John Bertrand AO

International Sportsman, Businessman, Philanthropist & Keynote Speaker

John Bertrand is an international yachtsman, businessman and philanthropist. John skippered Australia 11 to victory over the US team Liberty to win the 1983 America’s Cup. He mentors young aspiring Olympians and, as an exceptional keynote speaker, inspires corporates, students and community groups to achieve performance goals.

The victory was considered by the Confederation of Australian Sport as the ‘greatest team performance in 200 years of Australian sport’.

The victory broke 132 years of American domination, the longest running streak in modern sporting history.

John competed in five America’s Cups and two Olympic Games over 25 years of international competition. He is a triple world sailing champion.

He has a Master of Science from MIT in Boston, graduated from Monash University with a Mechanical Engineering Honours degree, and has an Honorary Doctorate from Victoria University. He is a Vice Chancellor Professorial Fellow at Monash University.

John is an entrepreneur. He built companies in the marine industry, property development and media industries, including co-founding and launching a digital media company on NASDAQ in the United States.

He was chairman and president of Swimming Australia from 2013 until October 2020 with the simple vision of becoming world’s best in everything they undertook. Athletes, Coach’s, Administration.

He led what could be considered the greatest turn around in Australian Olympic history when as chairman in 2013, he took over a largely dysfunctional organisation coming out of the London Olympics with one gold medal, to becoming the most successful Australian Olympic swim team of all time.

The swim teams 9 Olympic golds won in Tokyo represented over 50% of all gold medals won by the entire Olympic team across all sports.

John is chairman of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.

He continues to mentor young aspiring Olympians and business entrepreneurs.

Client testimonials

If you want to be inspired, educated, informed or entertained and, at the very least, congratulated after the event on your great choice of Speaker browse our speakers.