Manley Feinberg II, founder of Vertical Lessons, Inc., has been inducted into the Council of Peers Award for Excellence (CPAE) Speaker Hall of Fame®, the highest honor of the National Speakers Association. For the organizations that hire him, the recognition confirms what audiences at more than 1,000 events already know: commitment, built deliberately, is what separates teams that deliver from teams that fall short.
Manley was inducted July 27, 2026, at NSA’s Influence conference in Austin, Texas, alongside Anton Gunn, Peter Katz, Jess Pettitt and Allison Shapira. Established by NSA in February 1977, the CPAE is a lifetime award. Nominees are put forward by speakers who already hold it, and only living Hall of Fame members get a ballot. They evaluate message, presentation and delivery, experience, professionalism and collateral material. It cannot be applied for or campaigned for, and it is not based on celebrity, income or number of speeches. Fewer than 250 speakers have been inducted since 1977, among them Les Brown, Ronald Reagan, Zig Ziglar and General Colin Powell.
Manley is an expert mountain climber who has climbed in more than 500 destinations worldwide, including 2,000-foot ice walls in Canada, mixed alpine routes, and expeditions to Kyrgyzstan and Nepal. He has attempted 22 big walls and summited fifteen, five of them on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. In June 2026 he climbed the tallest sheer wall of his life, The Shield, spending nine days and eight nights on a portaledge. Across 34 years he has spent 73 total days living on the wall and completed thousands of climbs while adventuring through 25 countries, on some of the world’s steepest, most technical and most mentally and physically demanding mountains. He built his professional work on a single practice: reverse-engineering each ascent into transferable leadership and human performance principles.
“Every climb teaches you something about commitment you can’t learn in a conference room,” said Manley. “I reverse-engineer those experiences in the Vertical to help leaders build high-commitment teams and cultures that create world-class results.”
Manley developed that method as an executive at Build-A-Bear Workshop, where he and the leadership team grew the business from 42 stores to 425 worldwide and revenue from $55 million to over $474 million, through an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. The culture they built landed Build-A-Bear on the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® list four years running.
“Unlike many who write and speak about leadership success in business and life, Manley has actually done it,” said Maxine Clark, founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop. “For more than ten years at Build-A-Bear, I saw first-hand the results of Manley’s Vertical Leadership Lessons.”
More than 200,000 people in more than 50 countries on six continents have experienced Manley’s programs, brought to life through his own professional climbing photography and video. He delivers keynotes on Exponential Commitment™ to organizations including US Bank, Wells Fargo, Northwestern Mutual, Hewlett-Packard, the Federal Aviation Administration, State Farm, Quanta Services, Con Edison, MDRT and TEDx. He is the author of Reaching Your Next Summit™: 9 Vertical Lessons for Leading with More Impact, and delivers a dedicated safety leadership program for high-risk industries such as utilities, construction and manufacturing, where a lapse in commitment can change or end someone’s life in an instant.
His central premise is one he repeats from the stage and in print: “The difference between 99 percent commitment and 100 percent commitment is not 1 percent. It is exponential.”
The full story of the honor, the Class of 2026, and the acceptance speech are on the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame page.
Booking and Interviews
Manley Feinberg II is available to keynote leadership, culture and safety events, and for interviews on building high-commitment teams in high-stakes work. Organizations can review his keynotes and request availability at VerticalLessons.com.
About Vertical Lessons, Inc.
Founded in 1995 by Manley Feinberg II, CSP, CPAE, Vertical Lessons helps organizations align teams around a shared mission and build Exponential Commitment™ cultures where people step up and lead regardless of title. Manley’s work has been featured on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and TEDx, and in Entrepreneur, the New York Daily News and World News.
Media and Booking Contact
Manley Feinberg II
Manley@VerticalLessons.com
314-724-3443
The National Speakers Association’s official Class of 2026 announcement is available as a PDF press release, and more on the award is at nsaspeaker.org/cpae.
