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Felicity Aston
Through powerful storytelling, Felicity Aston MBE turns two decades of expedition leadership into resilience and team-performance insights for organisations. A polar explorer and climate scientist, she is the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica and is a 2026 Royal Geographical Society Award winner.
Felicity Aston MBE is a polar explorer and climate scientist who became the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica, a 1,744-kilometre crossing she completed alone over 59 days.
Felicity began her polar career in 2000 as a Meteorologist with the British Antarctic Survey, spending two and a half years at Rothera Research Station. She has since led all-female expeditions across the Greenland ice sheet, to the South Pole, and to the North Pole. Most recently, Felicity led The B.I.G. (Before It's Gone) Arctic Research Expedition, supported by the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, which gathered data on Arctic microplastics, heavy metal pollution, and black carbon.
Felicity is now a PhD researcher on Arctic Ocean sea ice based at the National Oceanography Centre and the University of Southampton. She is also the author of five books, including Alone in Antarctica and Polar Exposure.
Felicity brings a first-hand understanding of extreme environments to every session, translating decades of expedition leadership into practical lessons on resilience, teamwork, and adapting to change. Audiences leave with a clearer sense of how small, disciplined choices sustain performance when conditions are hardest, and how to lead teams through uncertainty without losing sight of the goal.
An elected Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society in London and The Explorers Club in New York, and winner of the Society's 2026 Geographical Award, Felicity offers organisations a distinctive mix of active scientific research and years of lived expedition experience. Book her to bring that valuable perspective directly to your audience.
Topics, sessions and talks
In 2012, Felicity Aston MBE became the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica, spending 59 days covering 1,084 miles through a hostile, monotonous landscape. She speaks with striking honesty about the fear, doubt, and loneliness of that journey, and the sources of motivation that kept her moving forward each day. Felicity draws out the perseverance behind her record and helps audiences recognise the resilience already within them, ready to be developed.
Felicity Aston MBE explains how a failed attempt to reach the North Pole led her team to build a multiyear, pan-Arctic research project far more ambitious than anything they had originally planned. Venturing into an environment changing faster than anywhere else on the planet, the team collected snow, ice, and water samples for scientific research while adapting to repeated setbacks. Felicity shows how a conscious shift in mindset turned failure into flexibility, innovation, and eventually success.
Felicity Aston MBE draws on her experience selecting, training, and leading a team of women from countries as different as Jamaica, Brunei Darussalam, Cyprus, and New Zealand to ski to the South Pole in 2009, several of whom had never camped or seen snow before joining. She uses this experience to explore how to manage a diverse team spread across cultures and levels of expertise. Felicity offers a compelling account of adventure alongside a fresh perspective on leadership and team management.
Felicity Aston MBE asks how you prepare for what you don't know is coming, drawing on her 2018 expedition leading ten novice women from across the Middle East and Europe across the fractured, shifting sea ice of the Arctic Ocean to the Geographic North Pole. Backed by striking photography and film, she recounts more than two years of preparation alongside the expedition itself, exploring risk management, decision-making, and adaptive leadership in a fast, high-stakes environment where the only certainty is change.
Felicity Aston MBE opens with a simple question: what does winter mean to you? She answers it through a 35,000-kilometre journey from the UK across Scandinavia and Siberia in a Land Rover Defender, using images, stories, film, and sound gathered along the way. Felicity describes the people and places she encountered heading into some of the coldest inhabited places on Earth, where temperatures fell to nearly minus 60 degrees Celsius, fuel turned solid, and breath could be heard freezing.
Felicity Aston MBE holds the Polar Medal, an MBE, and the Royal Geographical Society's 2026 Geographical Award, and continues her work as a PhD researcher with the National Oceanography Centre. It is a rare pairing of live scientific research and proven leadership under extreme conditions, one that speaks directly to audiences navigating pressure and uncertainty.
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frequently asked questions
Something we've not covered here?
To book Felicity Aston, email felicity.aston@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Felicity's availability and speaking fee. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and about your audience.
Felicity Aston draws on first-hand expedition accounts — including 59 days alone crossing Antarctica and leading a culturally diverse team to the South Pole — to ground her sessions in lived experience rather than abstraction. She uses these narratives to surface transferable principles around resilience, team management, and adapting to setbacks.
Felicity Aston MBE speaks on solo polar endurance and the psychology of resilience, diverse team leadership across cultures and expertise levels, and scientific expedition work in the Arctic including research into microplastics, heavy metal pollution, and black carbon. She is the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica, completing the 1,744-kilometre crossing in 59 days, a record recognised by her election as a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and The Explorers Club.
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