- Conference Speakers
Topics:
- Inspirational
- Motivation & Teamwork
Blind adventurer Miles Hilton-Barber has set numerous world records whilst undertaking extreme endurance events in Siberia, and across the Sahara, Gobi, Qatar and Mojave Deserts. In between these pursuits, he delivers inspirational and motivational keynote presentations.
He has climbed in the Himalayas, Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, scuba-dived 12 miles beneath the Red Sea, hot-air ballooned over the Nevada Desert, man-hauled a sledge over 400 kilometres across Antarctica, set the world lap record for a blind driver on the Malaysian Grand Prix Circuit and circumnavigated the entire world, using over 80 different forms of transport.
Miles is the first blind person to fly the English Channel in a microlight, holds the British duel microlight high-altitude record climbing to 20,300 feet, a record-breaking microlight flight halfway round the world from Biggin Hill to Australia and has wing-walked on a fully aerobatic 450HP Boeing Steerman bi-plane.
Another first for a blind person was the solo kamikaze skeleton run down the 5G Olympic bobsleigh track in Norway and the toughest desert ultra-marathon in the world through Death Valley California, where road temperatures reached 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Miles has been cage diving with Great White Sharks off Cape Town South Africa, where he also became the first blind person to abseil 350 feet down Table Mountain and he competed in a gruelling 3-day canoe race from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean via the Panama Canal.
He has participated in an Austrian air display, co-piloting an historic 1932 vintage 3-engined Dornier air-sea rescue floatplane and also a 2,200-kilometre voyage down the Yangtze River in China for the Daily Mail newspaper.
One of his greatest world record successes to date is flying a microlight over 13,000 miles from London to Sydney Australia, relying on revolutionary speech-output technology, accompanied by his sighted co-pilot.
Other accomplishments include Grade 5 Zambesi white water rafting, Scottish Grade 3 technical ice climbing, the 1998 London Marathon, para-sailing and 40 sky-diving jumps.
Miles' motivational presentations to large conferences and corporate management events are full of the rich, humorous life-lessons he has learnt, overcoming his blindness, epitomising his life-philosophy that; “the only limits in your life are those you accept yourself”. He is also a popular after-dinner speaker, weaving together rich anecdotes and humour.
In recent years he has undertaken over 300 keynote presentations in 110 cities around the world to global companies and organisations that include; Rolls-Royce, Fujitsu, BP, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Philips Electronics, JP Morgan, Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, 3M, O2, CibaVision, Nationwide, Powergen, KPMG, 3I, the BBC, AIG, GlaxoSmithKline, British Gas, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Sanofi Aventis, Raytheon Systems, The Royal Geographic Society, The British Council, Ernst & Young, Rotary International, Diageo, British Telecom, EDF Energy, Norwich Union, Sandhurst Military Academy, Orange, Caterpillar, IBM, Deloitte & Touche, HBOS, Cisco systems, The Daily Mail, CitiGroup, Western Union and GlaxoSmithKline.
Television continues to use Miles' experience to write, create, produce and present high quality programmes. The Carlton Television documentary 'Against All Odds' covering Miles' participation in the Sahara Ultra-Marathon has, to-date, won three international film festival Gold Awards. A second Carlton documentary entitled "Blind Faith" covering Miles' Kilimanjaro climb has already won its first International Film Festival Gold Award.
The National Geographic channel has recently been broadcasting a two-part documentary on Miles and his sighted guide Jon Cook's Antarctic expedition.
He will also be featuring in a forthcoming documentary series covering the Around the World in 80 Ways project. He has also featured in an HTV documentary, as well as numerous regional and national newspapers, radio and television programmes including appearing recently in the Richard and Judy programme on Channel 4, Channel 5, HTV, Carlton, BBC television and Radio 4, Five Live and the BBC World Service.
He has recently had published an audio book entitled “Living Your Dreams”, soon to be out in print.
Englemere Ltd