talks in conjunction with specific expeditions and projects. Please see more about the following for details on past tours:

Bio

Majka Burhardt has a passion for creating unusual connections. As an author, professional climber, filmmaker, and entrepreneur, Majka has spent two decades exploring the globe—usually by hand and foot. Her stories of taking chances, embracing risk, and living with uncertainty have electrified audiences worldwide. She specializes in pushing them to think differently about their own life choices and risk profiles. As a keynote speaker and writer Majka champions “Additive Adventure”—when adventure goes beyond exploration to cultural and environmental connections that create a larger conversation of singular and collective human meaning.

Majka has 15 years of experience producing multi-stage international ventures focused on current issues of cultural and global significance. Her first book Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn of Africa (2008) short‑listed for the Banff Book Award. Her second book, Coffee Story: Ethiopia, was released in August 2011. In 2010, Majka produced Waypoint Namibia and the film was featured at international film festivals and shown on NBC's Universal Sports. Majka was nominated for an EPIC Emerging Artist Award for her work as the Executive Producer. She is currently producing the forthcoming film The Lost Mountain, the story of a pioneering biological study of the cliffside habitat on Mt. Namuli, Mozambique’s second highest mountain and a critical target for conservation in southeast Africa.

As a speaker, Majka engages audiences in new interpretations of leadership, teamwork, and global capacity building. Majka presents keynotes and seminars at tradeshows, conferences, and company events around the world. Previous speeches include the Utah Council for Citizen Diplomacy, the Commonwealth Club, TEDxSMU, Banff Film and Book Festival, Colorado Environmental Coalition, universities and colleges throughout North America, and many others. Her work has been featured on news programs, radio shows, magazines and newspapers.

Majka’s non-fiction work has appeared in publications including Afar, Men’s Health, Skiing Magazine, Patagonia, Alpinist, Women's Adventure, The Explorers Journal, and Climbing, where her column “Whipped," ran for six years. Majka’s blog, The Liminal Line, can be found here, on her website.

Majka has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and received her BA in Anthropology from Princeton University. She is an ambassador/athlete for Patagonia, Osprey Packs, SnapMyLife, Petzl, Scarpa, Julbo, Outdoor Research and is an AMGA Certified Rock Guide. She also serves on the AMGA Board of Directors. Curious how to say her name? It's "My-ka."

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