Mark Denton

Consultant And Motivational Speaker

For the first 21 years of his life, Mark lived about as far away from the sea as you can get in the middle of the UK in Northamptonshire. In the school holidays he worked on the shop floor for the family shoe making business, at 17 he ran his own car valet business, at 21 he went to University to study Business with Human Resources Management. In the summer of 1994 he signed up to crew on the Tall Ships Race. Although sailing had been a hobby for many years on the inland lakes, Mark did not realise what a profound effect this experience would have on his life.

Following this great experience Mark took up a position in the city as an Account Executive for a London Advertising Agency. But after 2 years he soon realised that the rat race wasn’t for him, and decided to concentrate his efforts on forging a career in professional sailing, spurred on by his memories of that first race on the sea.

4 years and 40,000 miles later Mark entered the gruelling selection procedure to be a skipper on the BT Global Challenge 2000/2001 against 186 others, the ultimate environment to put everything he had learnt about sailing and working with people into practice. Victorious he went on to skipper the ‘BP Explorer’, a yacht sponsored by energy giant BP, in this toughest of round the world yacht races.

On his return Mark set about combining all the hard earned leadership and teamwork lessons into a high impact multi media presentation for use within BP. Such was the success of this keynote speech (over 250 appearances across 15 countries) that an online version was developed by Mark to allow a greater audience to share in the learning. This won a Gold award at the Sony Interactive Media Awards in 2003.

Mark has also been pivotal to the design and delivery of many impactful leadership and team development programmes combining industry standard tools and techniques with his unique multi media Masterclass seminars centred around what it takes to create and sustain high performance whether as an individual or as a group. Many organisations have benefited, including BP, BAE, Nationwide Building Society, BT, London Business School, Solvay, Zurich Insurance, CIPD, Burlington Resources, JMW consultants, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Marakon Associates, Amerada Hess and Cheyne Capital to name but a few.

“Over recent years Mark Denton has presented a number of inspirational seminars as part of our leadership development training. Every session has offered a terrific insight into leadership and teamwork, enabling us to harness the key ingredients of increased business performance through our people”

See Mark in action here   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSRfhqcnVcw