Dec 31, 2021
David Yacubian has been working in Outdoor Education for more than 20 years and has over 15 years of risk management and emergency preparedness experience. He has worked with NOLS as an instructor and advisor on four different continents around the globe. Dave has also run over 100 NOLS Wilderness Medicine courses in the San Francisco Bay Area through his company, Ready SF. Ready SF also offers risk management consulting and emergency preparedness training to schools and businesses in the Bay Area.
David is a member of The Crossroads School's, Environmental Traveling Companions risk committee and Outward-Bound California's safety committee. Dave enjoys spending time with his two lovely girls, when he is not teaching. He is often found on or in water, as well as participating in other sports on his bike, foot, or skis.
In this episode:
- (02:23) David shares the purest moment of joy he has ever experienced in his life, with the exception of the birth of his daughters. He tells the story of a young female student on his first summer working in Alaska, and how the concern of the little girl’s disappearance was more alarming than her eating disorder. Yacubian explains the details of Amy’s missing – and what leads them to find her in the end.
- (14:27) Yacubian talks about an executive leadership Ilama packing, NASA course in the mid of August, five or six years ago while working along with Lynn Petzold, Rick Rochelle, and many others. He tells us one of the funniest stories about a bear sighting when one of the students ran after the black bear to get his food bag – it is even hilarious in his narration.
- (20:13) Going along he tells us how they were missing a llama when they woke up the next day, after the bear chasing incident. David talks about the disappearance of the largest llama they had namely Summit, and since there was no trail or signs to track it down – they were left dejected for the rest of the trip.
- (28:44) David terrifies us with a near-death incident in spring 2015 while running the wilderness medicine course. He tells us a story about a panicking experience that took place in their 10 days CPR course, when a young woman had a cardiac arrest in front of the whole group – without proper treatment and a hospital nearby.
- (42:00) Moving forward, he gives us great advice on how it's important to learn survival skills. He tells how you never know when you might find yourself in a real-life survival situation – Survival courses aren’t for everyone, that’s for sure, but you’d be surprised at just how much you can achieve by simply giving it a go.
- (48:03) In the end, we play a rapid-fire question with David that intrigues us to the core – telling us the importance of adventure in his life, and how the excitement and happiness we experience during the adventure take us away from a normal hectic life to a new happy life within a matter of seconds.
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