George Kourounis

Facing Any Storm

What does it take to succeed, even when faced with a "storm" of challenges? George Kourounis compares his storm chasing and eco-exploration experiences to the types of challenges we all face—in both our personal and our professional lives. He uses the lessons learned from his own life or death adventures in the worlds most remote places to articulate down-to-earth strategies for meeting the challenges of challenging times. With dramatic video clips and stunning photography from around the world, Kourounis draws parallels on his experiences from setting goals, taking risks and living facing countless "storms" of the figurative and literal kind. The same skill set used to face the most dangerous weather can also help us work through our everyday workplace and individual challenges. Kourounis shows us how it's done.

Most people try to minimize the amount of risk they face in their lives. George Kourounis explains why this way of thinking rarely produces great results, and how your comfort zone is a terrible place to be. It is only when we embrace our fears and use them a motivating force instead of crippling us into inaction, that we are really able to achieve great things that we never thought possible. In this thought-provoking and anecdotal talk, Kourounis relates how he has been able to manage risk, fear and reward in some of the most hostile and dangerous environments where risk takes on true life or death meaning. These lessons can be directly transposed onto daily decision making in all areas of our lives.

 George Kourounis' experiences facing down extreme weather and natural disasters is unparalleled. In this presentation, he describes his scariest and most rewarding experiences and how they have sculpted his outlook on the world. It is an inspiring, personal chronicle of his quest to encounter and study some of the most awesome and powerful forces of nature. With a colorfully-detailed multimedia presentation, featuring actual video clips from many of his adventures, Kourounis will demonstrate how and why he tests his own physical endurance to pursue and understand the forces of nature that affect our planet and the life inhabiting it.

Supplemented with thrilling video and stunning photography, your audience will be swept up and brought along on a world wide thrill ride from the depths of erupting volcanoes to the path of oncoming tornadoes, from the beachfront of a hurricane landfall to the hottest and coldest places on Earth. Awe inspiring, educational , inspirational and entertaining, Kourounis' unique experiences, and his zeal for sharing his adventures will have you audience on the edge of their seat one minute, then laughing at his equally epic misadventures the next.

 Some consider George Kourounis to be fearless, but nothing could be further from the truth. It takes a certain kind of person to drive into the eye of a hurricane, to dangle from a rope over a steaming volcano or to jump into a pond with thousands of hungry piranhas, and although Kourounis has done all these things (and much more), he was not without fear. By understanding why we are afraid to do something and by analyzing the possible outcomes, he shows that fear is not only something that can be managed & controlled, it is a vital element to accomplishing anything worthwhile. Whether in business, personal challenges or extreme exploration, fear is what gives us an edge. It is that force that keeps us in check and without it, we are prone to making reckless decisions. Kourounis teaches your team how to harness their fear, and use it to their advantage.

From chasing hurricanes and tornadoes to exploring some of the most remote and ecologically sensitive places on Earth like Antarctica and the Greenland ice cap, George Kourounis has been on the front lines of climate change for years and has witnessed first hand the effects of our changing environment. What is really going on? Are we to blame or is this due to some other, naturally occurring phenomena? These questions and more will be covered as Kourounis pulls back the curtain to reveal the truth about climate change in a dynamic, engaging way, punctuated with a rich multimedia presentation showcasing some of his most poignant and sometimes terrifying encounters with the fury of nature, including being at ground zero during hurricane Katrina. His observations and experience give this "Master of Disaster" a unique perspective on how we got into this situation in the first place, what the average person can do to make a difference, and what we can expect the consequences of inaction to be in the near, and distant future.