Oliver is a journalist, presenter and adventurer. In the 2006 publication, “Faces of Exploration: Encounters with 50 Extraordinary Pioneers”, Oliver is the youngest featured alongside such luminaries as Buzz Aldrin, Ran Fiennes, Jane Goodall and Edmund Hillary. He’s described as “a representative of the new generation: modern, media savvy, high-tech, digital adventurer”.

Oliver is a critically acclaimed independent broadcast journalist, formerly with ABC News where he managed their Asia operations. As an independent journalist and broadcaster Oliver has reported for various news organisations (BBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera International, ABC, Discovery, Travel) from Asia, Africa, Middle East and Europe. He has been nominated for the Livingstone Award for Young Journalists, Emmys and Overseas Press Awards. Oliver runs his own production company Red Space with offices in London and Beijing.

Oliver is also the founder of the non-profit iNOMAD that works to communicate discovery through education and the media. Oliver has led numerous expeditions including to Mongolia, Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, China, Syria, Jordan and New Guinea. Unfortunately his expeditions are more Aled Jones than Indiana Jones and are best understood in the words of one his guiding inspirations, the American anthropologist Roy Chapman Andrews, who many believe was the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones. He saw adventure as merely ‘a mark of incompetence … (where) success depends on the humdrum, knowing everything about the area, drawing on the experience of others, using the best equipment, planning meticulously, staying healthy’.

Oliver’s incompetent adventures have caused problems in over 70 countries and include an unexpected 1250km walk across the Gobi Desert, being hunted down by bandits on the Chinese-Tibetan borders, being arrested for diving uncharted wrecks of the Sea Silk Routes, being chased across the Shangtu Grasslands by The People’s Liberation Army, breaking his arm riding a horse across Mongolia, being imprisoned on charges of espionage, mistakenly running 6 consecutive marathons across the Sahara, having horses kidnapped by rustlers, studying kung-fu with Shaolin Monks, retrieving video tapes from a kidnapped family in Nicaragua, leading a Royal Geographical Society Expedition to research the Grass Silk Road and most recently living with the Kombai tribe – one the last groups thought to practice cannibalism.

Oliver has given hundreds of lectures around the world and is a gifted public speaker: “All the hubris of Benedict Allen’s video diaries, but better pictures … funny, funny, funny …” (The Times). Oliver is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and The Explorers’ Club. Oliver speaks bad Mandarin Chinese and worse French, Mongolian, Kombai, Mek and Uighur.