Chris Moon

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, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, Skanska, Direct Line Group and London Business School executive programmes, typically on leadership in high-pressure environments.

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 tend to be those in which decisions carry operational weight: Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Skanska, Direct Line Group, and London Business School executive programmes. In those rooms, his argument keeps coming back to one observation. 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 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
• Health and safety conferences where the audience is operational leadership

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