Mark Evans – Keynote Speaker

Based in Muscat, Oman, Mark Evans is an experienced desert and polar explorer, writer, speaker and wilderness advocate. He is a consultant in the fields of expedition logistics, risk mitigation and fund-raising, and is a Fellow of the Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographical Society in London.

Some twenty years spent living and travelling extensively in Arabia give Evans an unrivalled knowledge of the region. In November 2015, with several Arab companions, he recreated the first ever crossing of the Rub Al Khali, the largest sand desert on earth. The journey made use of modern technology to demonstrate how Arabia and its people have changed.

Evans’s entrepreneurial spirit has seen him raise more than 26 million GBP from corporate and government sectors in the past ten years. He is currently the Executive Director of Outward Bound Oman, a not for profit organisation and the first and only Outward Bound school in an Arabic speaking country.

Evans has written 3 books and delivers engaging lectures to audiences all over the world. His expeditions have brought him into contact with tribes such as the Inuit and the Bedouin who have existed for thousands of years in incredibly hostile environments. Evans shows what can be learnt from them.

One of Evans’s more extraordinary projects saw him give up his career for one whole year to live in a small tent within 500 miles of the North Pole in temperatures that fell to minus 37 degrees Celsius, with four months of total darkness. Leading a team of 30 inexperienced people in this fiercely inhospitable environment enabled Mark to make connections to the grass root challenges of leadership and project management faced by the corporate world on a daily basis.

Evans’s creativity in the field of outdoor education and youth development saw him recognised as a Pioneer to the Life of the Nation at Buckingham Palace in 2003. In 2004, he established the Connecting Cultures initiative, a world leading civil society initiative.
In 2011 Evans received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth for his services to intercultural understanding.