Yusuf Hashim’s story is one of reinvention, courage, and an unapologetic commitment to living life fully. After a highly successful 30-year corporate career with Shell, Yusuf made the bold decision to step away from the C-suite and reimagine what the next chapter of his life could look like. What followed was not retirement in the conventional sense, but a radical redesign of living – one anchored in his lifelong passions for travel, adventure, and photography.
During his three decades with Shell, Yusuf held a wide range of senior leadership roles across London, Rotterdam, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Malaysia. His responsibilities spanned international trading, public affairs, strategy and change management, retail market entry, and marketing leadership. He served as Managing Director for Shell Chemicals Malaysia, Retail Marketing Director for Shell Downstream Malaysia, Founder Director of BonusLink Malaysia, and Retail Market Entry Director for Shell Indonesia, among many other roles. By the time he left Shell in 1999 at the age of 53, Yusuf had reached the pinnacle of corporate leadership – and yet felt called to something entirely different.
That same year, Yusuf chose to walk away from corporate life to pursue photography and extreme travel full-time. Motivated by a desire to tick off his bucket list, “spend his children’s inheritance,” and live deeply before it was too late, he deliberately chose adventure over comfort and experience over convention. His transition into an adventurer began humbly, as an unpaid photographer and spare driver for WorldExplorer.net, a 4x4 extreme travel and adventure organiser known for its trans-continental expeditions for four-wheel-drive vehicles and motorcycles.
Over the next 26 years, Yusuf travelled relentlessly, driving to and across more than 120 countries, traversing almost every continent and desert on Earth. When roads ended, he took to the seas – sailing twelve times to Antarctica, the Falklands and South Georgia, and repeatedly venturing into the Arctic regions including Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and Wrangel Island, the Russian polar bear sanctuary. Along the way, he documented these journeys through his lens, capturing more than three million photographs across some of the planet’s most extreme and remote landscapes; from Antarctica and the Arctic to Africa, South America, the Sahara, the Atacama, the Himalayas, Greenland, Russia, China and beyond.
Yusuf’s work has been widely published. He is the author of more than twelve coffee table books, has written hundreds of articles for print magazines and online platforms, and has participated in numerous photography exhibitions. He has also shared his knowledge as a part-time photography lecturer at Malaysia’s Open University, mentoring the next generation of visual storytellers.
Beyond photography, Yusuf’s life continues to be defined by adventure and curiosity. He is an avid trekker, mountaineer, motorcyclist, and aviator, having led trekking expeditions in the Himalayas and Patagonia and climbed several active volcanoes in Africa and Indonesia. He holds a Private Pilot’s Licence and, at the age of 70, qualified as a paramotor pilot – making him one of the oldest Malaysians to do so
Through his story, Yusuf Hashim challenges the idea that life should slow down after corporate success. Instead, he inspires others to rethink what is possible, to re-strategise how they live, and to step boldly into lives filled with meaning, adventure, and purpose – not merely to exist, but truly to live.
