Her Story
About Anna
Anna Flynn is a sailing coach based in Miami, Florida, where she has lived for the past two years. She coaches high school sailing and middle school age sailors at Coral Reef Yacht Club and Ransom Everglades school. With five years of experience in the field, Anna previously worked in Marblehead, Massachusetts, coaching younger sailors starting at age five. Her high school sailors achieved fourth place as a team nationally this year, and the yacht club's Optimist program, recognized as the best in the nation, sent two sailors to compete at the world level, including a female sailor who won the national qualifier. Anna attributes her success to consistency, showing up each day, and taking a holistic approach to sailing that emphasizes physical and mental well-being, equipment care, and respect for the environment. She leads by example as an active competitor herself and advises aspiring sailors to seek advice from those more experienced, surround themselves with higher performers, and approach challenges with a growth mindset while separating emotions from results.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Anna
01What do you attribute your success to?
Definitely showing up each day. Part of being good at sailing is consistency. It's not just like doing well in one race, it's doing well throughout your whole season and career. Like you have to put in a lot of time practicing, preparing. And there's so many elements that go into sailing. So kind of viewing sailing as like a holistic kind of unit and focus on well-being physically, mentally. Taking care of the equipment, and having a lot of like respect for the environment.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I guess just never be afraid to ask somebody that's better than you for advice, and if you're like the best way to get better at something is to surround yourself by to surround yourself with people that are better than you. Like exposing yourself to higher levels, and exposing yourself to people that do perform better than you and finding out why and really approaching sailing and life with like a growth mindset. Like maybe you were slow on Wednesday, and you if you're able to separate your emotions you can say, why was I slow on Wednesday? And you can think about it in more of a scientific way. Also like being able to separate like your results from your emotions is really awesome too.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.