Education and Training Awards 2020

Jun20523 Motivational Speaker of the Year (Australia): Jonny Shannon Jonny Shannon is a motivational speaker for young people across Australia, New Zealand and America. Recently, we profiled the unique service Jonny provides and how he established his impeccable reputation. Speaking on real life issues which affect young people, Jonny Shannon is able to provide solutions to their issues in a memorable and fun way. Drawing on his own personal experiences, Jonny offers examples of how he was able to turn his life around. Many of the topics he speaks about include cyber safety, mental health awareness and bullying. In the last decade, Jonny has presented over 3000 times, both online and in person, and has visited over 370 schools. At each school, Jonny conducts live surveys around health topics and sends the results back to the school, as his helps both the teachers and parents to meet the needs that some of their students have. Jonny’s mission is simple. To positively educate one million students a year on real topics that affect them and to provide real solutions. He used to spend 35 weeks a year travelling from school to school to speak, but as schools are becoming more open to online learning, Jonny has begun to use online presentations and courses. After receiving feedback, this has since developed into creating archylearning.com . This is an online learning pathway which allows schools to host their own courses and track and measure student performance. His team consists of three people; himself, a videographer and designer, and a PA. Each individual is passionate about what they do and work together to provide the best service possible for the schools and children they talk to. Jonny also surrounds himself in groups who are trained in helping young people. These groups meet on a regular basis and they use their expertise to help upskill one another. Jonny says that, “I believe being around specialist is a key to growing into a specialist yourself.” Early in his career, Jonny found that schools wanted a number of key attributes. They wanted speakers who speak on relevant topics, but were fun and engaging so that students do would not lose focus. In addition to this, the talks also need to be relevant to the curriculum to allow the school to build on teaching those topics once Jonny has left. The thing that sets Jonny apart from other speakers is that he offers a complete package. Once the talk is done, he is able to provide follow up materials and surveys. He keeps in contact with schools and gives them updates about where students are at, what the common problems and the solutions for these problems. Like in any industry, in order to succeed you have to stay ahead of the curve, and Jonny does this by asking lots of questions. The surveys that he conducts means that he can see a trend coming before many other people can. An example of this is that sexting only became a recent issue in Australian schools, but Jonny could see an increase in this happening six years ago. This enabled him to have time to prepare real solutions when schools wanted to address the problem. The global health crisis has seen much more learning being done online and in order to stay relevant, there is a much greater need to provide what you do virtually. Over the years, Jonny has found that many students are not aware of the some of the dangers that are present on the internet. In order to combat this, he has created a new engaging course which covers bullying, hacking, and stranger danger. Once students reach the end of this interactive course, they will receive a certificate of completion and will receive updates on the issues, so they do not get left behind. Jonny believes this course will help hundreds of thousands of children across the world. Looking ahead to what the future holds, Jonny will continue to provide this extraordinary service, which has helped so many people over the years and rightfully earned him the title Motivational Speaker of the Year (Australia). Contact: Jonny Shannon Web Address: www.jonnyshannon.com Drawing on his own personal experiences, Jonny offers examples of how he was able to turn his life around. Many of the topics he speaks about include cyber safety, mental health awareness and bullying.