Speakers

Mark Hannaford's career has included experience on UK frontline response as one of the UK's -ever community first responders helping to support the establishment of the first ever group with Southwest Ambulance, as a coastal rescue volunteer with HM Coastguard, and a reserve soldier attached for a period to Special Forces Headquarters. That instinct grew into founding the discipline of extreme medicine, built on the thesis that medicine belongs in the world's most resource-scarce, high-stakes environments.

Since establishing World Extreme Medicine in 2002, he has trained more than 20,000 medics worldwide and created the world's first MSc in Extreme Medicine at the University of Exeter, where he holds the first honorary professorship in the field. A four-decade veteran of expeditions on every continent, he co-founded The WEM Fund (formerly Medics4Ukraine) with Advanced Paramedic Luca Alfatti, delivering over £4.61 million of trauma supplies and casualty care training to Ukraine's frontline medical community. He now leads the Fund's strategy and capability development,  work formalised through MOUs with the Ukrainian Armed Forces MFSG East and NATO's Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the New York-based Explorers Club. He speaks internationally on what Ukraine is teaching the world about readiness under pressure.