“🌊 "In the storm as in business, the true direction is found within."”
Sébastien Destremau
Sébastien Destremau
Coming from a lineage of sailors, Sébastien Destremau first built a career as a top-level sailor: six world championship titles, five America's Cup campaigns, a victory at the Sydney–Hobart and participation in the Volvo Ocean Race. This elite experience shapes precise leadership: sense of direction, decision at the right tempo, and a culture of sustainable performance.
In 2016-2017, he lined up for the Vendée Globe and completed his solo round-the-world journey after 124 days, finishing last… greeted by a huge crowd upon arrival. In 2020-2021, he set off again, facing a cascade of damage in the Indian Ocean and choosing to abandon near New Zealand: a conscious decision, later transformed into a lesson of resilience.
His story resonates with a wide audience because it talks about demand and humanity: repairing with "three bits of string", knowing to slow down to save the boat, accepting to stay the course despite doubt. These markers, he now transfers into his conferences, from the boardroom to the field, in both French and English.
A journalist and storyteller, he has created embedded video formats and popular columns. On land, he directs a one-man show inspired by his Vendée Globe (Into the Hell of the Vendée Globe), where adventure becomes shared experience: risk-taking, stress management, cohesion, courage.
An author with XO and E/P/A, he publishes Alone in the World, Return to Hell, The Jade Road (with his daughter Jade) and Solitaires (with Théodore de Kerros, illustrated by Laurent Duvoux). Four volumes of comics (Glénat) extend the narrative: the sea as a school of decision, sobriety, and responsibility.
Engaged in humanitarian causes, he is president of the FaceOcean association, which conducts actions in Ukraine and the Mediterranean. He advocates for more sustainable sailing, with a project for a wooden boat for the 2028 Vendée Globe. He defends a vision of sport as a vector for ecological and social transformation.
High in demand in France, in Île-de-France, and in the Francophonie, he speaks in companies, at trade fairs, HR forums, and charitable events. His favorite themes are: resilience, leadership, risk management, motivation, team work – always with concrete tools that can be directly transposed.
Resilience: staying the course despite the storms!
Sébastien Destremau explores resilience through his experiences at sea. He shares how breakdowns, storms, solitude, and doubts have shaped his ability to bounce back. Each challenge becomes an opportunity for transformation.
He shares concrete tools for developing individual and collective resilience: stress management, acceptance of uncertainty, emotional anchoring. He illustrates his points with lived moments, like his abandonment in 2021 or his return to the sea with his daughter Jade.
This conference is particularly suited for crisis, reorganization, or transformation contexts. It revitalizes teams and leaders in search of meaning and stability.
The video testimony Surviving the hell of the Vendée Globe perfectly illustrates this resilience, with poignant excerpts from his journey.
Leadership in extreme situations: the performance of a 'solo'... very collective
Navigating alone around the world means making vital decisions in the face of uncertainty, managing the unexpected, staying clear-headed under pressure. Sébastien Destremau translates this experience into the world of business, where leaders must navigate through complexity.
He addresses the concepts of managerial courage, decision-making tempo, responsibility, and coherence. He shows how leadership is built in action, sometimes in solitude, but always in alignment with one's values.
He offers situational exercises, immersive stories, and powerful analogies between navigation and management. He invites leaders to reconnect with their inner compass.
Decision making in uncertain environments
At sea, every decision can be fatal. Sébastien Destremau shares his experience in decision-making in extreme contexts: changing weather, equipment failures, isolation, fatigue. He draws extensions for leaders and managers.
He addresses the cognitive biases, risk management, intuition, and clarity. He shows how to create decision protocols, how to integrate emotion without being overwhelmed by it, how to decide in emergencies without losing sight of the goal.
This conference is ideal for management boards, project teams, crisis managers. It helps structure decision-making thinking in shifting environments.
Team cohesion: navigating together
Even alone, a sailor depends on a shore team. Sébastien Destremau talks about trust, complementarity, and invisible support. He shows how to create a collective dynamic around an ambitious project.
He addresses the concepts of communication, recognition, feedback, and celebration. He shares anecdotes about his preparations, his relationships with sponsors, technicians, and loved ones.
He proposes interactive exercises to strengthen cohesion, create connections, and value everyone's roles. He invites to overcome silos to build a common adventure.
Motivation and Engagement: Why We Leave
Why travel alone around the world? Why start over after a failure ? Sébastien Destremau questions the deep drivers of commitment. He speaks of passion, of quest, of meaning, of transmission.
He addresses the cycles of motivation, the phases of doubt, the moments of grace. He shows how to reconnect teams to their mission, how to rekindle the flame during low periods.
He offers an emotional and strategic approach to motivation, enriched by experience and reflection. He invites everyone to find their "inner compass"
Ocean, sobriety, decision: sustainable leadership in extreme conditions
At sea, every resource is scarce: water, energy, spare parts, and even the time available before the next grain. Sébastien Destremau shows how this constant constraint forces us to do better with less, to monitor weak signals, and to lucidly arbitrate between speed and asset preservation. He recounts how the extreme clarifies priorities and reveals a leadership that protects the essentials while remaining results-oriented.
Beyond the sporting feat, his journey is part of a coherent approach to environmental responsibility. Ashore as well as at sea, he transforms his crossings into a concrete advocacy for the ocean: supporting useful projects, promoting research initiatives, and narrating simple but decisive actions on the scale of a crew. These proofs of commitment lend credibility to the discourse and provide a unifying narrative to mobilize very different audiences, from the executive committee to operational teams.
The conference then emphasizes transferable tools to the company. The audience discovers a gravity × probability matrix to prioritize environmental risks, a project "pre-mortem" to anticipate what could break in terms of resources or emissions, and a Stop / Start / Continue ritual that helps anchor sustainable behaviors. The goal is to move from good intentions to a discernible execution mechanism, with understandable indicators and decisions that hold over time.
Finally, Sébastien Destremau offers a way to engage teams without exhausting them: narrating a sincere direction, celebrating small visible victories, and installing identified sponsors who carry the subject daily. Participants leave with a simple compass to reconcile performance and responsibility, and with the conviction that sustainability is not a constraint, but a leadership discipline that allows us to go fast… for a long time, while respecting the ocean that confronts us with reality.
Dire merci à l’océan : tenir le cap face à l’urgence écologique”
- Dans cette conférence, Sébastien Destremau partage ce que l’océan lui a appris après des milliers de milles parcourus en solitaire : l’humilité, la patience, la vulnérabilité, mais aussi la responsabilité. À travers son expérience du Vendée Globe, ses avaries, ses moments de solitude et son engagement autour du projet Merci, il montre que l’océan n’est pas seulement un terrain d’aventure : c’est un monde vivant, fragile, puissant, dont notre avenir dépend directement.
- La conférence relie ainsi aventure humaine, résilience et conscience écologique. Elle invite le public à changer de regard sur la mer, non comme une ressource infinie, mais comme un partenaire vital qu’il faut préserver, respecter et écouter.
- L’océan m’a tout donné. Aujourd’hui, il nous demande quelque chose en retour. C’est un angle très fort pour lui, parce qu’il peut parler avec émotion et légitimité de ce qu’il a vécu : la solitude en mer, la beauté du vivant, les tempêtes, les déchets, la fragilité du bateau face aux éléments, et cette sensation très concrète que l’homme ne domine pas la nature — il compose avec elle.
- Les objectifs de cette conférence est de faire prendre conscience que la transition écologique n’est pas seulement une affaire de normes ou de technologies, mais aussi une affaire de posture. Montrer que l’humilité, la sobriété et l’adaptation sont des qualités essentielles, en mer comme dans nos sociétés. Donner envie d’agir, sans discours culpabilisant, à partir d’un récit personnel puissant et accessible. Enfin créer un parallèle entre tenir le cap en mer et tenir le cap collectivement face au dérèglement climatique.