Elizabeth McCormick

Elizabeth McCormick: Leading from Within to Help Others Soar

Success rarely follows a straight path. For some leaders, the most meaningful careers are shaped by unexpected turns, difficult decisions, and the courage to begin again. Elizabeth McCormick’s journey reflects that kind of path. From serving as a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot to building an international career as a motivational and inspirational keynote speaker, author, mentor, publisher, and entrepreneur, she has turned change into an opportunity for growth.

Today, through Soar 2 Success International LLC, McCormick helps individuals and organizations strengthen leadership, resilience, accountability, motivation, and performance. Her work is built around a simple but powerful principle: FLY, First Lead Yourself. It is a philosophy shaped by experience and one that places personal responsibility at the centre of effective leadership.

Her journey into aviation was itself unexpected. Earlier in her career, she had considered very different possibilities, including jewellery design and law. She also experienced life as an unemployed military wife and worked in a pizza place before finding her path in Army aviation. She eventually earned her wings as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot at a time when women represented less than one percent of all Army pilots.

When a medical issue brought her aviation career to an unexpected end, McCormick moved into corporate supply chain management, where she spent more than eight years. Her military experiences and leadership lessons, however, continued to attract attention. Organisations began inviting her to speak about what she had learned in aviation. After being laid off in 2009, she chose to turn those opportunities into a full-time speaking career and founded Soar 2 Success International.

Leadership Begins with Self-Leadership

At the heart of McCormick’s leadership philosophy is the belief that people must first learn to lead themselves. Before guiding a team, influencing an organisation, or inspiring others, a leader must understand personal responsibility, decision-making, resilience, energy, and accountability.

Her approach does not present leadership as a position or title. Instead, it focuses on behaviour and choices. The ability to remain steady during uncertainty, respond constructively to setbacks, and continue moving forward becomes just as important as technical knowledge.

Three values have played a particularly important role in shaping her approach: integrity, perseverance, and generosity.

Integrity forms the foundation of trust. For McCormick, it means doing what has been promised and maintaining strong standards even when no one is watching. Perseverance provides the strength to continue through rejection, career changes, uncertainty, and the challenges of entrepreneurship. Generosity extends leadership beyond personal achievement by encouraging people to share knowledge, create opportunities, and help others succeed.

Her philosophy can be captured in a simple idea: do the right thing, keep going, and bring others with you.

Turning Experience into Meaningful Learning

McCormick’s approach to motivation is grounded in action rather than empty encouragement. She believes that language can influence how people think, and that thoughts can shape behaviour and outcomes. Positive affirmations have therefore become an important part of her personal approach to success.

Rather than allowing present circumstances to define what may be possible, she focuses on preparing for future opportunities. Yet she also recognises that positive thinking alone is not enough. Preparation, action, and persistence must follow belief.

Her message is clear: “Speak possibility before you can see the path. Then take the actions necessary to make that possibility real.”

This principle is reflected in her work as an experiential motivational keynote speaker. Rather than simply delivering information from a stage, she creates interactive experiences designed to stay with audiences after the event. Her programmes address leadership, motivation, sales resilience, safety focus, accountability, and performance under pressure.

One significant example of this impact came when she addressed more than 6,000 people at a National Sales Conference at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. The scale of the audience demonstrated the reach of her work, while the experience reinforced her belief that a shared keynote can create powerful energy and lasting engagement.

Building an Ecosystem of Influence

McCormick’s work has expanded beyond keynote speaking into a broader platform for developing people and ideas. Her offerings now span three connected areas: experiential speaking, professional speaker mentoring, and publishing.

Through the Speakers at Sea Cruise and The Velocity Society, she mentors aspiring, emerging, and established professional speakers. The focus extends beyond speaking skills to include positioning, business development, and expanding professional influence.

Through Soar 2 Success Publishing, she works with experts and thought leaders to transform their knowledge and ideas into professionally published books. In doing so, publishing becomes more than a product. It becomes a way for professionals to establish credibility and extend their message beyond a single event.

These three areas create a connected ecosystem in which expertise can move from experience to ideas, from ideas to communication, and from communication to lasting influence.

Her commitment to the speaking profession was further recognised in 2019 when she earned the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation. The achievement represents her continued focus on professional standards, client service, and excellence in the craft of speaking.

Turning Setbacks into New Beginnings

The most defining moments in McCormick’s career have often emerged from circumstances she did not choose. Her path into Army aviation required perseverance in an environment where women were still a very small minority. Later, a medical issue forced her to leave the career she had worked hard to build.

The corporate world brought another major change when she was laid off in 2009. Instead of allowing the setback to define her future, she used it as the point from which to build her speaking business full time.

Entrepreneurship brought new challenges, including rejection, uncertainty, and the need to continually adapt. Each transition strengthened a lesson that remains central to her work: “You may not control what happens next, but you can control what you do next.”

That belief gives her message practical relevance. Resilience is not presented as avoiding difficulty. It is the ability to respond, adjust, and continue moving forward.

A Vision Built Around Trust and Growth

McCormick’s next chapter is focused on expanding the reach and depth of Soar 2 Success International without losing the personal connection that defines its work.

Over the next five years, she aims to continue developing the company’s three core areas while expanding its intellectual property through books, leadership frameworks, digital learning, and other resources. The objective is not simply geographic growth. It is to make valuable ideas more accessible and create influence that lasts beyond individual speaking engagements.

Two upcoming books reflect this direction. FLY: First Lead Yourself will explore personal leadership through themes such as accountability, resilience, decision-making, energy management, and becoming the type of leader others want to follow.

The Credibility Deficit will examine the growing challenge of trust in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, constant information, competing voices, and digital noise. The work will explore what creates genuine credibility and how leaders, experts, and organisations can earn and maintain trust.

Together, the books reflect two closely connected questions: how people lead themselves and how they earn the trust required to influence others.

Creating Impact That Extends Beyond the Stage

For McCormick, success is no longer measured simply by the number of stages she reaches. The greater measure is what happens after the presentation ends.

When people remember the message, apply it, and carry it back into their organisations, the keynote becomes more than an event. It becomes a starting point for change.

That perspective also shapes the advice she offers to people seeking greater recognition in their own industries. Her recommendation is to focus first on becoming exceptional rather than becoming famous. Visibility can create attention, but credibility, consistency, and results create lasting standing.

Through Soar 2 Success International, Elizabeth McCormick continues to build her career around that belief. Her story demonstrates that unexpected endings can create new beginnings, that leadership starts from within, and that influence becomes most valuable when it creates opportunities for others.

Her path from military aviation to international speaking and publishing is ultimately a story about taking responsibility for the next step. It is a philosophy she has lived, developed, and now shares with audiences around the world: lead yourself first, then help others soar.