Oli France
Senior teams are being asked to make decisions in conditions they were never trained for: compressed timelines and incomplete information. The instinct is to retreat into process. What gets lost is composure, and with it the authority to ask people to follow you when the route ahead is genuinely unclear.
Oli France teaches senior teams how composure and judgement hold up under sustained pressure, drawing on fifteen years of expeditions through conflict zones and remote terrain in more than 85 countries.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Oli France
- The Ultimate Seven Project is still running. Africa, North America and South America are complete, which means the keynote is built on expedition evidence that keeps being added to.
- He has led teams up Iraq’s highest mountain, through the militia-filled jungles of DR Congo and the backstreets of Aleppo, and crossed 405 miles of frozen Lake Baikal alone hauling a 60kg sledge.
- Death Valley to Denali, 3,588 miles in 64 days, gives the keynote a decision-making case study that the BBC, The Times, National Geographic and Red Bull all covered.
- He founded Wild Edge, which runs bespoke expeditions for corporate and private groups, and hosts The Wild Edge Podcast, where he interviews people working at the extreme end of human performance.
- His client list runs from McKinsey, Accenture and KPMG to Rolls-Royce, Google, HP, DHL, Prudential, AIA, AbbVie and Equinor, with audiences from small leadership teams up to 500 people, in person and virtual.
Biography highlights
- Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, qualified Winter Mountain Leader and remote first aider, with a BA in Outdoor Leadership.
- Author of The Trail of the Mountain Folk (2017), based on a 108-day solo winter crossing of the mountainous spine of Asia from Hong Kong to Istanbul, covering eleven countries and fourteen mountain climbs.
- Founder of Wild Edge, host of The Wild Edge Podcast.
- Currently completing The Ultimate Seven, a world-first series of human-powered journeys from lowest point to highest summit on each continent, being filmed by True to Nature for broadcast.
- Death Valley to Denali, 3,588 miles in 64 days, the first person this century to complete the journey by human power. Coverage in BBC, The Times, National Geographic and Red Bull.
- Has led expeditions in over 85 countries including Iraq, DR Congo, Somalia, Socotra, Siberia, Tajikistan, and the Aleppo region of Syria.
Biography
Lac Assal in Djibouti is the lowest point on the African continent. Kilimanjaro is the highest. Oli France cycled and climbed the 1,636 miles between them in 28 days, the first leg of an ongoing world-first sequence called The Ultimate Seven. The South America leg followed in January 2025, 1,730 miles from Laguna del Carbon to Aconcagua in 34 days, through 49 mph Patagonian winds and 43-degree desert heat.
Each leg adds to the record. France comes back from every expedition with new material on planning under unknowns and on leading small teams through compounding risk. The Death Valley to Denali leg in spring 2024 made him the first person this century to travel by human power from the lowest point in North America to the highest, and was covered by the BBC, The Times, National Geographic and Red Bull.
France is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, holds a BA in Outdoor Leadership and both summer and winter British Mountain Leader awards. His first book, The Trail of the Mountain Folk, was published in 2017 after he travelled overland alone from Hong Kong to Istanbul across the spine of Asia in winter, eleven countries and fourteen mountain climbs over 108 days. He founded Wild Edge to lead small groups into hard-to-reach terrain, and hosts The Wild Edge Podcast, where he interviews operators working at the extreme end of human performance.
On stage the consequences stay concrete: minefields, militia, meningitis, dehydration, weather windows that close inside an hour. France has delivered this to McKinsey, Accenture, KPMG, Rolls-Royce, Google, DHL and Equinor, and to a room of risk managers representing dozens of FTSE 100 and 250 companies at an insurance industry keynote.
Key speaking topics
- Leading with clarity in complex conditions
- High-performing teams under pressure
- Decision-making with incomplete information
- Self-leadership and composure
- Intelligent risk-taking
- Resilience in extreme environments
- Expedition planning and risk management
Ideal for
- Executive leadership offsites and CEO summits where the brief calls for a credible non-management voice on resilience and judgement
- Company conferences, all-hands and sales kick-offs wanting a named expedition as the spine of the keynote
- Programme leads running high-stakes change rollouts, restructures or operational recovery
- After-dinner and award ceremony slots where authority and storytelling matter equally
Audience outcomes
- A working language for composure: how senior people hold their judgement together when the plan stops cooperating
- Oli’s AAA frame, Awareness, Anticipation and Adaptability, applied to decisions their own organisation is facing
- His World-Class Basics argument about what consistent execution requires when conditions deteriorate
- A specific, recent expedition case study attendees can reference with their own teams afterwards
Talks
How leaders cut through complexity and give teams enough conviction to keep moving when the path ahead is uncertain.
Key takeaways:
- How to focus a team on what matters most when the information is incomplete
- Making better decisions under time and consequence pressure
- What clarity from a leader actually sounds like to the people receiving it
What separates good teams from great ones once the stakes rise, drawn from leading small teams in conflict zones and remote terrain.
Key takeaways:
- Trust and communication inside small teams under stress
- Why zero complacency has to be an operating habit
- The World-Class Basics that drive consistent execution
A case for curiosity and intelligent risk-taking as the working response to having no map.
Key takeaways:
- How adaptability is built before it is needed
- Intelligent risk-taking, and where the line sits
- How teams move from reacting to change to shaping it