When Annasley Park speaks about pressure, fear and performance, she isn’t drawing on theory, but on lived experience.
At twenty nine, she became the ninth solo, unsupported and independent woman in history to row three thousand miles across the Atlantic. Yet the row is only part of her story.
Growing up on military estates in Herefordshire, she found freedom outdoors and through sport, eventually earning a place on the Great Britain Cycling team and signing for a UCI WorldTour road team before injury abruptly ended that chapter. The loss of identity that followed forced her to rebuild from scratch.
She went on to manage a chalet in the French Alps for a winter season, instruct white water rafting on American rivers, and spend four years working as a deckhand on superyachts. Each role demanded adaptability, composure and strong self leadership in unpredictable environments.
In 2023, her body became seriously unwell and everything stopped. Work, training and momentum were stripped away, along with the labels she had carried for years. Recovery became her only focus.
During this period, she deliberately simplified her world. She attended a ten day Vipassana silent meditation course and completed trauma informed somatic training. These experiences were not about performance, but about understanding human capacity when distraction and identity are removed.
In stillness, she began to observe how the mind and body respond to discomfort, and how awareness shapes decision making in the messy middle, the liminal space between where we are and where we want to be. The Atlantic row emerged not as an escape, but as a continuation of this exploration.
Ten hours into the crossing, as daylight began to fade, her boat capsized.
She does not dwell on the drama of the moment, but on what it revealed. Beneath the surface there was calm. Above it, chaos. That contrast quietly set the tone for the rest of the journey.
As the days passed, she realised she had been too focused on the end goal of reaching Barbados. With the support of a strong team on land holding her accountable, she learned that success lay in the small, consistent actions taken each day. The small things were the big things.
Fear was always present, but it did not get to steer. Curiosity and awareness kept her grounded in the moment.
What surprised Annasley most after returning to land was how difficult she found it to articulate these lessons. With dyslexia and what she describes as a deep thinking brain, translating experience into clear language was a challenge.
Working with Leon Lloyd and the BEST team, she learned how to shape her insights into stories that others could connect with, and finally found her voice after the endeavour.
As she shared on the podcast, not everyone rows an ocean, but everyone faces their own version of one.
Today, Annasley Park brings these lived experiences into organisations and teams navigating pressure, uncertainty and change. Through keynotes, workshops and storytelling, she helps people perform sustainably without burning out, make better decisions when things feel overwhelming, and lead themselves effectively when conditions are far from ideal.
Her approach is grounded, practical and deeply human, shaped by time spent in mountains, rivers, oceans and recovery rooms rather than classrooms.
At the heart of her message is a simple belief: everyone is rowing an ocean of their own, and how we choose to meet the messy middle determines how we move through it.
Through her speaking, Annasley helps people recognise that the small things, the pauses, and the way we frame our experience often make the biggest difference.