About Josh Morris

Joshua Morris is the director of Grand Dynamics International in Asia and founder and CEO of The Progression Group, a multicultural organization that works with students, educators, corporations, and athletes to fuel individual growth, create meaningful connections, and prepare for what’s next. An entrepreneur, leader and coach based in Thailand since 1999, Josh excels in connecting teams, communities, and cultures, a skill that enabled him to play a critical role as the lead international team coordinator in the Thai Cave Rescue in Mae Sai, Thailand in July 2018.

Josh has worked with businesses, NGOs and governments to identify and harness opportunities to build a more sustainable future through a combination of education, personal development, business strategy, cross-cultural communication, and community partnership. In addition to directing vision and strategy for his own company, Josh provides leadership training and development programming to businesses throughout Asia. He has consulted The Thai Authority of Tourism to develop innovative strategies for sustainable tourism development in the region. He has also spearheaded projects to develop local guides and pioneered exchange programs to raise standards in adventure tourism and rescue throughout Thailand and other parts of Asia.

Fluent in English and Thai, with personal roots in both western and eastern traditions, and staff based in Asia, Europe and the United States, Josh is uniquely positioned to enable leaders and teams to transcend organizational barriers. Bridging the gap between language and differing cultural perspectives, Josh’s work with executives is focused on creating high-performing teams by fostering meaningful connections through shared experiences.

An experienced rock climber, caver and expedition leader, Josh leveraged a love of the outdoors and a passion for personal growth, and transformed it into a movement that empowers individuals, protects the environment, connects the community, and supports local economies. His extensive experience has helped him bring a compassionate, client-focused approach to his work and leadership, and has given him the unique ability to empower others to go deeper, climb higher, and fuel their personal and professional development.

Just as progression is a steady movement to a more advanced state or place, Josh guides others in their journey toward a more conscious, successful and fulfilling future.

About Josh’s Thailand Cave Rescue Keynote Speech

For more than ten years, Josh has spoken at events of all sizes, for organizations from numerous industries. His humility, energy, and prowess as a storyteller enable him to connect with a room of ten people or a hall of several thousand. As a leader and coach, Josh helps audiences bring a mindful approach to high stress situations, empowering them to achieve impossible results. Weaving in the story of his experience from the Thai Cave Rescue, his training as an expedition leader and educator, and everyday examples from life and business, Josh engages and inspires audiences, connecting them to their highest potential, and delivering lessons and strategies to get there.

In July of 2018 the world was mesmerized by the story of the impossible rescue of 12 members of the Wild Board football team and their coach from a flooded cave. As the world watched, all 13 members of the team were safely evacuated from the cave to safety above ground. It was an improbable rescue that inspired billions around the world. Few know the inside story and intimate details of what it took to achieve this incredible feat. Not only did it require innovative methods and new approaches in cave diving, but diplomacy and deliberation with decision makers to even arrive at the decision to dive the boys out, something that had never before been attempted.

On the morning of July 06, Josh Morris found himself in a military briefing room discussing plans for diverting water away from the cave. Little did he know that 18 years of cave exploration, fluency in Thai and experience in the corporate and government sector were about to converge, placing him at the center of the rescue. Within a few hours, Josh became a critical part of the rescue, acting as the chief international coordinator and government liaison between the international divers, US Air Force Para-rescue Specialists (PJs) and senior level Thai authorities.

Applying his knowledge of the Thai language, caving experience and experience leading teams, Josh was able to assist decision makers in accessing key information and presenting the information in order to assist leaders in making critical decisions at a time of great uncertainty. In recognition of his role in the rescue, Josh received the award of Knight Commander 2nd Class from the King of Thailand.

Josh’s speeches highlight the challenges of bringing multiple groups of people from different cultures together to align around a unified goal. Highlighting points of chaos, strong leadership and team spirit, Josh speaks about what it takes to achieve success including:

• Establishing a common goal
• Working outside hierarchy and tradition in order to get things done more quickly and efficiently
• Creating a sense of urgency in order to improve performance

With more than 20 years of experience living and working in Asia, Josh weaves the challenges faced during the cave rescue with natural connection to everyday life and work, highlighting the need for agile decision making, mindful leadership, building empathy among the team, and taking risks in order to innovate for the future. Josh has worked with and delivered speeches to multiple industries including Private Equity, Venture Capital, Insurance, Chemistry, and Education. He can easily customize his speeches around relevant topics for different audiences.

High Level Speaking Themes

• Leadership
• Communication
• Personal growth
• Team development
• Planning & Strategy
• Sustainability
• Community partnership
• Crisis Management

Testimonials

Charles D. Hodges, Lt Col, US Air Force, Commander, 26th Special Tactics Squadron
(In regards to the Thailand Cave Rescue Mission 2018)
“Josh’s cross-cultural communication skills, perspective, and insight were vital to our team’s success. Those skills, coupled with his discerning leadership style, allowed us to navigate some tough cultural intricacies. Without him our mission would have never gotten out of the planning stages.”

Emily Merlino, Program Operations, Smartly by Pedago
“Josh was generous enough to be the keynote speaker at Smartly Institute’s Singapore Conference in August of 2019, and we could not be more impressed. Josh is professional and a pleasure to work with, and his speech was the highlight of the conference. You can tell that he really puts time, effort, and thought into his speeches. Our conference attendees were unanimously impressed with the caliber of his speech. We would love to work with Josh again, and would not hesitate to strongly recommend him as a keynote speaker!”

Charles Motion, Executive Director, Aviation, Willis Towers Watson
“Josh Morris visited our offices in May of last year to deliver a fascinating presentation on the well-publicized and dramatic cave rescue of Thai school boys football team.  I had originally heard Josh speak at an event at Tanglin Trust School and was struck by his insight into this extraordinary event.  It was immediately apparent that important lessons in leadership, crisis management, communications and clarity of purpose lay at the heart of his story and I was keen for Josh to come and speak to colleagues and clients along the same themes.  Josh tailored his presentation cleverly to meet our target audience and we received a huge amount of very positive feedback from those lucky enough to attend.  The only part we would change would have been to allocate more time to enable the audience to ask all the questions they wanted to.”

Adrian Gonzalez, CEO North Asia, South Asia, Pacific, Insights Division, Kantar
“At Progression, Josh teaches real life experiential leadership skills and has become a mentor and source of inspiration that has seen a number of our participants elevated to country CEO level positions. I am hugely grateful to Josh for his contribution to leadership development at Kantar. He is a tremendous asset to our company and indeed to leadership generally.”

Kristin Ulmer’s education on the subject of fear and anxiety comes from practical, real – world experience, starting with being a mogul specialist on the US Ski Team. She then expanded her skiing repertoire to become recognized as the best female big mountain extreme skier in the world for 12 years.

Known for big cliff jumps and you-fall-you die descents, she became sponsored by the likes of Red Bull, Ralph Lauren, and Nikon, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame September of 2019. Her mastery of other danger sports including paragliding, ice and rock climbing, kiteboarding, adventure mountain biking, and flying trapeze also gained her the outdoor industry vote as most extreme “fearless” woman athlete in North America, beating all danger-sports stars, not just skiers.

Retired as an athlete since 2003, Kristen spent the next 15 years going to the next level– by intently studying Zen and also learning how to facilitate voice dialog as a way to transmit Zen concepts to practitioners in a quick and digestible way. Her mastery of this dialog led to her facilitate over ten thousand clients now, helping them access and integrate the mindset of optimal sports performance, flow states, whole mind thinking, embracing change, merging in a healthy way with emotions and more.

Her revolutionary work has been featured in such media as NPR, The Robb Report, The New York Times, Forbes, USA Today, Tim Ferriss ‘Tribe of Mentors’, Mindvalley,  Spartan, The Megyn Kelly Show and many more.

Jimmy Chin is an Academy Award winning filmmaker, National Geographic photographer, New York Times Best Selling author and mountain sports athlete known for his ability to capture extraordinary imagery and stories while climbing and skiing in extremely high-risk environments and expeditions. He began his professional career in 1999, and his talents were quickly recognized by top expedition leaders and outdoor brands. In 2002, he secured a breakthrough assignment to be the cinematographer for a high-profile National Geographic–sponsored trek across Tibet’s Chang Tang Plateau. In 2006, he became one of the only people to ski off the summit of Mount Everest. A longtime member of The North Face Athlete Team, he has led dozens of exploratory expeditions and completed first ascents around the globe, working with the best adventure athletes in the world.

Jimmy has garnered numerous photography awards from Photo District News (PDN), Communication Arts, the American Society of Magazine Editors, and others. As a filmmaker, his years of experience in the adventure and extreme sports world enables him to bring an authentic and unique perspective to his storytelling. His 2015 film Meru won the coveted Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was on the 2016 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary. Jimmy’s documentary Free Solo won a BAFTA, 7 Emmy’s and an Academy Award for best Documentary Feature in 2019. Jimmy and Chai’s latest documentary, The Rescue, chronicles the daring rescue of 12 boys and their coach from a cave in Thailand.  The Rescue won the People’s Choice Award at Toronto International Film Festival and was also shortlisted for an Academy Award.  Chin and Vasarhelyi are currently working on their first scripted feature, Nyad, about Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Florida. Jimmy’s photos have appeared on the cover of National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine, among others, and he has directed commercial film projects for a diverse range of clients that includes Apple, Chase, Pirelli, Red Bull, The North Face, and RSA Films.

Timmy O’Neill is a professional rock climber, first ascensionist and public speaker. Following early speed ascents of Yosemite’s 3,000 foot El Capitan, O’Neill has dedicated his time to a life of international exploration and giving back through ‘adventure impact’ – the combination of outdoor adventure and social impact.  

He is co-founder and former executive director of Paradox Sports, a non-profit that integrates individuals with disabilities into outdoor recreation. O’Neill also volunteers as an ophthalmic tech, working on the African continent for the past 10+ years to assist in curing preventable blindness with CureBlindness.org. O’Neill is a 20 year climbing ambassador sponsored by Patagonia, Osprey Packs, and Clif Bar.

Lynne Cox started open water swimming at the age of 14 after one of her coaches recommended she try it, and she fell in love. Lynne has been praised for her performances, which often required swimming in extremely harsh conditions. Because of this success, she is recognized as one of the best open water swimmers in the world.

She once held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel for both men and women, initially breaking the record with a time of 9 hours and 57 minutes. But Lynne wasn’t satisfied with that time. The following year, in 1973, she recorded an even faster time of 9 hours and 36 minutes for the 21-mile swim. 

One of her most famous swims helped bring two countries together. In 1987 Lynne became the first person to swim the 2.7 miles from Little Diomede Island, in the U.S. state of Alaska to the Big Diomede Island, in the Soviet Union. This waterway is more commonly known as the Bering Strait. Strong offshore currents and 38 degree water made this swim all the more challenging. The goal of this swim was to ease some of the tension between the two countries during the Cold War. Before Lynne completed this swim people were not permitted to go back and forth between the two islands. This swim helped break down the political borders between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Dr Richard “Harry” Harris has worked in anaesthesia, diving and aeromedical medicine around the world.

His passion for cave diving goes back to the 1980’s and has taken him to the corners of the globe in search of new adventures. An interest in accident investigation, and search and rescue activities has been a theme during his diving and caving career.

Harry and his colleagues have explored caves to 245m depth, and shipwrecks to over 150m, in dives lasting over 16 hours. He is an enthusiastic Underwater photographer and videographer who is now also building a career in documentary films.

In his talks, Harry reveals the depths of the moral dilemmas, the physical danger to the rescuers and the ‘impossible’ decision points that finally lead to a successful outcome. His improbable combination of skills led to him being labelled a unicorn, and he now describes how we can all better prepare for the unknown challenges that inevitably lie ahead.