Mount Everest Foundation
Supporting the exploratory
MEF trustees are drawn from the membership of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geogrphical Society. The committee of trustees (listed below) are assisted in their work by an Honorary Secretary and a Screening Committee.
It was with a pencil and notebook that Rebecca Stephens first went to Everest to report on an expedition for the Weekend FT, in 1989. Fascinated by the mountain, she returned to climb it in 1993 – the first British woman to reach the summit, and the following year, to complete the seven summits.
Her travels as a writer have taken her from the Arctic to Antarctica, Africa and the Himalaya, and today she leads treks around family and work - writing, lecturing, coaching, and leadership consultancy. Her book titles include On Top of the World, The Seven Summits of Success, Everest Eyewitness Guide, Due South, and Making it Happen: Lessons from the Frontline of Strategy Execution.
She has been a trustee of the Himalayan Trust UK for some 30 years and is a fellow of the RGS and member of the Alpine Club.
Richard is a retired Chartered Accountant who spent his career working in wide variety of industries.
He has been treasurer of several sports clubs and local charities and is a former treasurer of both the ABMSAC and the Alpine Club.
Richard has spent much of his spare time with an active role in the climbing community. In retirement and now less active than he once was, he enjoys walking in the hills and dedicating his time to conservation work in his local area.
Malcolm has been an explorer all his adult life, firstly in caving and cave diving, then mountaineering, with 11 expeditions to the Himalaya/Karakoram and 3 to Alaska, all attempting technical new routes or first ascents, with many successes.
In 2010, with Paul Figg, he made the first ascent of the west face of Vasuki Parbat in India (6780m) which was nominated for the Piolet d’Or. In 2018 Malcolm, Paul and Guy Buckingham made the first ascent of Janhukot, a 6805m Indian peak.
Malcolm served a term as Vice President of the Alpine Club, and chaired the Montane Alpine Club Climbing Fund sub-committee for many years.
When not in the mountains, Malcolm worked as a clinical psychologist in NHS mental health services, and also held a variety of managerial and leadership posts. As a beneficiary of many MEF grants, Malcolm is delighted to now be able to contribute to the work of the MEF as a Trustee.
After suffering a debilitating stroke a few years ago, Malcolm is finding new ways to explore the natural world. He particularly enjoys mentoring less experienced climbers on their way to explore in the Greater Ranges.
John has been mountaineering “off and on” for over thirty years and is a full member of the Alpine Club.
His passion for mountaineering started on an Outward Bound course in the Western Isles of Scotland in the early 1980s. This was soon followed by trekking holidays in the Nepalese and Indian Himalaya.
John set up a climbing club at Guildford Law School between 1994 and 1996 when he started to rock climb in earnest, with numerous trips to North Wales and Scotland. Since these beginnings, John has completed several climbing trips to the Alps, Scotland (in Winter) and two Alpine Club expeditions to Bolivia – the first in 2009 when he climbed Illimani (6438m) and the second in 2015which involved several technical summits between 5000 and 6000 meters, including some new routes.
With a full-time career as a solicitor and a young family, John has less time these days for mountaineering but still finds time to help with the Alpine Club’s meets program and to act as a trustee of the MEF.
Hayley is Professor of Climate Change Impacts in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. Her research has improved the understanding of processes causing changes to extreme weather and their impacts on mountains, and other regions.
She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow. She was a Contributing Author to Chapter 8: Water Cycle and Chapter 11: Extremes for the IPCC 6th Assessment Report WGI.
She was British Hydrological Society President from 2021-2023 and currently advises government through the BEIS Science Expert Group and as a member of the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme Science Review Group.
Grace is a Post-graduate tutor with Robert Kennedy College Zurich, formerly with the University of Cumbria, where her work involved addressing the growing need to focus on how teaching and learning at MBA level can be reoriented toward leading for sustainability.
She has a PhD in health policy, power and politics from Nottingham Trent University and was Chair of the Alpine Club Green Group from 2020-22.
A keen mountaineer and climber, Grace loves bridging indoor and outdoor learning experiences: whether it's getting avalanched on Athabasca, vomiting down the Red Sentinel or ambling up Helvellyn with her family.
Adele is a retired medical research director, a role that involved overseeing collaborative projects with a multidisciplinary team of clinical and scientific researchers.
She has been climbing, skiing and mountaineering on six of the seven continents over a period of nearly 30 years, during which time she has made a number of modest first ascents.
She was Vice President of the Alpine Club for the years 2022 and 2023 and found herself an inadvertent champion for women alpinists. Her experience as often the lone woman on an expedition has resulted in a desire to encourage and facilitate women to overcome both real and perceived barriers in the mountaineering world.
With a background spanning the natural and social sciences, Poshendra brings extensive experience in interdisciplinary research, teaching, consultancy, and project management within the realms of environment and development.
In addition to his role as a trustee of the Mount Everest Foundation, he currently holds the position of Senior Policy Manager at BirdLife International in Cambridge. He also serves as an Affiliate Senior Research Fellow at the Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies in Nepal.
His academic journey includes a PhD in Environmental Policy from The Open University, UK (2005-2009), an MPhil in Environment and Development from the University of Cambridge (2001-2002), a BSc (Honours) in Agriculture from Haryana Agricultural University, India (1996-2000), and a BSc from Tribhuvan University, Nepal (1994-1996).
Jemma is a Professor of Glaciology at UiT the Arctic University of Norway and the University of Bristol, UK and is the director for the Norwegian Centre of Excellence, iC3: Centre for ice, Cryosphere, Carbon and Climate, which studies the impact of changing ice sheets on Earth´s carbon cycle and marine food-webs.
Jemma has traveled the world in a quest to understand the importance of glaciers in influencing Earth´s life support systems, with expeditions in Greenland, Antarctica, Svalbard, the Himalaya, and Andes.
She believes passionately in finding new ways to tell the stories of changing glaciers. She is the author of Ice Rivers (Penguin Press) and has worked in theatre and film as well as contributing regularly to news, TV, and Radio.