Roy H. Smith
Roy left school in the North of England at 15 to work on a farm. At 18 he joined the British Army and later began leading military mountaineering expeditions, first in Europe then around world. During the 60s he became a safari and mountain guide in East Africa, leading groups to the summits of Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya and the heavily glaciated, Mountains of the Moon (Ruwenzoris). In 1966 he was chosen for the team that made the first ascent of the North Ridge of Alpamayo the last of the unclimbed 20,000 high peaks of the Andes.
Roy came to the United States in 1967 to work for the Colorado Outward Bound School and later introduced Outward Bound into higher education. He was a leader in the development of experiental corporate team-building programs in the early 1970s.
Supported by National Geographic, he led an expedition that made the first winter crossing of the Alaska Brooks Range on skis, a formidable 400 mile, forty day journey pulling sleds. In 1986 he led a major expedition down the 600 mile length of the Omo River in Ethiopia that was supported by National Geographic, Yale University and World Wildlife.
In 2004 he crewed on a 44catamaran around the tip of South America and sailed north, through the Straits of Magellan and up the remote coastline of southern Chile. The following year he skied across Finland from the Russian/ Finnish border to Sweden.
Roy is executive Producer of a 2009, Public TV documentary film, ?eadership on the Edge?
He has lectured at the National Geographic in Washington, D.C. in the IBM Distinguished Lecturer Series, for corporations and at major museums and universities in the United States, England and Canada.
Graduate work at Yale University School of Management convinced him that the lessons of leadership, building winning teams, and risk taking learned in an adventure setting, were highly relevant and applicable to the corporate world.
His experiences of working with people striving for extraordinary goals, often under exacting and life threatening circumstances- have given him remarkable insights into leadership and what it takes to motivate and produce the winning team.