About Gaia Exploration
Led by Experience
Marcus Oliver Gay, our Chief Expedition Officer, brings over 30 years of outdoor leadership and global expeditions experience across the UK, US, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He has led and planned journeys through diverse landscapes, from the glaciers and tundra of Arctic Alaska to the dunes of the Sahara Desert.
His expeditions have included multi-day mountaineering ascents, technical winter traverses, wilderness canoe expeditions, gravel-biking, backpacking, and 4x4 overland journeys. Each adventure has tested his ability to navigate remote terrain, manage risk, and build team resilience. This extensive global experience informs his approach to safety education, ensuring that the educational programs he designs are adventurous, safe, and deeply connected to meaningful learning outcomes.
Qualified for Safety
Marcus Oliver Gay has built his career at the intersection of exploration, safety, and science, particularly through his involvement in global expeditions. He has trained as an Emergency Medical Technician, Wilderness Medical Technician, and First Aid & CPR instructor, alongside additional courses in avalanche safety, dive medicine, and risk management. He also holds DBS safeguarding clearance, ensuring the highest standards of duty of care for young people and vulnerable groups.
Beyond classroom qualifications, Marcus serves as a Search and Rescue Technician with Mountain Rescue England & Wales, responding to emergencies in challenging terrain. He has completed Rescue 3 MOD2 Flood Water Responder training, which prepares him to operate in hazardous environments. These combined experiences not only enhance his practical emergency response skills but also promote a culture of safety education on every expedition he leads.
Educator at Heart
With a strong foundation in science education and curriculum-linked program design, Marcus Oliver Gay has taught learners from secondary school through undergraduate level. Early in his career, he worked in North Carolina as an environmental program instructor, teaching marine science, hydrology, and geomorphology to junior and senior school students, while also leading canoeing, kayaking, and sailing instruction, emphasizing safety education throughout these activities.
Later, as a scientific diver and field researcher, he contributed to undergraduate education at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, helping deliver the Semester in Environmental Science — a program linking coastal ecosystems, marine chemistry, and environmental change for liberal arts undergraduates.
Marcus went on to serve as an expedition educator at Shackleton Schools, co-designing and leading global expeditions that featured multi-week experiential education programs for US high school sophomores. These journeys combined overland travel — driving a converted 40-foot school bus across the United States — with an interdisciplinary curriculum spanning marine science, geography, social science, and the humanities.
Through these roles, Marcus has built a reputation for connecting classroom learning to field experience, making travel both academically rigorous and personally transformative.