In 2017 he completed an expedition with National Geographic Partners and Cisco to walk 1,686km across all of the UK’s national parks and cities while wearing a headset that mapped his emotions. Demonstrating how people, things, technology and nature can be better connected to improve life in cities, the project created an estimated 50,000,000 PR impressions around the world and won the 2017 Festival of Media award for Best Use of Geo-location.

Daniel has walked across some of the world’s largest cities including Mexico City, Mumbai and London. He’s also been on urban polar explorations that go from the most to least violent parts of a city and walked the height of Mount Everest by only using steps in London’s buildings. Most recently he walked a 563km spiral from the far north of the capital to the city’s centre to help catalyse the London National Park City campaign. On this walk he was joined by mayors, celebrities, community activists, business leaders and local residents.

In 2014 Daniel completed 125 micro-adventures across all of the UK’s regions with his son. As part of a partnership between National Geographic and Toyota to promote the new RAV4, the project included climbing, kayaking, canyoning, wild swimming, hill rolling and one hundred and twenty other challenges between Cornwall and the Shetlands. For each adventure Daniel wrote adventure reports which included inspiring photography and dozens of self-shot videos.

As an urban explorer and geographer Daniel is fascinated by the things that shape places and how we can make them better. That’s why InterContinental Hotels & Resorts in partnership with TED asked Daniel to facilitate an international conversation on the Future of Local. The purpose of the project was to find out how the benefits of globalisation can best be balanced with the needs of local places. Daniel presented an award winning film and led conversations at TED Active in Palm Springs.

Daniel was a geography teacher for nearly 7 years. During this time he was always exploring new ways to bring the outside world into the classroom and take young people out into the outside world. One of his projects involved travelling to Sao Tome and Principe, a small island state in the Gulf of Guinea, to film a virtual field trip so that his students could explore the island’s communities, habitats and volcanoes. Shortly after arriving back in the UK the footage was used by The Workshop to create a cutting-edge virtual learning game for BBC Learning. An active geography campaigner, Daniel was picked to be a guest editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.

Daniel is a disruptive and highly-thought provoking speaker who uses the power of exploration to challenge people’s ideas. He has given talks on every major continent bar Antarctica. Clients include TEDx, HICAP (Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific), WorldHotels in Monaco, software giants ESRI, infrastructure designers AECOM and presented on the prestigious main stage at the National Geographic Society in Washington DC on many occasions.

In his thought-provoking and inspiring talks, Daniel explains how he uses adventure to shape new ideas, challenge the status-quo and provoke positive change. His stories include walking 1,686km across all the UK’s national parks and cities as a mind-reading cyborg, hiking the Height of Mount Everest without leaving London, how he’s proved that New Zealand almost certainly does not exist and why he plans for his next major expedition to be just 100 metres long.

Themes

Adventure, Change, Innovation, Sustainability & Environment

Call +44 1753 439 289 or email Great British Speakers now to book Daniel Raven Ellison to host your next live event.  Contact us.