Phil Ashby

Leadership
Motivation

Phil Ashby is a genuine hero. His autobiography ‘Unscathed’ (published by Macmillan in May 2002) rocketed into the bestseller list. To escape a desk job in London, he volunteered for a 6-month tour with the United Nations as a Peace Keeper in war-torn Sierra Leone (at the time the poorest country in the world). The mission was brought to a violent end when the rebels restarted the country’s civil war. They turned on the UN’s representatives, torturing and butchering them and taking over 500 hostages. Phil and three other Western soldiers found themselves cut off in a small compound in hostile territory, surrounded by rebels who taunted them by throwing the blood-stained uniforms of fellow UN workers over the walls.

After four days of physical and psychological bombardment with no hope of rescue, Phil took the decision to risk being killed trying to escape rather than be taken alive. So at 2.45 am the next morning, faces blackened with charcoal, he led his team over the wall. They were surrounded by rebel troops and outnumbered by at least twenty to one and were completely unarmed. Their chances of escaping alive were very slim. Despite trekking day and night for almost a week without food or water, Phil found the courage and strength to lead his colleagues on a daring and dramatic race to freedom through the hostile jungle. He was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his actions.

However, perhaps the toughest challenge for Phil was yet to come. On his return to Britain, he was rushed to hospital, paralysed from the waist down. He had brought home a memento of the West African jungle in the form of a virus lodged in his spinal cord. He has had to face a whole new set of challenges both personally and professionally, even re-learning how to walk as he has come to terms with long term disability.

Commissioned into The Royal Marines at just seventeen and a half, making him the youngest officer in HM Armed Forces, he won his Green Beret one-week after his 18th birthday. Phil Ashby was sponsored by the Marines to read Engineering at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but he was more likely to be found climbing on the College Library than studying in it! He has climbed all over the world and survived an epic 2-man rowing expedition in the Arctic Ocean. This was the first - and only – human-powered circumnavigation of the polar island of Spitsbergen. One thousand miles of rowing through ice floes for eight weeks in a 17-foot, open-topped wooden boat. He survived becoming trapped in the pack-ice, a polar bear attack, hurricane force winds and capsizing in icy water.

After a further fifteen months of Royal Marines officer training in 1992, Phil Ashby won the Commando medal for ‘Leadership, Unselfishness, Cheerfulness, Determination and Courage’.

Phil Ashby is a powerful and charismatic speaker, who can really reach, move and entertain his audience. He is a natural storyteller who can adapt to suit any occasion. He has already shown real flair on television and radio with his appearances on CH4’s Richard and Judy, CH5’s Gloria’s Open House, R4’s Midweek with Libby Purves, R5 Live’s Simon Mayo Show and numerous serious current affairs programmes.