Luis Benitez

Throughout his career, as a professional mountaineering guide, Luis has summited the top of the famed “Seven Summits” a cumulative 32 times, including being a six-time summiteer of Mt. Everest.

Because of this, between managing expeditions on some of the most remote peaks in the world, while working in the public and private sectors, Benitez works to tie the lessons available from the outdoors and carry them back to the everyday challenges of life and business while always holding a keen focus on the global development and advancement of the outdoor industry.

At the start of his career, Benitez spent a decade managing the well-established outdoor leadership development school, Outward Bound Professional.

Luis has also served as the COO and Director of Operations for Adventure Consultants (AC), a highly respected New Zealand-based global expedition firm with a long and storied history of leading trips on Mt. Everest that was featured both in the book Into Thin Air and in the movie Everest.

Benitez has reported from Mt. Everest for ABC-TV News, and has filmed segments for National Geographic on Mt. Everest.

At the heart of his career, Luis has always focused on servant leadership. Some of his most rewarding work has been to help create the internal university for Vail Resorts, focusing on leadership development for every level of employee and executive

Benitez has also worked with VF Corporation, creating and leading a global government affairs function and restructuring and re-launching The VF Foundation. VF is a Fortune 500 holding company whose portfolio includes some of the most iconic brands in the outdoor industry like The North Face, Supreme, Smartwool, and Timberland to name a few.

Benitez also helped create the nonprofit Trekking For Kids, which focuses on service based expeditions allowing participants to climb and trek while teaching them about local issues like housing and healthcare for disadvantaged youth around the world. Benitez was also a founding partner for Warriors to Summits, a nonprofit focusing on serving returning Veterans by connecting them with the outdoors.

Benitez has also served as an adjunct professor in Ecuador and Chile for the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and at The University of Colorado at Boulders Outdoor Recreation Economy masters program

In the last 10 years, Benitez has grown to have a deeper investment in public service 1st by serving as a Town Councilman in Eagle, Colorado and then serving as the 1st State Director for the Outdoor Recreation Industry office for the State of Colorado under Governor Hickenlooper’s administration and then with the Polis administration.

Benitez holds a professional mountaineering guide accreditation with an Honoris Causa from Colorado Mountain College in Outdoor Recreation Leadership and Avalanche Science and an Executive MBA from the University of Denver (DU) with an emphasis certification for behavioral sciences and public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

If there is any message that Luis likes to leave with the clients he works with, it is this;

“If you really challenge yourself, you can truly change your world.”