Preview: Alison Levine

This past January, Alison Levine spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. Her topic was Lessons in Risk Taking. The adventurer-philanthropist knows the subject well. Born with a heart condition that required three surgeries and prevented her, as a teen, from even climbing a set of stairs, Levine has gone on to scale the world’s highest mountains, and venture to the North and South Poles on skis.

In 2002, Levine led a summit assault as team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition. She made it within 200 feet of the top before what she describes in corporate leadership presentations as the most difficult leadership decision of them all: “turning around when you’re right there.” Last year, she completed the Adventure Grand Slam by climbing the highest peak on each of the world’s continents and skiing to both the North and South Poles.

When she’s not braving high winds and ice, Levine teaches West Point cadets the fundamentals of making choices in similar isolated, fraught situations. These lessons translate not only into survival acumen, but into the kind of leadership skills she coaches major corporations how to employ through her company, Daredevil Strategies. The business environment may have different material risks than a high-altitude climb, but Levine sees parallels in the high-stakes, high-pressure decisions a leader in either situation must face.

“It’s important to lead based on the situation in the environment. Be flexible; accommodate the circumstances around you,” she advises. “It doesn’t matter what you did last year, or last time; it’s what you need to do now.” On an ice field or in an avalanche, actions must be guided by knowledge and decisiveness. Those moment-by-moment decisions affect not only the leader, but those who rely on her. It’s no different on the ground, Levine points out. “Complacency leads to extinction” is a common theme of Levine’s; true literally in the backcountry, and figuratively in life.

It’s not all about the joy of achievement, either. “A lot of it is learning from failure,” she told the New York Times after last summer’s successful Everest ascent.

A 2005 climb in the Rwenzori Mountains along the Uganda-Democratic Republic of Congo border prompted Levine to a rather different sort of choice: not how to get women safely off a mountain, but how to get them safely up it—a climb not only in elevation, but in socio-economic status. She founded the Climb High Foundation after learning about the status of Bokonjo women who lived in the area, who have little or no access to money, healthcare or education. Levine sought to remedy this cycle of dependence by training several of the women as guides at the popular climbing destination. Those women are now employed at Rwenzori National Park, and Levine has plans to expand the training program to reach more women. The Power of Choice for Levine? It’s all in knowing what to risk, and when to risk it.