Raha Moharrak

Why organisations work with Raha Moharrak

• Her core material is not motivational narrative – it is a documented, years-long record of calibrating risk, managing fear, sustaining team cohesion, and making irreversible decisions at altitude. Organisations get specific behavioural insight, not a metaphor.
• She holds two verified world firsts simultaneously: first Saudi woman to summit Everest, and first Arab woman to complete all Seven Summits. That combination of record and cultural context is not available from any other speaker in the leadership or resilience space.
• Her career was built in advertising and visual communication – at Leo Burnett and in senior art direction – before and during her climbing career. She frames extreme experience with a practitioner’s precision, not a competitor’s self-regard.
• In 2023 she returned to Everest with Adidas TERREX specifically to guide two young women from the region through a competitive selection process to the summit. Her argument is not only about what individuals can endure – it is about what leaders must do to build capability in the people who come after them.
• For GCC and MENA leadership audiences in particular, she speaks as a cultural insider who navigated societal constraint as well as physical extremity. That dual dimension – societal ambition alongside physical risk – resonates in ways that an equivalent Western adventure speaker cannot replicate.

Biography highlights

• First Saudi woman and youngest Arab to summit Mount Everest, 18 May 2013 – confirmed by IOC, Arab News, Gulf News, Esquire Middle East
• First Saudi woman to complete the Seven Summits – the highest peak on each of the seven continents – by 2017
• Keynote speaker at the 10th IOC World Conference on Sport and the Environment, alongside UNEP Patron of the Oceans Lewis Pugh
• Esquire Middle East Woman of the Year 2017; Emirates Woman of the Year 2017
• First Arab brand ambassador for TAG Heuer, joining the watchmaker’s global roster alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Bella Hadid
• BA in Visual Communication, American University of Sharjah; MBA in Women’s Leadership, Synergy University Dubai
• Career in advertising and brand as Art Director at Leo Burnett and UPNDO; TV presenter at MBC Group and Dubai Media Incorporated
• Returned to Everest in 2023 in a partnership with Adidas TERREX to mentor and guide two young women from the region to the summit

Biography

Leadership development rarely simulates the conditions that matter most: when planning has failed, options have narrowed, and the decision in front of you cannot be undone. What equips a leader to perform at that moment – to manage their own fear, hold the confidence of their team, and act on incomplete information – is the question Raha Moharrak has spent over a decade exploring in the most unforgiving conditions available.

Moharrak is the first Saudi woman to summit Mount Everest and the first Arab woman to complete all Seven Summits – the highest peak on each continent. The Everest summit came on 18 May 2013, as part of the Arabs with Altitude expedition. The Seven Summits were completed by 2017. Each ascent required months of logistical preparation, self-funded risk-taking, and sustained performance when weather, physical failure, or the behaviour of others threatened the outcome. None of it was carried out with a safety net.

Her background is not that of a career athlete. She trained as a graphic designer, built her early career as Art Director at Leo Burnett, and continued in brand and media roles – including presenting for MBC Group and Dubai Media Incorporated – while climbing in parallel. That discipline of clear, purposeful communication shapes how she translates high-altitude experience for corporate audiences: with precision, not spectacle.

In 2023, Moharrak returned to Everest not to repeat her record but to bring two young women from the region with her, through a competition run in partnership with Adidas TERREX. That decision – to move from being the first to actively enabling the next – defines what her work now asks of organisations: not merely to celebrate resilience, but to build and transfer it deliberately.

Key speaking topics

• Leadership under extreme pressure
• Risk assessment and decision-making with incomplete information
• Resilience and mental endurance
• Fear management and performance in hostile conditions
• Ambition beyond societal constraint
• Legacy and generational capability transfer
• Women’s leadership in the Arab world

Ideal for

• Senior leadership teams in organisations operating in sustained conditions of uncertainty, transformation, or risk
• CHROs and talent development leads building high-performance and resilience frameworks
• Corporate conferences in the GCC and MENA region where the cultural dimension of ambition and barrier-breaking carries direct relevance
• Events and boards focused on inclusive leadership, particularly where the gap between stated commitment and actual practice is the live tension

Audience outcomes

• A concrete, first-person account of how decision-making, risk calibration, and team management actually function when the consequences of failure are real and irreversible
• Specific frameworks for distinguishing productive discomfort – the kind that precedes growth – from signals of genuine danger
• Practical perspective on what mental preparation for extreme conditions looks like, transferable to organisational contexts where sustained pressure is the norm
• A reframed understanding of ambition: what it means to pursue a goal against external constraint, and how that differs from goal-setting in permissive environments
• Reflection on leadership legacy – the deliberate move from personal achievement to building capability and confidence in others