Anna Wardley is a British endurance swimmer, motivational speaker, and founder CEO of the Luna Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to transforming the support for children and young people after suicide.

As a sought-after keynote speaker, she inspires audiences around the world with her story of overcoming adversity and a deeply personal mission to improve the support for children left behind after suicide.

Her dad, Ralph, took his own life when she was nine and that loss has had a profound impact on both her own life and the lives of those around her. She has raised more than £125,000 for suicide-related causes through a series of gruelling endurance swims around the world and in 2013 was named Inspirational Woman of the Year in the Johnston Press South Awards in recognition of her ‘incredible swimming achievements and outstanding efforts raising money for charity’.

After teaching herself to swim front crawl in her 30s, Anna has completed many of the world’s most challenging swims including the English Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Hellespont Channel from Europe to Asia, around the islands of Portsea and Jersey, and she has also competed at the World Ice Swimming Championships.

Anna’s first attempt to swim from England to France in 2007, a year after she took up swimming, left her hospitalised with hypothermia, shock and exhaustion after more than 14 hours in the water.

But two years later, after making the intensely difficult decision to try again, she made it. It was a particularly gruelling swim that took 21 hours and 20 minutes during which time she faced thick fog, darkness and jellyfish. Anna’s crossing was singled out by the Channel Swimming Association to receive its prestigious Van Audenaerde Trophy for the Greatest Feat of Endurance.

In 2013 she became the fourth person to swim solo and non-stop around the Isle of Wight in the UK, covering 103km in 26 hours and 33 minutes.

In 2019 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to carry out international research focused on improving the support for children after parental suicide. She published her report entitled Time to Count in December 2021 sharing her findings from her visits to pioneering organisations in Australia, Denmark, Sweden and the USA, and recommendations to improve the provision in the UK.

Anna has also completed a 38,000-mile circumnavigation in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race in the mixed crew of 12 on a 60-ft ocean racing yacht.