Marcin Jamkowski is a documentary filmmaker and writer based in Warsaw, Poland. He serves as vice chairman of The Explorers Club Polish Chapter. Educated in chemistry, former Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic magazine in Poland and TEDx speaker specialized in popular-science topics, Marcin is currently monitoring the refugees situation in Poland.

Mark Hannaford has spent decades focusing on sustainable social change via 2 pioneering self-founded initiatives; Across the Divide (ATD) [est. 1996] and World Extreme Medicine (WEM) [est. 2002]. These organisations act as faciliatory platforms for mass participation in worldwide adventure challenge expeditions (ATD) and remote medical training courses (WEM). ATD has facilitated raising $132M for a multitude of UK charities, while WEM has become a globally recognised sub-medical discipline for which Mark received the inaugural Honorary Associate Professorship of Extreme Medicine (2019) from Exeter University Medical School.

Additionally, Mark has established the world’s largest subject matter conference in the field of Extreme Medicine (WEM Conference). Launched the world’s first MSc Extreme Medicine; and was an inaugural member of The explorers Club 50.

Despite commitments as CEO of both organisations, Mark continues to embrace his passion for adventure and travel by undertaking significant expeditions overseas. In 2018 Mark was one of 3 expeditioners who were the first people outside of the local indigenous population to transverse the ancient trade route of Ethiopia’s Amhara tribe, stretching 120 km across varying terrain at very high altitude, without in-country rescue facilities. Previously, Mark recorded a first complete descent of the Kuiseb River in the Namib Desert, part of a series of expeditions over several years, which took him across all five continents at least four times.

Tomasz Grzywaczewski is a journalist, writer, filmmaker, and expert in Central and Eastern Europe studies. He has authored the books “The Erased Border” dedicated to the people who
formed the multinational mosaic of the Second Polish Republic (www.borders2rp.com, November 2020), “The Borders of Dreams”, devoted to the post-soviet unrecognized states (awarded with Kryształowa Karta Polskiego Reportażu 2019 and Magellan prize for the best reportage book 2019), “Life and Death on the Dead Road” and “Across the Wild East” (awarded with The Magellan 2013). He has been a speaker at Georgetown University in Washington DC and The Explorers Club.

Levison Wood is a best-selling author and photographer who has worked and travelled in over 100 countries & has written nine best-selling books. He has produced six critically acclaimed documentaries which have aired around the world. Levison is a Major in the British Army having served in the Parachute Regiment for 13 years.

Levison is an elected Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and The Explorers Club. He is an ambassador and patron for a number of charities including UNICEF, for which he is a high-profile supporter. When not abroad, he lives in London.

Dr. Reed was born in the 1970’s in communist Poland. The political situation at the time led to the family having to flee to the West, leaving everything behind. The family ultimately arrived in the United States in 1984, where her parents struggled and persevered, the way of many immigrants. They earned their college degrees while working full-time when Dr. Reed was in high school while parenting her and her younger sister. Dr. Reed attended Johns Hopkins to earn her Bachelor’s Degree in Biophysics, University of Virginia to earn her medical degree, completed her pediatric residency at Northwestern’s Children’s Memorial Hospital, her Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition fellowship at Johns Hopkins, and her Master’s Degree in Public Health at University of Maryland. She currently works at the United States Department of Health and Human Services

Having begun his career as a cave explorer some four-five plus years ago, Chris Nicola has now lead over two dozen annual caving expeditions throughout Ukraine over the past thirty years. As a result of all these trips Chris has developed many long lasting friendships both among those numerous cavers he escorted to Ukraine, as well as among the local Ukrainians with whom he worked in the caves he was studying. He also got to know many in the Ukrainian Jewish Community. who he got to know quite well during the twenty years he spent developing what was originally nothing more than a rumor of an extraordinary WWII Holocaust cave survival story , into a book, The Secret of Priest’s Grotto, and documentary, No Place On Earth.

With the advent of the current crisis in Ukraine, Chris now finds himself, on an almost daily basis, addressing the concerns of all these friends as it relates to the safety and welfare of those still in Ukraine today.