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Alex Staniforth is a record-breaking adventurer, performance coach, author, and charity founder from Chester who is no stranger to overcoming adversity.
Alex has overcome more challenges before the age of 30 than most face in a lifetime — including surviving the two biggest disasters in Mount Everest history as a teenager. His toughest battles were even closer to home: with epilepsy, a stammer, bullying and mental ill health since childhood. But Alex refused to be defeated.
Despite numerous setbacks, Alex raised over £35,000 in corporate sponsorship while still at school to pursue his dream of climbing Mount Everest. His 2014 expedition ended when a tragic avalanche took sixteen lives. A year later, he was trapped at Camp 1 for two days during the Nepal earthquake, while another avalanche took the lives of three teammates at Base Camp.
However, this only inspired Alex to redefine success: pushing the limits of human performance and helping others achieve theirs. He became the first and fastest person to run and cycle all 446 mountains in England and Wales in just 45 days, complete the National Three Peaks Challenge entirely on foot within 9 days, and is the fastest person to climb all 100 UK county tops by human power. He has written two books (Icefall and Another Peak), founded Mind Over Mountains – a charity restoring mental wellbeing through nature, and raised more than £150,000 for charity. In 2025 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Chester for his contribution to young people’s mental health.
However, Alex is not your typical motivational speaker. He leads audiences on an emotional, human and inspirational journey with powerful lessons from adventure, high-performance and practical resilience tools in his ‘Resilience Rucksack’ that anyone can relate to.
He has been trusted by global organisations including Rolls-Royce, Bank of America, Samsung, Accenture, FedEx and the NHS – helping teams and leaders build the resilience and mindset to thrive through challenges, embrace change and achieve the extraordinary. Why settle for Base Camp?
With a humble and relatable style, Alex delivers inspirational keynote presentations in person, virtually and hybrid. Presentations are typically 30-60 minutes with Q&A, but Alex will work meticulously with your brief to understand what success would look like for your audience.
Challenges and change are inevitable; being defeated is optional. It’s time to re-define resilience in our rapidly changing world. Resilience is no longer about bouncing back or enduring to breaking point: it’s how we recharge, prepare and move forward despite adversity, even when we can’t see the top of the mountain.
Drawing lessons from ultra-endurance and adventure challenges, Alex will share the tools in his ‘Resilience Rucksack’ that anyone can apply to overcome challenges and maintain performance under pressure and uncertainty – especially when the whole team depends on it.
We all have our own ‘Everest’ to climb. Yet fear of failure often prevents us from taking the first step towards our full potential: when staying at Base Camp may be the greatest risk of all.
This is not a typical success story. Drawing on two near-death experiences on Everest, alongside challenges closer to home, Alex offers a powerful and human perspective on success, failure, and resilience in the face of adversity and change.
Alex shares the pillars of effective goal-setting to build motivation, strengthen teamwork, and develop a growth mindset — empowering teams to improve performance and achieve the seemingly impossible.
Why settle for Base Camp?
High performance isn’t sustainable without managing our well-being too. With refreshing vulnerability, Alex openly shares his own mental health journey as a young man to encourage open conversations about mental health, whilst challenging the myths and stigma that costs thousands of lives each year. For leaders, supporting others often starts by putting our hand up first.
Drawing on his ultra-endurance challenges and lived experiences, Alex shares practical tools to proactively build our mental fitness: helping individuals and teams protect their wellbeing, manage stress, spot early warning signs and avoid burnout – one small step at a time.
Alex recently joined us at the launch event for our High Potential programme as the keynote speaker. Alex perfectly combined his story and experiences with the theme of Achieving Your Potential. He captured the audience through his ability to authentically articulate his drive and determination, overcoming many challenges in his way, as well as finding beauty and lessons through ‘failure’. Alex collaborated with my team in preparing for the event such attention to detail, ensuring his talk would not only resonate but inspire the audience. And that it did! Feedback received from participants was exceptional, so many inspired to push outside of their comfort zone and to see what opportunities lie ahead. Myself included!
Thanks so much for coming down to talk with the team. You absolutely hit the brief – everyone has been talking about it ever since. It also encouraged one or two people to open up about their own anxieties and stories later in the day. And we had some really healthy conversations.
