Eric O'Neill
About Eric O'Neill
“Eric was a dynamic speaker and was amiable and approachable to all attendees!”
Speech topics
Leadership Under Pressure
What You Can Learn from Spies, James Bond & Jason Bourne?
What separates extraordinary leaders from everyone else? It isn’t luck. It isn’t perfect planning. And it certainly isn’t having all the answers.
Former FBI counterintelligence operative Eric O’Neill knows what it’s like to make life-changing decisions under extraordinary pressure. Tasked with helping expose Robert Hanssen, the most damaging spy in FBI history, Eric was thrust into an assignment he wasn’t trained for, against an adversary who had defeated the FBI for more than two decades. In this highly interactive masterclass, Eric combines gripping stories from the front lines of espionage with practical leadership lessons that every executive, entrepreneur, and professional can apply immediately. Through live audience polling, decision-making exercises, and real- world case studies, participants will discover how elite intelligence professionals assess risk, respond to uncertainty, recover from failure, and lead when the stakes are highest.
Whether you’re leading an organization, building a business, or navigating your own pivotal career decisions, you’ll leave with a proven framework for making better decisions under pressure and inspiring others to do the same.
Participants will learn how to:
- Recognize opportunities before they disappear.
- Make confident decisions without waiting for perfect information.
- Turn setbacks and unexpected challenges into competitive advantages.
- Invest time where it creates the greatest impact.
- Build momentum through small wins when the odds seem stacked against them.
- Take ownership of decisions and lead with courage and accountability.
- The greatest lessons in leadership don’t come from the boardroom. Sometimes they come from the hunt for a spy.
The greatest lessons in leadership don’t come from the boardroom. Sometimes they come from the hunt for a spy.
Speaking videos
Books by Eric O'Neill
“Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime: Cybersecurity Tactics to Outsmart Hackers and Disarm Scammers” (2025)
Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime: Cybersecurity Tactics to Outsmart Hackers and Disarm Scammers
“Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy” (2019)
Eric O’Neill was only twenty-six when he was tapped for the case of a lifetime: a one-on-one undercover investigation of the FBI’s top target, a man suspected of spying for the Russians for nearly two decades, giving up nuclear secrets, compromising intelligence, and betraying US assets. With zero training in face-to-face investigation, O’Neill found himself in a windowless, high-security office in the newly formed Information Assurance Section, tasked officially with helping the FBI secure its outdated computer system against hackers and spies—and unofficially with collecting evidence against his new boss, Robert Hanssen, an exacting and rage-prone veteran agent with a fondness for handguns. In the months that follow, O’Neill’s self-esteem and young marriage unravel under the pressure of life in Room 9930, and he questions the very purpose of his mission. But as Hanssen outmaneuvers an intelligence community struggling to keep up with the new reality of cybersecurity, he also teaches O’Neill the game of spycraft. The student will just have to learn to outplay his teacher if he wants to win. A tension-packed stew of power, paranoia, and psychological manipulation, Gray Day is also a cautionary tale of how the United States allowed Russia to become dominant in cyberespionage—and how we might begin to catch up.
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