Abby Wambach

Abby Wambach is one of the most decorated forwards in the history of soccer, and one of the few champions who has turned the lessons of elite sport into a leadership language that works in any organization.

Born Mary Abigail Wambach on June 2, 1980, in Rochester, New York, she starred at the University of Florida, helping the Gators win their first NCAA Division I title in 1998. Over a 15-year career with the United States Women's National Team, from 2001 to 2015, she made 255 appearances and scored 184 international goals. She won Olympic gold in 2004 and 2012 and lifted the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. At her retirement in 2015, her 184 goals were the most in international soccer by any player, woman or man, a record later surpassed by Canada's Christine Sinclair. She remains second on the all-time list.

Her honors match the numbers. Wambach was named FIFA World Player of the Year in 2012, U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year six times, and one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in 2015. In 2016 she received the ESPY Icon Award alongside Kobe Bryant and Peyton Manning, and in 2019 she was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

What set up her second act was a speech. Her 2018 Barnard College commencement address went viral and became Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game, a #1 New York Times bestseller that reframed leadership around a simple idea: change the rules instead of playing by them. It followed her bestselling 2016 memoir, Forward, and set the template for the work that followed.

Today Wambach is a media founder and cultural force. With her wife, author Glennon Doyle, and Amanda Doyle, she co-hosts the chart-topping podcast We Can Do Hard Things, which has surpassed 500 million plays, and co-authored the #1 bestseller We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life's 20 Questions in 2025. Through their company, Treat Media, she is an executive producer of the Sundance-honored documentary Come See Me in the Good Light. She is a part owner of the National Women's Soccer League club Angel City FC and serves on multiple boards. On stage, she brings all of it, the championships, the record, the losses, and the reinvention, into a message about leading together that audiences do not forget.