David Breashears

Leadership In An Unpredictable World

Program Titles

Climate Change Evident Even on Everest
Infamous blizzard to hit Mount Everest

David Breashears is an American mountaineer and filmmaker. He became the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice.

David Breashears’ program is a compelling blend of first person story-telling illustrated by breathtaking and rarely seen images from Everest IMAX filming expedition.

David’s extraordinary real-life leadership experiences, observations, practical knowledge, allows him to precisely target and interact with your audience.

David Breashears is an accomplished filmmaker, explorer, author, mountaineer. He has combined his skills in climbing and filmmaking to complete more than forty film projects.

Breashears transmitted the first live television pictures from the summit of Mount Everest and became the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice.

When the now infamous blizzard of May 10, 1996 hit Mount Everest, killing eight climbers, Expedition Leader Breashears and his team were in the midst of making this historic film. In the tragedy that soon followed, Breashears and his team stopped filming to provide assistance to the stricken climbers.

After returning to Base Camp, Breashears and his team then regrouped and reached the summit of the mountain, achieving their goal of becoming the first to record IMAX film images at Earth’s highest point.

Breashears has said that if there is a lesson to be learned from the tragedy, it is that for him, success that year was not to be found in reaching the summit, it was that everyone on his team returned safely.

Breashears is the recipient of four National Emmy Awards for achievement in filmmaking.

Breashears: documents his life as a mountaineer and filmmaker.

He documented the disappearance of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on Mount Everest in 1924.

In the spring of 2004, Breashears reached the summit of Mount Everest for the fifth time while shooting his film Storm Over Everest.

Equipped with a 35mm motion picture camera, Breashears made his fifth ascent of Everest while leading his handpicked filmmaking team to the summit.

Produced and directed the feature-length documentary Storm Over Everest about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. The film was acquired by NBC Universal and is scheduled for broadcast on the PBS series FRONTLINE. The documentary includes dramatic interviews with the survivors of Mount Everest’s deadliest storm, and strikingly realistic re-creations of the ferocious storm that killed eight people in May 1996. The film also tells the story of the climbers who perished in that storm, marking the worst climbing tragedy in Mount Everest’s history.

He conducts programs on leadership, planning and team building as the most innovative; and influential “Leadership in an Unpredictable World”