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Chris Moon
Most corporate resilience frameworks have never been stress-tested against genuine operational conditions. Crisis plans get rehearsed in conference rooms and then filed. When pressure actually arrives, the rehearsed response and the live situation turn out to be different problems.
Chris Moon helps senior leaders understand how people actually make decisions under extreme pressure, drawing on a career in British Army operations, humanitarian landmine clearance, and elite ultradistance endurance.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Chris Moon
- Reference points for crisis decision-making come directly from surviving Khmer Rouge captivity in Cambodia and self-treating critical injuries inside a Mozambique minefield after a landmine explosion in 1995.
- Brings formal academic grounding to the subject: a Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester, focused on human behaviour and management theory.
- Credentials a senior audience registers immediately: an MBE awarded in 1996 for services to the HALO Trust, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Plymouth, Leicester and Exeter.
- Has been booked by Microsoft, Barclays, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, Skanska, Müller, Morrison Utility Services and Direct Line Group, and by executive programmes at London Business School and Henley Business School.
Biography highlights
- Former British Army officer, commissioned into the Royal Military Police after graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
- Led landmine clearance operations for the HALO Trust in Cambodia and Mozambique from 1993; awarded MBE in 1996 for services to demining.
- Survived abduction by Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia and negotiated the release of himself and two colleagues from captivity.
- Lost his right arm and lower right leg after a landmine explosion in a supposedly cleared safety lane in Mozambique in 1995.
- First amputee to complete the Marathon des Sables (1997); subsequently completed the Badwater 135 ultra in Death Valley and, in 2024, a solo unsupported 500-mile Camino de Santiago at age 62.
- Author of One Step Beyond (Pan Macmillan); Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester; honorary doctorates from Plymouth, Leicester and Exeter.
Biography
A landmine detonated in a supposedly cleared safety lane in Mozambique in 1995. Chris Moon, then running mine clearance for the HALO Trust, lost his right arm and lower right leg. He treated himself where he lay, and reached a South African hospital where doctors said they had never seen anyone survive with so little blood remaining.
Moon came to the work through the British Army. After Sandhurst and three years of operational duty with the Royal Military Police, he left in 1993 to lead landmine clearance operations for the HALO Trust. Two years before the Mozambique explosion, he had already negotiated his way out of Khmer Rouge captivity in Cambodia along with two colleagues. The MBE followed in 1996, for services to demining.
Within a year of leaving hospital he completed the London Marathon. In 1997 he became the first amputee to complete the Marathon des Sables, the 250km race across the Sahara. The Badwater 135 in Death Valley followed. At age 62, in 2024, he completed a solo unsupported 500-mile Camino de Santiago. Alongside the endurance work he holds a Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester and serves as an adviser to the NHS on prosthetics.
The organisations that retain him now run from Microsoft, Barclays and Ernst & Young to Skanska, Müller and Morrison Utility Services, along with executive programmes at London Business School and Henley Business School. The brief changes with the room. The argument does not: the responses leaders fall back on under severe pressure are the ones they have already rehearsed in ordinary conditions.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership and decision-making under pressure
- Crisis response and operational risk
- Resilience and human performance
- Safety culture in high-risk industries
- Personal accountability in operational settings
Ideal for
- Senior leadership teams and health and safety conferences in operationally intensive industries: construction, utilities, energy, defence, transport
- Heads of risk, safety and security responsible for how the organisation performs in a crisis
- Boards and executive programmes working on leadership in high-pressure conditions
- Year-end celebrations and New Year kick-offs, where the brief is an after-dinner or opening session for the whole workforce
Audience outcomes
- Recalibration of what operating “under pressure” actually involves when conditions are genuine
- A stock of specific, verifiable examples of decision-making in extreme conditions that audiences can apply to their own work
- Vocabulary for discussing risk, accountability and resilience that is grounded in operational terms
- A baseline for what sustained performance under difficult conditions looks like across three decades
Talks
A session for New Year kick-offs and celebration events on adapting and recovering when conditions change, delivered with humour and without forecasts about automation.
Key takeaways:
- Perspective on an organisation’s own pressures, set against conditions in Cambodia and Mozambique.
- Ways to recover from a reversal and keep going, drawn from Moon’s rehabilitation and three decades of ultradistance racing.
- A shared experience for the whole room, with the humour carrying the argument.
Available as a keynote or after-dinner session, with live Q&A and an optional follow-up workshop, in person or virtual.