Jason Fox

Why organisations work with Jason Fox

• He speaks with the authority of someone who ran hostage rescue, counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics operations at Sergeant rank in the Special Boat Service, not someone interpreting that world from outside it.
• His account of complex PTSD and recovery, set out in the Sunday Times number one bestseller Battle Scars, gives senior leaders a usable frame for talking about mental health with people who will not respond to standard corporate wellbeing language.
• He translates the team standards that kept SBS troops alive into the behaviours that hold a leadership team together during restructures, market shocks and public failure. The vocabulary is operational, not motivational.
• Organisations that have put him in front of their teams get a speaker who has also led a Guinness-record Atlantic row and a 1,980-mile unsupported Yukon kayak, which means the lessons on preparation, teamwork and composure come from current practice as well as past service.

Biography highlights

• Royal Marine Commando from age 16; Sergeant in the Special Boat Service; approximately 20 years in UK Special Forces before medical discharge in 2012.
• Longest-serving directing staff on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins; former directing staff on SAS Australia.
• Presenter of Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, filmed in Mexico, Colombia and Peru.
• Author of Battle Scars (Sunday Times number one bestseller, Bantam Press) and Life Under Fire (Penguin Random House).
• Co-founder of Rock2Recovery, providing mental health support to serving personnel, veterans and their families.
• Guinness World Record holder with Team Essence for the first unsupported east-to-west Atlantic row, Lagos to Venezuela, 50 days, 2016; led an unsupported 1,980-mile Yukon River kayak expedition in 2019.

Biography

Hostage rescue, maritime counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics work in the Special Boat Service demand a style of leadership that most organisations only discover they lack once something has already gone wrong. Fox spent two decades inside that environment, joining the Royal Marines at sixteen and reaching Sergeant rank in the SBS before a complex PTSD diagnosis forced a medical discharge in 2012.

The second half of his career has been about translating that experience into language corporate leaders can actually use. His first book, Battle Scars, reached number one on the Sunday Times list and opened a serious conversation about how elite operators break, recover and rebuild. Life Under Fire, published by Penguin Random House, sets out the team habits and personal disciplines he saw work under fire.

Audiences know him from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, where he has served as the longest-standing directing staff, and from the Channel 4 documentary series Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, in which he reported from cartel-affected communities across Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Alongside television and writing, he co-founded Rock2Recovery with fellow former Royal Marine Jamie Sanderson to give veterans faster routes into mental health support.

The adventures reinforce the argument rather than decorate it. In 2016 Fox was part of Team Essence, which set the Guinness World Record as the first team to row the Atlantic unsupported east-to-west from mainland Europe to mainland South America, 3,308 nautical miles in fifty days. In 2019 he kayaked the Yukon River, 1,980 miles unsupported, in aid of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity. Both are reference points he uses with leadership teams to make the case that composure, preparation and team trust are trained, not inherited.

Key speaking topics

• Leadership and decision-making under extreme pressure
• Team performance in high-stakes environments
• Resilience and recovery from operational trauma
• Mental health and PTSD in high-performing populations
• Risk assessment and mission planning
• Accountability and standards inside elite teams

Ideal for

• Executive and senior leadership teams navigating restructures, crisis response or reputational pressure
• Boards and operating committees rebuilding trust after a serious incident
• Safety-critical and frontline-heavy organisations (defence, energy, logistics, emergency services) where team decision-making is the core asset
• CHRO and wellbeing leads building a mental health programme that needs credibility with male-heavy or frontline workforces

Audience outcomes

• A working picture of how elite military teams run planning, rehearsal and after-action review, and where those practices map onto corporate leadership
• A usable vocabulary for discussing mental health with people who dismiss standard wellbeing language
• Sharper thinking on what individual composure and team standards look like when conditions actually deteriorate
• A first-person account of PTSD and recovery that makes the business case for early intervention concrete rather than abstract