ROSEANN HANSON – FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR

For more than 25 years, Roseann Hanson has worked around the globe as a guide, journalist, and conservation program director. Her diverse work has involved thousands of miles of overland driving experience, from the deep backcountry of Mexico’s Sierra Madre to Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, and from Arctic Canada to the plains of the Serengeti. Roseann enjoys integrating conservation, science, outdoor skills, and cultural awareness into her work. She has been a Tread Lightly Trainer, and is certified in the Land Rover Driver Training Programme, an elected National Fellow of the Explorers Club, and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She is the founder and director of ConserVentures Charitable Organization, a U.S.-based non-profit whose mission is to promote exploration of our planet and conservation of its natural and cultural heritage. In 2009, Roseann founded Overland Expo, to inspire people to get out exploring, to provide expert instruction in driving and riding, and to bring together North America's largest professional trade show for overlanders. When not traveling, she works at home with her husband Jonathan in a remote corner of the the Sonoran Desert.

JONATHAN HANSON – DIRECTOR AND CURATOR, OVERLAND TECH AND TRAVEL

Jonathan Hanson’s exploration experience encompasses land- and sea-scapes from Baja, Mexico to the Beaufort Sea, from the Rift Valley to the Namib Desert, and modes of transportation from sea kayaks to sailboats to bicycles to Land Cruisers and Land Rovers. He has traveled among and worked with cultures as diverse as the Seri Indians and the Himba, the Inuit and the Maasai.

Jonathan has written for a score of magazines including Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Nature Conservancy, and Global Adventure, and has authored a dozen books on subjects including natural history, sea kayaking, outdoor photography, and wildlife tracking. One, The Ragged Mountain Guide to Outdoor Sports, co-authored with his wife, Roseann, won the National Outdoor Book Award. Jonathan has taught tracking, natural history writing, 4WD techniques, and other subjects for many conservation and government organizations. He is an elected fellow of the Explorers Club, and a charter member of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. 

GRAHAM JACKSON – TRAINING DIRECTOR

Graham Jackson was born in Lesotho in Southern Africa. He grew up racing motorcycles off-road, as well as helping his father design, build and race off-road buggies. At age 10, Graham completed his first safari across the Kalahari in a Range Rover with his family. That trip planted the seed for Graham's lifelong obsession with deserts. In 2004, he and his wife completed a 30,000-mile overland adventure from London to Cape Town, which included crossing both the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts. He has guided expeditions in Africa, the American West, Mexico and Central America, and trains US Special Forces on desert operations with a focus on North Africa. A scientist by trade, Graham tries to combine his interest in the natural world, his passion for overlanding and his love of things mechanical. He is a member of the Explorers Club, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a member of the Field guide Association of Southern Africa. Currently, he is the Director of Training for Overland Expo, a partner in 7P International and a NPTC certified off-road driving assessor.

ALISON DELAPP – ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Originally from the greater Los Angeles Area, Alison has been a traveler all her years, a motorcyclist for half, and combining the two passions changed her life. In 2009, she bought a KLR650, and embarked on multiple journeys throughout the Americas, accumulating 60,000+ solo miles between Alaska and Argentina. Alison’s Wanderland was created as an avenue to share her adventures through stories and photographs, which eventually that led to self-publishing her own books through ADVantage Point Publishing. Although her degree and background are in the arts and photography, she always gravitated toward computers and technology. Now she works remotely as the Assistant Director, overseeing logistics, and the creative and technological development for Overland Expo, taking local trips when she can on her Triumph Tiger 800XC. 

Anthony Sicola – Sales & COMMUNICATIONS dIRECTOR

Free-range human, adventure traveler and founder of the Overland Nomads website, Anthony Sicola is a Toyota Land Cruiser fanatic, triathlete, artist, photographer, food-lover, do-gooder and an all-around good friend to have. 
Anthony’s job experience is as varied as his interests, he’s been a marketer, social media expert, project manager, fundraiser, program director, community relations manager, and he even spent a summer making salt water taffy on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The travel bug hit Anthony at a very young age and he spent many summers vagabonding around North America with his parents in their Jeep camper, an experience that drove his need to get away and see the world. Since then, he’s traveled through England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, 40 US states, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Germany and India. He speaks passable Spanish and Italian and slightly better English. He’s shared Tongba (millet beer) with an Indian military platoon in the Himalaya, rode a motorbike through insane Indian traffic, traveled on countless chicken buses, and argued with Carabinieri over a parking spot in Florence. In 2012, Anthony’s team, #teamASTRID won the Maya End of the World Rally, a ten day expedition-based scavenger hunt that took him from Guanajuato to Bacalar, Mexico with lots of challenges in between. Anthony’s top-secret lair is currently in California where he’s busy planning his next adventure.

CYAN SAMONE – Community Relations Coordinator

Cyan began her travels backpacking primarily around Europe and Central America during summer breaks while she was studying graphic design and illustration. She later discovered a passion for motorcycles and stumbled into the world of overland adventure travel. Attending early Overland Expos and meeting international adventurers inspired her to embark on a ride from Alaska to Argentina. That trip is chronicled via a series of amusing videos on her YouTube Channel.

She lives by the ethos of never taking life too seriously, viewing challenges as opportunities for learning and always having as much fun as humanly possible. She has begun a new chapter recently, changing her name from Becky and buying a big old military truck which she is in the process of fixing up and converting into her go-anywhere overland home.

Eva Rupert – Logistics associate

Eva Rupert is an artist, adventurer, and educator dedicated to empowerment through outdoor experience. A pioneer in creating and facilitating wilderness programming for women, Eva is a skilled outdoorswoman and survival expert. Her diverse background includes a degree in film production and careers in craft beer and experiential education. Whether working as a wilderness guide, event planner, brewery manager, or photographer, she approaches her work with a commitment to creativity. She believes that spending time in the natural world is essential for all of us. She is a dedicated motorcyclist and card-carrying renaissance woman with a penchant for lo-fi photography. Eva loves exploring on two wheels and meets the world with boundless enthusiasm, curiosity, and optimism. With her early years spent in New England, Eva has lived all across the United States; she now makes her home in Flagstaff, AZ. She loves the high deserts of Northern Arizona and nothing makes her happier than sharing her little mountain town with the world. 

Azure O'Neil – Logistics Manager

As a Vermonter with an educational background in cultural anthropology, it’s not surprising that Azure bailed out of corporate America for the wide-open spaces of Australia in 2011. Since then, she has car camped all over "the land Down Under" (including New Zealand), explored Malaysia by Land Rover and ridden her 1989 Honda Transalp from coast to coast and top to bottom of both North and South America. Azure’s "work breaks" from travelling have seen her harvest winemaking, swabbing the decks of scuba dive boats, and reporting locally, and throughout her travels, for a TV news station in her part-time “hometown” of Sarasota, FL. Between managing logistics for Overland Expos, Azure's sights are set on a big motorcycle ride through Russia and Mongolia. You can follow her travels @MyTicketToRide, where she documents her adventures in motorcycle maintenance, creative two-wheeled dismounts and occasionally shares the coordinates of her “new favorite” wild campsite.

GRACE HOWARD – KIDS ADVENTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Born in Flagstaff, Arizona; Grace came home from the hospital in a Range Rover Classic. She started camping a few months later and now has traveled throughout the USA, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Guatemala, and Belize. Grace has been camping, running trails, and just having fun with the Arizona Land Rover Owners Club since before she can remember. Recently, Grace became one of their youngest trail leaders.

Her best memories include visits to Palenque, Mexico City, Tikal, Chaco Canyon, and the Four Corners area. Recently armed with her driver’s license, she drove her Mom to Alaska. All this time spent outdoors has instilled a love for the environment, and she wants to study environmental science in college.  When not attending high school or traveling, Grace actively participates in her school’s robotics team, CRUSH 1011. She lives in Tucson with her parents and is resurrecting her own 1994 Range Rover. 

DUNCAN BARBOUR – CAMEL TROPHY EXPEDITION SKILLS

Expedition Leadership, 4x4 Driving and Off-Roading are genre synonymous with Scotsman Duncan Barbour who has carved an impressive 25-year career as a world-leading exponent in these fields and built a reputation that is second-to-none.

Inspired by his great great uncle, Henry Alexander, the first man to drive a car (Model-T Ford) up Ben Nevis in 1911, Off-Roading is in Duncan’s blood and his naturally chosen and driven career path has taken him to all corners of the globe organising over 50 expeditions through all manner of terrain across seven continents.

From internationally acclaimed events such as Camel Trophy and Overland Expo and the launch of his specialist company BATT (Barbour All-Terrain Tracking) Duncan’s extraordinary skills-set have been sought from a wide diversity of industry, from Motor Manufacturer product launches and incentive expeditions for Land Rover, Jeep, Mercedes and Lexus, to Formula One Teams and the big screen of the Motion Picture Industry, his film credits the envy of many a Hollywood A-Lister.

ANDY DACEY – CAMEL TROPHY EXPEDITION SKILLS

Forestry, The Forces and Arboriculture finally led Andrew to apply for the Camel Trophy competition in 1990 – where, by hanging on in there, he became one of the two competitors for the UK during the Siberia event. It was a match made in heaven for the Welshman since he was able to combine his passions of off-road driving, recovery, and pioneering skills coupled with the occasional medicinal beer!

Andrew worked with Camel Trophy for many years after his first competition, becoming one of the event coordinators and travelling throughout the boonies of most continents.  The work with Camel Trophy meant that he worked closely with Duncan Barbour and this association has continued over many years and many expeditions. Training has become a big part of work over the last ten years, allowing the boundaries to be pushed on advanced recovery, including utilization of old and new techniques and equipment.

Tim Huber – Training Team Member
 

Born and raised in Southern California, Tim has enjoyed a variety of outdoor activities, from surfing and scuba diving to snowboarding and mountain biking, since a young age. After moving to Arizona 15 years ago, Tim created and ran the largest volunteer cleanup in the southwest collecting over 50 tons of trash from public lands. Tim has worked as a Tread Lightly Trainer, Overland Driving Instructor, Backcountry and Expedition Guide, Vehicle Outfitter for suspension and overland companies, and was published in Overland Journal. He is also a data collector mapping the most remote areas of the South West for the Federal Government using 4x4's, dirt bikes, mountain bikes and hiking. In his free time, Tim enjoys pursuing his passion for adventure by racing the Baja 1000 and countless other desert races in a buggy he helped build, endurance mountain bike racing, hunting, backpacking, riding dirt bikes and getting out to camp and explore in his Landcruiser every chance he gets. 

Nick Taylor – Training Team Member

Nick is a Colorado-based Brit–originally from Sunderland–and a Chartered Engineer and technologist who became a devotee of the worlds deserts. He’s lived in half a dozen countries and traveled to over 70. Over the last 15 years he’s extensively traveled in the Sahara and Rub’ al Khali, with much practical knowledge of remote solo desert travel. 

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2002, Nick has delighted in sharing his experience with many expedition groups. He is a member of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Explorers Club and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. As a technologist, Nick has a particular interest in communications technology and autonomous systems, the antithesis of the simple diesel Land Rovers he loves. 

Nick is also a City & Guilds NPTC assessor, and is a partner in an international off-road driver training and expedition company.

Connie Rodman – Staff Kitchen and Wellness Coordinator

Born in Colorado, Connie has made numerous overland trips through
Africa, along with countless excursions into the Rocky Mountains, the
American Southwest, and Mexico. In 2004, she finished a nine-month
overland trip from London, England, to Cape Town, South Africa, with
her husband, Graham. Connie has a passion for the unique “outback”
culinary arts and has worked as chef on overland tours, concocting
delicacies to tempt any pallet in campsites all around the world. Give
her a can of this, a box of that, and her secret seasoning stash and
she can whip up some amazing dishes. When not cooking, you might find
her hovering around the campsite, fighting off vervet monkeys with her
twin frying pans of fury.

Chris Bradley – Venue Tech Manager

Chris first developed a love for travel at the age of eight while on a twenty-five hundred mile family road trip through the American West. Each subsequent summer would bring a new family trip, a new adventure, and an increased hunger for more travel. That desire eventually led him to live in Italy for a short time during his early twenties, where he was struck by how accessible the rest of the world could be and vowed to experience as much of it as he could. Since then he has managed to travel through fifteen countries and, as a result of a particularly inspiring Overland Expo experience, is planning “something big” for next year. Chris currently works as an architect in Oakland, California, specializing in school and multi-family projects. When not working or dreaming of travel, he is obsessed with landscape photography and can often be found plucking away at his Stratocaster.

ALAIN DESPATIE – film festival curator

Alain started his solo travels at age 13, thumbing his way through
Eastern Canada, experiencing the highs of complete freedom. Since then, his travels took him through Europe by foot and North Africa by bicycle. In 1995 he obtained his motorcycle license; two-wheels became an extension of himself, and he vowed to travel the world by motorbike.

In 2013, Alain finally unhooked from a “job” and travelled to
Australia where Aboriginal people introduced him to the real land down
under with what they refer to as 'Connection to Country.’ He learnt
that his travels were not about putting a red line around the globe, but
to explore our humanity in search of our common threads. Within a year he rode 30,000km of Aussie green fields and red dirt until he returned to California and built a tiny house on wheels as his home base. His vision is to continue his deep journey in the land of the Southern Cross.

When not riding the world, Alain is an educator of motorcycle safety and
an overall storyteller. He joined Overland Expo in 2017 to share his
passion of deep exploration of people and place.