Paul Deegan

With his personal stories and experience, Paul Deegan shares the lessons he’s learned about leading your team in an uncertain world and what are the drivers of determination. Audiences learn the importance of ensuring that every member of your team is more talented than the leader, the philosophy for invisible leadership, why there can be no room for passengers on any team and how to overcome self-doubt and reduce fear of failure. After proposing and co-leading the original Everest cleanup expedition when he was just 18 years old, Deegan turned his back on a promising career in refuse collection and instead made two unsuccessful attempts to climb the world’s highest mountain. One of these expeditions took place during the worst disaster in Everest’s history—the 1996 Into Thin Air storm. Rocked by the deaths of 11 climbers, Deegan vowed never to go back to the mountain. But several years later, a chance encounter with a legendary mountaineer, Anatoli Boukreev, impelled Deegan to break his promise and he returned to Everest a few months before his nuptials in a final attempt to reach the top of the world. Deegan’s multifarious adventures include a journey along an iced-over Himalayan river in a gorge deeper than the Grand Canyon, a voyage to the rarely visited Nicobar Islands and a stint at a scientific research station on the frozen Arctic Ocean. On the eve of the 21st century, Deegan led an expedition to what the BBC described as “one of the world’s last unexplored ranges”—the Eastern Pamirs on the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China. More people have stood on the moon than on the mountains that Paul’s team scaled. Dozens of publications ranging from The Times of London to Geographical (the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society) have published hundreds of Deegan’s expedition, travel and environmental stories. His first book, The Mountain Traveller’s Handbook, received an award at the U.S. National Outdoor Book Awards.