Current Show

9 Lessons in Leadership From a Life on the Edge

Explorer Mark Jenkins is one of the most sought-after leadership keynote speakers around the world. He has given over 300 presentations for a vast array of corporations, conventions, universities, public organizations and clients. With humor, candor and understanding, Jenkins takes the audience around the world to reveal the hard-won lessons learned in the field.

From climbing Everest to being captured by Congolese rebels, from kayking down the Niger River in West Africa to crossing Afghanistan during the war, National Geographic writer, foreign correspondent and author Mark Jenkins will discuss the reasons for successful leadership under difficult and dangerous situations. How to train yourself to stay calm, how to prepare for a mission, how to develop the most effective leadership skills.

  • As a national industry advocate, I want my business leaders to see well beyond the rest. Mark Jenkins delivers that vision, pushing outer boundaries of adventure and shaping perspectives along the way. Few can do this better than Mark. His experience and passionate stories from parts of the world few will ever witness firsthand helps define how society can and should think differently."

    Chris Spear, President & CEO American Truck Association

  • Mark's Fascinating experiences as an explorer and journalist under extreme conditions offered piercing insights into leadership and problem solving in the midst of crisis. Mark's lessons are not merely practical; they expose the timeless struggles leaders face to accomplish missions and manage people. Employing his gift of story-telling, coupled with beautiful and poignant photography, Mark outlines nine universal lessons of leadership that are easily understood and free of needless jargon or catch-phrases. In the end, Mark Illustrates that no matter the circumstances, true and effective leadership always spring best from strength of character and humility.

    Ed Panetta, Federal Law Enforcement Officer

  • Mark Jenkins is the real Indiana Jones. From the summit of Mt. Everest to the depths of the deepest cave on earth, from the wards in Afghanistan, the Congo and Burma to the wastelands of the Arctic, Siberia and the Sahara, Mark Jenkins brings back stories and lessons of life on the edge."

    Laurie Nichols, former President of the University of Wyoming

Everest The Hard Way

Six Vital Lessons for Leadership

In this one-hour program, using award-winning National Geographic photography, Mark Jenkins identifies the six vital lessons for great leadership.  

Mark Jenkins first went to Mount Everest as the youngest member of the 1986 U.S. Everest North Face expedition. Being one of the first American expeditions to attempt Everest from the Tibetan side, the team endeavored to ascend a difficult, unclimbed line up the middle of the 9000-foot North Face of Everest. They spent over 60 days on the sheer icy face, climbing with no porters and no Sherpas. Jenkins put up the highest rope on this expedition, well above 8000 meters. But the monsoon came early that year and avalanches began blasting down the North Face. To avoid loss of life, the team was forced to abandon their attempt on Mt. Everest.

During the next two decades, Jenkins became one of the most experienced mountaineers on the planet, putting up hard routes in mountains around the world, from the Alps to the Andes, Africa to Asia to the Arctic. In 2012, Jenkins was invited on the National Geographic Society 50th anniversary expedition of Mt. Everest. He would chronicle this expedition in real-time blogs, a feature story in National Geographic Magazine, and in a National Geographic book. Taking the standard route up the Southeast Ridge, Jenkins and his team successfully summited Everest on 16 May, 2012.

Why did his first attempt on Everest fail, and the second succeed? What leadership lessons did he learn in the 25 years of expeditions between his first and second Everest attempt? Jenkins has been on expeditions that went smoothly, and expeditions in which climbers were killed. The difference is always leadership. Whether in business, on a mountain, or in combat, success is always entirely dependent on the brinkmanship of the leader. 

 
 

Three recent leadership programs still available

Expedition Burma

When to Push and When to Quit

 Dispatches from Dangerous Places

Six Lessons from a Foreign Correspondent

Jumping Fire

Life or death lessons from Smokejumpers

To book Mark for speaking events:

Call: 307-760-3275

Email: addi@cumbrecommunications.com

Beyond the subject of leadership, Mark Jenkins has given presentations on numerous environmental and social issues. Titles of previous presentations include:

“Going To Extremes: Encounters with Earth, Wind and Water”

“Vietnam Underground: The Viet Cong, Spelunkers and the  Biggest Cave on Earth”

“The Healing Fields: The Legacy of Landmines”

“Guns, Gorillas and Laptops: How We Are All Unwittingly Connected”

“Off the Map: Bicycling Across Sibera”

“A Geographer’s Life: Stories from a National Geographic Writer”

“Lost Horizons: The Unclimbed Peaks of Eastern Tibet”

“Tea, Trade Tyranny: The Relationship of Tibet and China over Time”

“Oasis of Peace: An Expedition to Egypt”

“BikEcology: Bicycles Can Save the Planet”

“Last of the First Skiers: the 7000-year-old History of Skiing in China”

“Climbing Everest: The Myths, the Madness and the Macabre”