Vicki Anstey Author

Vicki Anstey is a well-being expert, TEDx keynote speaker, Human Performance Coach and World Record Holder, and proof that extraordinary lives are built, not born. 

One of the first women to reach the final stages of Channel 4's SAS: Who Dares Wins, Vicki has since pushed the boundaries of human endurance across some of the world's most unforgiving terrain. In 2021 she set a world record rowing the mid-Pacific unaided. In 2024 she set a second, cycling 3,000 miles across America as part of a four-woman team in the Race Across America, widely regarded as the world's toughest bike race. She has also completed 250km ultra-distance races across the Arctic in -35°C and across the Kenyan Savannah in temperatures exceeding 50°C. Yet Vicki's story doesn't begin with adventure. She built her career in advertising before founding her own pioneering fitness business. It was only in 2017, after leaving a long-term coercive relationship that had left her deeply disempowered, that she began to change the trajectory of her life, just six months before she appeared on SAS: Who Dares Wins. 

That backstory is central to everything she does. Vicki places huge importance on relatability: she is, by her own admission, an ordinary person who has been consumed by self-doubt and fear, and who found a way through. It is this authenticity that makes her a compelling speaker on resilience, female empowerment, high-performance team behaviours and psychological safety. She challenges audiences to explore self-reliance, the power of mindset, hidden capability in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and what she calls the often-overlooked power of emotional endurance. 

As a Stress and Resilience Coach, Vicki works with individuals and organisations on the physiological and behavioural impact of stress, and how to build capacity to meet it. Certified across a range of mindset methodologies, she has developed a deep fascination with behavioural drivers, neuroplasticity and the evolutionary reasons we react as we do under pressure. Vicki is also the proud UK Ambassador for Inspiring Girls, an international charity founded by Miriam González Durántez and active in over 40 countries, dedicated to raising the aspirations of girls worldwide - a cause she supports through most of her major endeavours.