BEAR GRYLLS
Mountaineer and motivational speaker
His natural ability to communicate makes Bear Grylls' talks and presentations both challenging and entertaining.
At only 23 years of age, Bear Grylls became the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest. This was even more remarkable as only two years before he had broken his back during a parachute jump.
The parachute failed to open and Bear broke two vertebrae and chipped a third and narrowly missed severing his spinal cord. However during all those months lying in agony in his bed he kept his childhood dream alive.
Through sheer commitment and persistence, training and planning Bear entered The Guinness Book of Records and joined only thirty British climbers to have successfully climbed Everest.
At 07.22 am on May 26 1998, ninety days after the start of his ascent, Bear reached the summit, but he had overcome extreme weather, two months of limited sleep and almost running out of oxygen deep inside the 'death zone' (above 26,000 ft).
When he was on the way down from his first reconnaissance climb on the mountain, the ice gave way beneath him and he fell into a crevasse, was knocked unconscious and when he came to, was swinging on the end of a rope.
On either side were sheer walls and below him - nothing just a yawning chasm stretching away into darkness. He saw no one for four hours. Luckily one of the team climbers appeared from nowhere and hauled him up.
Prior to the Everest Expedition, Bear spent three years with the British Special Forces as a specialist combat survival instructor and patrol medic.
In September 1997 he became the youngest Briton ever to climb Mount Ama Dabla in the Himalayas (22,500 ft) a peak once described by Sir Edmund Hillary as 'unclimbable'.
His entertaining and humorous delivery have already brought him to the attention of television programmes such as This Morning ITV, BBC Television's Ainsley's Meals in Minutes, the Bigger Breakfast CH4, ITV2's Bedrock and National Geographic Production's Explorer's Journal.
He has given talks recently to clients such as The Institute of Directors, Creating Young Leaders for the Future, presentation for The Industrial Society, speaker at The Leading Edge Convention for The Institute of Grocery Distribution and British Telecom.
The youngest motivational business speaker on the international circuit, last year Bear undertook a speaking tour of large businesses in South Africa and he continues to speak on themes such as leadership and teamwork in the UK and Europe.