MARK AGNEW

Mark Agnew is an adventurer, journalist, presenter and keynote speaker. Born in 1991, he grew up in Edinburgh before moving to Hong Kong, where he worked as the Outdoor & Extreme Sports editor of the South China Morning Post. After almost a decade in Asia, he moved back to the UK.

After a string of failed adventures in his twenties, he had a mental health crisis. After discovering more about resilience and motivations, he joined a team kayaking the Northwest Passage in 2023. Mark and his three teammates made history when they became the first people to complete the fabled route by kayak and the first people to do it by human power, without motors or sails, in a single season.

His story was featured in all the major UK media including on BBC, ITV and SKY, and he was awarded European Adventurer of the Year and Endurance Asia’s Extraordinary Feat of the Year. Having learned that adventure does not lie in the outcome or the praise but is about the experiences and the people he shares those with, he gives talks to corporations such as Heineken, Marks & Spencer and Bosch about the importance of intrinsic motivations.

He is currently based in London and working on a book about kayaking the Northwest Passage, THERE WILL BE HEADWINDS, to be published by Icon Books, and a project for book and TV about ‘stayventures’,

encouraging people to undertake challenging adventures close to home. www.adventureagnew.com