More about Brandon H. Wheeler

Now 35, his adventurous life started early, and hasn’t stopped since. Brandon’s life became adventurous at five years old, when he saw three lion kills a few feet away and lived with a Masai family in their kraal in Africa’s Serengeti. At six, he was the youngest person to set foot on the sea-ice at the North Pole – then went to live with an Inuit (Eskimo) family in Qaanaaq, Greenland.

At age fourteen on the 40th anniversary of his father’s iconic ascension as the youngest American to ever summit the Matterhorn in Switzerland, both Brandon and his father successfully stood on the knife-edge apex of this world-famous mountain together.

At fifteen, Brandon went on an extensive safari in southern Africa – through South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. Later that year, he ventured to the Amazon jungles of Brazil.

He had his third trip around the world when he was sixteen, from Europe to Singapore, through Australia and New Zealand, then the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. While in Australia, he climbed the highest mountain on the continent, Mount Kosciuszko. Brandon summited Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Back home, he learned to fly successfully soloed a single-engine plane.

At seventeen, upon graduating as Corps Commander at Randolph-Macon Military Academy in Virginia, Brandon reached the summit of the highest mountain in Europe, Mount Elbrus, in the Caucasus of southern Russia.

At eighteen, Brandon ventured to Alaska to climb Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. At twenty, during winter break, he summited Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America. Back home he learned to skydive, gaining his USPA parachuting license.

In 2005, Brandon graduated from VMI as 1st Battalion Commander. He was hired by Greenfield World Trade to create sales relationships traveling through most every country in the Middle East and West Africa in 2005.

In 2006, while living in Damascus, Syria, studying Arabic at the University, he conducted a cultural and political study throughout the Kurdish areas of Rojava, Bakur, Bashur and Rojalat. After 4 months traveling across the region, meeting with political, tribal and religious leaders, Wheeler ended his research and joined the United States Marine Corps. From 2006 to 2015 he served in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Portugal, Japan and was critical in NATO Operations Unified Protector, Operation Enduring Freedom and a number of other experiments in the United States Marine Corps that made national press.

As Executive Director of the Freedom Research Foundation, he made multiple trips into Syria and Iraq meeting with political and military leaders in Rojava and Bashur to develop programs that promote understanding and freedom. Wheeler has regularly briefed U.S. Members of Congress, diplomats of European nations, Ambassadors to the United Nations and has spoken at the National Defense University in Amman, Jordan and War University in Warsaw, Poland.

Finally, Brandon joined his father in Wheeler Expeditions, he has been leading custom-designed expeditions to distant parts of the world. Whether overland, island hopping, or in a helicopter, he finds it great to see people discover more about our world. He enjoys sharing his talk on “Value of an Adventurous Life” and enabling clients to have not only “Adventures of a Lifetime, but also a Lifetime full of Adventure.”