Ryan Lavarnway

World Series Champion, Olympian, and Leadership Speaker

Expert on

  • Peak Performance
  • Resilience
  • Overcoming Adversity
  • Leadership
  • Motivation
  • Inspirational

Fee Range

$10,000–$15,000

Travels from

CO, US

Biography

Ryan Lavarnway is a former Major League Baseball catcher, Olympic athlete, and World Series Champion with a 15-year professional career across eight MLB teams. He played in the 2013 World Series with the Boston Red Sox and in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Summer Games.

What sets Ryan apart is not just his success on the field, but his mindset. Through 26 cuts and countless comebacks, Ryan built a career on resilience, grit, and reinvention.

Now a motivational speaker, Ryan brings powerful lessons from the dugout to today’s high-stakes performance arenas—conference stages, leadership retreats, and corporate events. His Why Not Way is more than a message; it’s a mindset framework that rewires how leaders show up under pressure, build habits that last, and own outcomes under any conditions. 

Speaker Videos

Why Not You? The Mindset Shift That Built a Pro Sports Career and Can Transform Yours

What if the key to resilience wasn’t about being the best but believing you could become it?

In today’s fast-changing business environment, teams and leaders are often stuck in performance ruts and motivation gaps. In this powerful keynote, World Series Champion and Olympian Ryan Lavarnway shares how one simple question—Why not me?—reshaped his path from overlooked high school player to a 15-year professional baseball career.

Drawing from his signature Why Not Way framework, Ryan equips audiences to lead with clarity under pressure, build habits that actually stick, and rewrite limiting narratives in real time. His message doesn’t just inspire—it rewires how people show up when the pressure’s on and the stakes are high.

After this session, audiences will be able to:

  1. Reframe limiting beliefs to drive better decisions in real time
  2. Build habits that reinforce resilience and high performance
  3. Normalize recovery as a leadership tool, not a luxury
  4. Take ownership of outcomes—even in high-pressure, high-change environments