Admiral
Mike Manazir
Retired Two-Star Rear Admiral • Bestselling Author • Leadership Keynote Speaker
36
Years IN U.S. NAVY
10
Years of private sector leadership
Speaker Bios
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Rear Admiral Mike Manazir (U.S. Navy, Ret.) is a Top Gun graduate who commanded the USS Nimitz and Carrier Strike Group 8, logged 1,240 carrier landings, and now teaches leaders everywhere that the most powerful force in any organization isn’t firepower – it’s heart.
Retired Two-Star Rear Admiral Mike Manazir graduated Top Gun, commanded the USS Nimitz and Carrier Strike Group 8, and logged 3,750 fighter hours and 1,240 carrier landings across 36 years in the U.S. Navy. A bestselling author and VP at Hadrian Automation, he now helps leaders at every level lead with clarity, courage, and heart.
Mike Manazir has spent his life leading in the most demanding environments on earth.
A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and Top Gun alumnus, Mike served 36 years as a naval aviator and ship captain – logging 3,750 fighter hours and 1,240 carrier landings across 15 overseas deployments. He commanded an F-14 fighter squadron, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, and Carrier Strike Group Eight, leading thousands of sailors in environments where the margin for error was zero. His Pentagon service culminated as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Systems (OPNAV N9).
After retiring as a Two-Star Rear Admiral, Mike took those same leadership instincts into the private sector – first as a Vice President at The Boeing Company, now as Vice President, Federal at Hadrian Automation, where he builds strategies at the intersection of advanced manufacturing, defense, and national security.
The bestselling author of Learn How to Lead to Win and four other books, Mike speaks with high-performing teams about leading with clarity, courage, authenticity, and heart. His talks draw from cockpits, carriers, and boardrooms, and regularly earn standing ovations.
Mike believes leadership isn’t about rank or title – it’s about impact and heart. His mission is to help leaders at every level lead to win.
Speaking Topics
Lead to Win: Building High-Trust Teams Through Clarity, Courage, and Heart
When the margin for error is zero, leadership isn’t a soft skill – it’s the only thing standing between success and catastrophe. Drawing on 36 years of leading in the world’s most demanding environments, Rear Admiral Mike Manazir (U.S. Navy, Ret.) shows audiences how great leaders build the trust, culture, and conviction that produce extraordinary teams. Attendees leave with a battle-tested framework for leading with authenticity, courage, and heart that they can put to work the moment they walk out the door.
SIGNATURE KEYNOTE
From Carrier to Business: What Billion-Dollar Navy Operations Can Teach Any Organization
Running a nuclear aircraft carrier with thousands of sailors, dozens of aircraft, and billions in assets is one of the most complex operational challenges on earth. In this keynote, Rear Admiral Mike Manazir (U.S. Navy, Ret.) translates the hard-won lessons of carrier command into practical frameworks for leaders navigating complexity, change, and high performance. Audiences leave with a clear-eyed view of what operational excellence, decentralized execution, and personal accountability actually look like when the stakes are high.
ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE
From Setbacks to Strength: Battle-Tested Lessons in Resilience, Failure, and the Courage to Keep Going
Extraordinary achievements rarely happen on the first attempt and the leaders who last are the ones who know how to fail forward. Drawing on unfiltered stories from flight training, combat operations, and the boardroom, Rear Admiral Mike Manazir (U.S. Navy, Ret.) shows how the most defining moments of his career were the ones where things went wrong. This keynote doesn’t just give audiences a resilience framework, it gives them permission to use failure the way Mike did: as fuel.
RESILIENCE & MINDSET
Custom Topic Available
Mike customizes every keynote to your audience, industry, and event theme. Pre-event consultation included with all bookings.
FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE
AVAILABLE FORMATS
Fee Range / Booking Information
- Keynote fee: Mike’s speaking engagements generally start at five figures. Final fees are based on the scope of the engagement, event format, location, travel requirements, and level of customization. Contact our team for current pricing, availability, and engagement options.
- Travel: First-class airfare is required for all engagements. Travel, hotel, and ground transportation are covered by the client and billed separately from the speaking fee. Mike is based in Annapolis, MD.
- Typical AV requirements: Headset or lavalier mic preferred, slides can be presented from Mike’s laptop or a central event deck (clicker required), HDMI input for slides, etc.)
Audience Types / Ideal Clients
- Senior- to mid-level corporate leaders and executives (C-suite, VPs, Directors)
- High-performing teams in industries that face rapid change, high stakes, or complexity like aerospace/defense, manufacturing, logistics, regulated industries and mission-driven organizations.
- Companies undergoing transformation, merger, restructuring, or scaling fast, who need grounded, values-based leadership to navigate uncertainty.
Testimonials
Mike Manazir delivers unparalleled leadership insights for C-suites with his powerful blend of real-world experience and humble, heartfelt wisdom.
Mike has so many inspirational stories of leadership. We loved hearing the lessons that he has learned and how we can apply them to our everyday lives.”
I wanted to take a moment and thank you for the outstanding guest speaker today! I ended up purchasing the book Learn How to Lead to Win in the middle of the presentation. In my almost 18 years with Pfizer, Mike was one of the most compelling and inspiring speakers I have heard. I am eager to read the ’33 Powerful Stories and Leadership Lessons’ that Mike has to share with his incredible resume of life experiences.
Pfizer Ambassador Program participant
I can’t tell you how impactful your time with us was. I continue to receive notes and comments from the team about how inspiring they found it. I think the most telling moment for me was that, after you left and we transitioned to a different topic, one of our leaders who’s been struggling felt safe enough to acknowledge his challenges to the rest of the team and talk through them with us. Really remarkable – he told me later that he felt safe after seeing the tone we set.
What was astounding is that nobody — out of several hundred people — nobody looked at their phones for a full hour. Like they were spellbound!
Past Clients
Mike’s audiences span Fortune 500 boardrooms and frontline industries alike, from healthcare and aerospace to construction, defense, and public safety, proof that carrier-tested leadership travels well. Past clients include: KPMG, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Jeppesen, Michels US, Stellantis, Michigan Army National Guard, and Prudential Financial.