Team members say

The key to this voyage is not going to visit the penguins and seals or to see whales coming almost completely out of the water, although all of those are unforgettable. Nor is it the scenery, which is truly fantastic, or the opportunity to spend a night camping on the Antarctic continent, out on the ice with the wind blowing and with the snow falling, in tents that we had to get up the side of the mountain and get set up before dark.

The key element is the educational program developed by Robert Swan and the 2041 team called “Leadership on the Edge.” The program, which we came to know as “LOTE” was conducted in one, or more frequently two sessions per day. After we picked up Robert and his team from the eBase at Bellingshausen Station on King George Island, he told his story of walking to the North and South Poles and of the programs he has run in the 20-something years since his first “Walk in the Footsteps of Scott”. The other parts of the program were designed to show how inspirational lessons can be extracted from Robert’s incredible experiences to teach the leaders of the future.

The program challenged each of us to apply the lessons of Robert´s experience to the challenges facing us in our companies and our private lives. Developing a vision for needed action, getting buy-in, and taking the actions needed to achieve success are not easy subjects, and resulted in a lot of discussions both for the company teams that are here, and between company teams as well. Each of us will try to apply the lessons learned for ourselves and our organizations. But we are also challenged to pass along the story of what Robert has done, and what we have done on this voyage and learned during this expedition, because Robert’s story has become our story, and as we pass along the knowledge, it becomes the story of our listeners as well. We have been inspired by what we have experienced and learned. Our challenge is to inspire others to excel. Leadership must be sustainable, and should challenge us, but it must also inspire the best in each of us.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that two of the LOTE sessions were conducted ashore, on Antarctic hilltops overlooking glaciers, amazing bays, and even penguin colonies. I challenge you to find a more incredible venue for a course.

I would be even more remiss if I did not take a moment to acknowledge my family, who understood how important it was for me personally to spend this time with my friend Robert and his team. I travel a lot for my work, and this time away was in addition to that travel. The support of my wife Linda, and my daughter Rachel was invaluable. And so too was the support from my colleagues at Kroll Ontrack, from our President, Kris Nimsger, to my close colleague and good friend Jason Paroff. Saying thank you seems insufficient, but each of you know what this time and this voyage meant to me, and I most humbly and sincerely thank you for your inspiration and your wholehearted support.

Antarctica is a continent that cannot adequately be described in words or in pictures. It is as much an emotion as anything physical, and is experienced in all five senses. From the pungent smell of penguin rookeries to the feel of freezing salt water hitting your face as the zodiac boats run from the ship to the land, to the recognition, as our ship’s captain Jorge put it, that white is not just a color, but is a spectrum, Antarctica is an incredible experience.

Put aside your preconceptions of this place. You may think of it as endless plains of ice. Yes, they exist, but so do mountains climbing a thousand meters high right next to the narrow channel through which our ship sails. You may think of it as devoid of life, but there are penguins, flying birds, seals and a surprising variety of plant life which has adapted itself to the inhospitable environment of the ice. There are people, too, but few in summer and fewer in winter who staff the scientific stations. But to stand on deck (heavily bundled up against the freezing cold and the wind and the snow or rain that sometimes accompanies our voyage) and look out at this incredible continent is incredible, just incredible.

I don’t know if I will ever have the opportunity to come here again, but in a real sense, I will never leave it. I understand now why my friend Robert Swan has devoted most of his life to a very simple proposition – that it is vitally important to preserve Antarctica forever as a place where nature is in charge, and where we can come to study and learn from this last frontier of our planet.

I’m proud that my colleagues at Kroll are a part of this, and am truly grateful to them for this opportunity to learn, to help where I can, and to bring back the message that preserving this global heritage is worth our time and our concern and our participation.

So far the journey has been a great one. While the Drake’s Passage is never calm, we lucked out, and it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. As we crossed the Drake, I had time to think about how my vision of what constitutes “the final frontier” has changed during my life.After graduate school in the late 1960’s, my first work was at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Manned Spacecraft Center (now called the Johnson Space Center) in Houston. I worked on support software for the Apollo project to take astronauts to the moon.

At the time, we thought we were all part of a real-life Star Trek. When William Shatner opened that show with the term “Space, the Final Frontier” all of us said “Yeah, that’s what we’re working on. Soon, we’ll be going.” I believed it then. A bunch of 20-something and 30-something engineers and scientists working to send people to the moon and to bring them back safely. We all figured that by 2000, we would all be up in orbit, if not at a moon colony. Obviously we were wrong.

Maybe space is the ultimate frontier, but if we don’t take steps to reverse trends like global warming, we’re not going to have much of a home planet. I’ve come to believe, like Robert, that for us here on earth, the final frontier is Antarctica. The melting of the pack ice, the changes in glacial melt, the changes being observed in Antarctica’s biosystems and the hole in the ozone are troubling signs. To industrialize the Antarctic continent at the expiration of the Antarctic Treaty in 2041 should be unthinkable, but in a world thirsty for fossil fuels, who knows how reasonable just a bit of “ecologically sensitive exploration, drilling and production” might sound? This journey is showing me that this is the place to take a stand — that Antarctica should stand forever as a protected natural habitat and science center.

What can we do as individuals do? Maybe not a lot, but collectively, we can make things happen. If we don’t the Antarctic follows the vast buffalo herds of the American west into oblivion. I don’t know if I’ll be here in 2041, but for my children and their children, I own them the attempt to get the word out and try to reverse the climate change and preserve this planet’s final frontier.

Alan’s initial thoughts on climate change…

I have wanted to find a way for people to take some personal responsibility for doing something about climate change. It doesn’t have to be big. Swapping out the incandescent lights in your house for compact fluorescent isn’t a huge deal, but if done by enough people, it helps. I’m not above having people do the right thing even if they are doing it with an ulterior purpose. While visiting my parents in Florida, I not only changed their bulbs to CFLs, but got several of their neighbors to do so, not so much to save energy or reduce avoidable carbon loads, but because they are guaranteed to last for years (which is more than I can say for some of the neighbors.) I also helped our neighbor switch his holiday light display from the little incandescent bulbs to LEDs, which combined both a more beautiful display and reduced energy consumption by more than 90%.

That’s all good, but I hope I can use my experience and skills in adult/lifelong education to provide a vehicle for getting the word out about climate change and what we can each do, both as individuals and through our political systems, to begin changing things. One of the things that Admiral Hopper taught me is that when a warship is steaming full speed ahead, it takes a while for it to turn or to stop, but that the key is getting the turn started. I’m hoping for some insight and guidance during our trip so that I can make that training happen.