Meet the Team
Felicity Aston
Felicity will be representing the United Kingdom as well as leading the expedition team.
Why the South Pole?
Skiing to the South Pole has become a symbolic journey that represents personal achievement, enduring against all the odds, of overcoming challenge and hardship to reach a final goal. I think this translates well into everyday life. We all have personal ambitions - be it buying a house, getting a qualification or moving jobs - and these can sometimes be very daunting. By reaching the south pole I think we can show that anything is possible if you take it one step at a time.
What has been the hardest part of leading an international team like this?
The time zones! I think that between us, the team covers pretty much every global time zone! Just getting everyone together to speak to each other means that someone will be up in the early morning or staying up till late at night. In order to communicate with each other we have used lots of new internet-based technology such as wiki's and skype.
What lessons have you learnt?
I have learnt just how much my own culture effects the way I do things and the decisions I make. I had not realised this before. By working with an international team I have learnt about the attitude to work in other countries and cultures and this has made me take a closer look at the way I do things and to ask questions of myself.
You have been in Antarctica before, working for the British Antarctic Survey. In what way will your experience working there be helpful to the expedition?
Working in Antarctica I learnt not to be scared of the cold. You always have to respect the environemnt, to be prepared for the unexpected and ready for the worst-case-scenario but at the same time it is a place of incredible beauty and somewhere I feel very much at home. I hope that by the time my team leave Antarctica they will also feel this way.
Thanks and acknowledgement:
I would personally like to particularly thank Harry Cheung, Suk Ling Gun, Maggie Yu, Paul Deegan, Steve Jones of ALE, Victoria Holdsworth of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust who enabled me to start this project, Rob Hollingworth, Simon Meek, everyone who helped staff the Norway training, Justin Roberts, Rob Lewis, Guy Risdon, Connie, Mark and Justine, James Larter, Gillian Hoyle of the Gordon Foundation, Tony Simmonds, Tim Butcher, Petra Hilleberg, Richard Woodall, Peter, my long-suffering parents, and my incredible team-mates - your trust is a priviledge.
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The Commonwealth
The Commonwealth is an association of 53 independent nations that support each other and work together towards international goals of development, democracy and peace. The Commonwealth nations represent a diverse range of cultures, faiths, geographies and social histories from every continent across the globe. Together, the membership represents the interests of over 2 billion citizens - that is 30% of the World's entire population.
You can read more about the work of the Commonwealth at www.thecommonwealth.org