TheCEOVerse • Digital Edition
“Most Formidable Leaders Making Waves in 2026”
Cover story
Elizabeth McCormick
Featured Profile - Elizabeth McCormick
From Cockpit to Corporate Floor to Center Stage
Elizabeth McCormick never planned to fly Black Hawk helicopters. Before the Army, she considered jewelry design and law, and at different points she was an unemployed military spouse and a pizza shop employee. None of it looked like a flight path. Then she earned her wings as a U.S. Army Black Hawk pilot, at a time when women made up less than one percent of Army aviators.
The cockpit became her first leadership classroom. She learned to prepare for the unexpected, make decisions under pressure, trust the people around her, and stay focused as conditions changed. A medical issue eventually ended her flying career, and the loss went beyond the job itself. She lost an identity, a community, a sense of purpose she had built her adult life around. Healing came first, physically and emotionally.
What carried her forward was something she had not expected to need. On the days she was not flying, she managed inventory and procurement for the Army, and that background became the foundation for an eight-plus-year corporate career in supply chain management across three manufacturing companies. In July 2009, another unplanned shift arrived. She was laid off in the same stretch of time she had been turning down paid speaking engagements to focus on her corporate job. The side opportunity suddenly looked like the next mission. That moment led to Soar 2 Success International.
Looking back, she does not describe her path as a straight line so much as a series of corrections she did not choose but eventually needed. Every chapter, including the ones she never would have picked, prepared her for the one that followed.
Before Leading Others, She Had to Lead Herself First
Ask McCormick what has made her effective as a leader, and she names three things without hesitation: accountability, adaptability, and service. Accountability comes first in her thinking because, in her words, leadership begins with yourself. That belief sits at the center of her philosophy, FLY, First Lead Yourself. She cannot ask for excellence, preparation, or commitment from others without demonstrating it herself first.
Adaptability was forced on her by circumstance more than choice. A pilot who becomes a supply chain manager who becomes a professional speaker does not get there by following a fixed plan. She has learned to recognize when conditions change, adjust her approach, and keep moving toward the mission.
Service, she says, keeps the other two in perspective. Leadership is not about occupying the most important chair in the room. It is about understanding the people being led and using influence responsibly, whether she is mentoring one speaker or standing in front of six thousand people. The three qualities are not separate boxes for her. Take responsibility for yourself, stay adaptable when circumstances change, and never lose sight of who you are serving.
Her values follow the same logic. Integrity, accountability, and excellence guide her personally and professionally, and she does not believe those should change depending on who is watching. Integrity means following through on what you say and standing behind the decisions you make. Accountability means owning outcomes instead of looking for someone else to blame. Excellence has a military root for her, preparation builds confidence, and details matter, whether she is speaking to twelve people or more than six thousand.
The Standards She Refuses to Compromise
McCormick has addressed more than two thousand audiences, from small VIP gatherings to arenas holding over six thousand people. Her standard does not shift based on the size of the room. Every audience, she says, deserves the same level of preparation, presence, and energy, a commitment that comes directly from her time in the cockpit, where there was no room for shortcuts and no version of a mission that got less than full attention.
That discipline did not stay behind in the Army. She carried the same standard into business and into professional speaking, believing that excellence does not happen without preparation. For McCormick, that standard was never about the size of the crowd. It was about giving every audience her full preparation, presence, and energy, regardless of the room.
From the Stage to the Page to the Next Generation of Speakers
Soar 2 Success International operates across three primary areas. The first is McCormick’s own work as a motivational keynote speaker, delivering interactive keynote experiences on leadership, motivation, sales, safety, resilience, accountability, and change. Her books extend those ideas beyond the stage into something audiences can apply after the event ends.
The second area is speaker development. Through the Speakers at Sea Cruise and The Velocity Society, she works with speakers at every stage, aspiring, emerging, and established, helping them sharpen their positioning, visibility, credibility, and bookability.
The third is Soar 2 Success Publishing, where she works with experts, entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to turn their knowledge into professionally published books. Three different areas, one underlying purpose: taking ideas that already have value and building more paths for those ideas to reach people.
Resilience Isn’t Surviving. It’s Still Creating
In 2020, McCormick lost approximately ninety percent of her previously booked keynote speaking contracts within a single week. An entire business built on bringing people together in ballrooms, conference centers, and convention halls lost its footing almost overnight, with no clear timeline for recovery.
There was no fast fix. She had to live out the resilience she had spent years speaking about from the stage. She adapted where she could, stayed visible, kept relationships with clients and meeting professionals active, and kept showing up even when nothing suggested the industry would return to what it had been. Eventually, organizations began meeting again. The business rebuilt.
The lesson she takes from that period is specific. Resilience is not simply surviving a hard season. It is continuing to prepare and create while still inside it, with no guarantee of when things improve.
Credibility Is Something You Keep Earning
Among her professional credentials, McCormick holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association, a credential that recognizes professional speaking experience, business excellence, and consistent client satisfaction. Global Gurus ranked her among the World’s Top 30 Motivational Speakers; thirteen in 2025 and eleven in 2026.
She has held leadership roles within the National Speakers Association and received recognition through the organization. As a faculty member of the John Maxwell Team, she contributes to the development of more than 68,000 speakers, trainers, coaches, and thought leaders worldwide. She has written 20 books, including her 20th, Credibility Factor.
Awards provide validation, but she points to something else as the recognition that matters most: the trust organizations continue to place in her, reflected in more than 2,000 audiences addressed across her career. Credibility, in her view, is not something earned once and kept. It has to be renewed through the value created and the way she shows up.
A Philosophy That Started Before The Title Ever Arrived
FLY, First Lead Yourself, is the philosophy McCormick returns to across every part of her career. Leadership, in her framing, does not begin with a title, a team, or a stage. It begins with taking responsibility for attitude, choices, preparation, and actions before any of those external markers exist.
Her aviation, corporate, entrepreneurial, and speaking careers all reinforced the same point for her. Circumstances change. Careers change. Plans change. What stays within a person’s control is how they respond. Her belief distills into one line she returns to often: when people first lead themselves, they become the kind of leaders others want to follow. For her, it is not just a message she delivers from stages. It is a standard she holds herself to.
The Lessons She Learned Before She Had Words for Them
McCormick’s father owned a construction company, and long before she had language for words like entrepreneurship or leadership, she was watching both in practice. He was her first model for what running a business actually required. Owning a company meant more than having your name on the door. It meant taking responsibility for employees, customers, decisions, finances, and problems, often with no one else to hand them to.
Watching him also showed her the value of hard work and resourcefulness, lessons that carried through her military and corporate careers and became more relevant once she started her own company. As founder of Soar 2 Success International, she recognizes how much of her business mindset formed before she ever ran a business of her own. Her father, she says, showed her that entrepreneurship is less about starting something and more about having the courage to take responsibility for an idea, build it, sustain it, and create opportunities for others along the way.
Growth Without Losing The Personal Thread
Looking ahead, McCormick wants to expand her influence without losing the personal connection that built her business in the first place. That means continuing as an experiential keynote speaker, developing new books and intellectual property, and designing more interactive audience experiences. As AI makes information more accessible, she believes authentic human connection and shared experience will only become more valuable, not less.
For Soar 2 Success International, she sees growth continuing across all three areas, keynote speaking and thought leadership, speaker mentoring through the Cruise and The Velocity Society, and an expanding publishing arm. The business already operates globally, so the goal ahead is not primarily geographic. It is about deepening reach through more audiences, authors, speakers, and partnerships.
Personally, she wants to keep creating, writing, speaking, and mentoring. Success, she says, does not give permission to coast. It comes with a greater responsibility to keep creating value, all of it still grounded in FLY, First Lead Yourself.
The Flight Plan Changes, the Values Don’t
McCormick’s advice to aspiring leaders starts in the same place her own philosophy does: lead yourself before worrying about leading anyone else. Leadership is not something that starts with a promotion or a title. It starts with how a person shows up daily, particularly when things get difficult.
Anyone can look confident when a plan is going well, she says. Character becomes visible during adversity, uncertainty, and disappointment, in whether a person stays accountable and whether their actions match what they claim to believe. Her own career has included enough unplanned corrections to teach her that the turbulence itself cannot always be controlled, but the response to it can. Her advice is to stay curious and coachable, seek mentors who challenge you, and adjust the flight plan without abandoning your values or your mission. Leadership, in the end, is not measured by how many people report to you. It is measured by the example set, especially when circumstances make that example harder to keep.