Holly Budge

Holly Budge has been described as “one of the UK’s most accomplished female adventurers”, and with good reason. She has summited, and was the first woman to sky dive Mount Everest, she holds the world record for having raced 1000kms across Mongolia on horseback, and she has been at the front line of the Black Mambas anti-poaching unit.

But more than that, Holly Budge has motivated thousands of others, world wide, to pursue their own adventures, simply by demonstrating how taking purposeful, actionable steps can propel you to reach big goals in life and work.

Holly’s nail-biting stories and powerful videos amaze and entertain, all the while guiding her audience through the benefits of taking action.

More about Holly Budge:

At the age of 21, Holly threw herself out of a perfectly good aeroplane for the first time in New Zealand. That sixty seconds of adrenaline (and sheer terror) changed the course of her life forever. It hadn’t occurred to her that people were getting paid to jump out of aeroplanes for a living! Funnily enough Holly’s school career’s advisor hadn’t mentioned this! Holly decided that was the job she wanted. Six months later, with lots of training, dedication and hard work, she achieved her rather far-fetched goal. On reflection, she refers to this as the ‘boldness’ of youth as when she set herself that goal, she knew nobody in NZ, she knew nothing about skydiving or filming but none of that mattered because she knew she could learn those skills or at least try. Achieving this goal gave Holly immense confidence and self-belief that she could achieve whatever she set her mind too.

Following on with this positive mindset, Holly became the first woman to skydive Everest and race semi-wild horses 1000 kms across Mongolia in just nine days. Additionally, she graduated with a masters in Sustainable Design, which opened up a world of possibility, knowledge and passion for her.

As the founder of the award-winning charity How Many Elephants, Holly has educated people around the world about the devastating impacts of the elephant ivory trade, and raised almost AU$600,000 for charitable initiatives. With a strong social conscience, she has immersed herself with the Black Mambas, an all female, front-line, anti poaching team in South Africa supported by How Many Elephants.

A powerful keynote speaker, Holly draws on her first-hand experience of testing her limits and overcoming challenges to inspire others to do much more and go much further than they think they can. She demonstrates the importance of maintaining a positive mindset and backing yourself to make good decisions, especially in times of adversity. Through real life examples, Holly shows us why we should never underestimate the sheer power of the human mind and body.

Holly’s audiences have included Eton College, JP Morgan, BBC News, University of Oxford, Shell, The North Face and TedX Brighton. Her presentations incorporate a powerful collection of photographs and videos from previous expeditions.

Holly Budge talks about:

The Everest effect – turning fear into action – in this presentation, Holly encourages and inspires her audience to:

• Think big, dream bigger,
• Get comfortable with the feeling of being uncomfortable,
• Rationalise when your body is screaming NO but your mind is whispering yes,
• Breakdown big overwhelming challenges into management and achievable bite-sized tasks… and
• Say ‘yes’ to taking that first step to achieving your Everest.