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Omar Samra is an entrepreneur, adventurer, speaker, and analogue astronaut. He’s a staunch advocate for climate action, equality, refugees and space exploration.
As an adventurer, he’s the first Egyptian to climb Everest, the 7 Summits (highest mountain on every continent) and ski to both the North and South Pole. In 2017, Omar made three first ascents of Antarctica mountains and named them. He rowed 1,000km across the Atlantic Ocean before capsizing in a storm. His survival story, which also sheds light on the plight of refugees, was made into a documentary that screened at many film festivals including Cannes, and been widely released in cinemas across the Middle East.
Professionally, following a career in Investment Banking and Private Equity with HSBC and Actis respectively, Omar founded Wild Guanabana, the Arab region’s leading adventure travel and destination consultancy company. Subsequently Omar founded a handful of other businesses and initiatives in the education, environment, space, and tourism sectors, as well as a children’s education charity in his late wife’s honor. Since its inception, it has impacted more than 100,000 children in 10 countries.
In his pursuit of space travel, Omar served as the Vice-Commander of Lunares 3, a 15-day moon-analogue mission conducting research on lunar habitability. He’s a citizen-science astronaut candidate with project PoSSUM, having completed its comprehensive space training, including space suit testing and zero G experience. And the winner of an XCOR Aerospace sub-orbital space flight in the Axe Apollo space competition among 2 million applicants. He has also founded Make Space Yours, a school and university nationwide program to get students excited about space science and exploration.
Omar is an ambassador of the Earth Shot Prize, a Mark Maker for Montblanc, a former Goodwill Ambassador to the UNDP, a High Level Supporter to UNHCR, and an honorary ambassador to Nepal. He is a board member of Equality Now, and the Chairman of the board of Marwa Fayed’s Toy Run. He has received a national award of merit and achievement from the ministry of Sports and Youth, the ministry of Defense and the President of Egypt.
Omar is a graduate of El Alsson school, he holds a degree in Economics from the American University in Cairo and an MBA from London Business School with a focus on Entrepreneurship. He is a public figure with over 1.8 million followers across his social media platforms.Omar is a Fellow of the sixth class of the Middle East Leadership Initiative and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
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