Leadership. Courage. Service.
Combat aviator. Marine Corps leader. Author. National security expert.
Amy McGrath brings the stories and lessons of an extraordinary career to audiences navigating leadership, change, uncertainty and risk.
Amy McGrath has spent her career taking on difficult missions.
Amy McGrath was among the first women to fly in combat for the United States Marine Corps and became the first woman in the Marine Corps to fly a combat mission in an F/A-18 fighter jet. Over a 24-year military career, including four years at the U.S. Naval Academy and 20 years in the Marine Corps, she flew 89 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, served as a senior policy adviser at the Pentagon, worked with Congress, and taught future military officers at the Naval Academy.
After retiring from the Marine Corps, Amy entered an entirely different arena, building nationally recognized political campaigns and organizations, teaching national security at the graduate level, writing about American leadership, and becoming a familiar national-security analyst on television.
Courage isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you build.
Keynote Topics
Amy’s keynotes combine compelling stories with practical lessons about courage, leadership, resilience and change. Choose the conversation that fits your audience.
Courage is Built
How we prepare ourselves to do difficult things
At 11 years old, Amy McGrath decided she wanted to fly fighter jets—even though women weren’t allowed to do it.
That dream eventually took her to the U.S. Naval Academy, the Marine Corps, the cockpit of an F/A-18, and combat missions over Afghanistan and Iraq. But some of the things that frightened her most had nothing to do with combat.
Amy’s experience taught her that courage isn’t the absence of fear—and it isn’t a trait reserved for a select few. Courage can be developed deliberately, one uncomfortable experience at a time.
And courage isn’t only about taking the risk. It’s also about what happens when the risk doesn’t pay off.
Amy has pursued enormous goals and achieved some of them. She has pursued others, given them everything she had—and lost. Those experiences taught her that failure doesn’t erase the value of the effort, and that some of the most important acts of courage come afterward: honestly assessing what happened, getting back up, starting over, and deciding what comes next.
Through stories from aviation, combat, public life, leadership and starting over, Amy explores how we build the courage to take risks, face failure, speak up, pursue difficult goals and keep moving forward when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
Because courage is built—and courage is contagious.
Leadership When the Stakes Are High
Lessons from the cockpit, combat, campaigns and command
Leaders rarely get perfect information, unlimited time or complete control over circumstances.
Amy McGrath learned that lesson flying combat missions, planning military operations in Afghanistan, working inside the Pentagon and Congress, leading organizations and building major political campaigns.
Drawing on those experiences, Amy explores what effective leadership looks like when circumstances are uncertain and the consequences matter: preparing before the crisis arrives, making decisions with incomplete information, building trust within teams, adapting when the plan changes, accepting accountability, and continuing to lead after setbacks.
This keynote brings lessons from high-stakes environments into the challenges leaders face every day.
Breaking Barriers
What happens when the path to your goal doesn't exist yet
When Amy McGrath first dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot, women were prohibited from flying fighter aircraft in the United States military.
She pursued the dream anyway.
Years later, after federal policy changed, Amy became one of the first women to fly combat aircraft for the Marine Corps and the first woman Marine to fly in an F/A-18 in combat.
Her experience offers a larger lesson about ambition, change and leadership: you don’t have to see the entire path before you start moving.
Amy shares what she learned about confronting structural barriers, finding mentors and allies, preparing for opportunities that don’t yet exist, dealing with people who doubt you, and becoming an example that changes what the next generation believes is possible.
America in a Changing World
National security, military affairs and America’s role in the world
A combat veteran, former Pentagon policy adviser, congressional fellow, Naval Academy instructor and graduate-level national security professor, Amy McGrath brings both operational experience and policy expertise to conversations about America’s role in the world.
Amy offers customized talks and moderated conversations on U.S. national security, military affairs, civil-military relations, the use of American military power, China and the Indo-Pacific, Russia and Europe, the Middle East, emerging threats, and the challenges facing America’s all-volunteer military.