Nick Giles

Nick is Managing Director of Ordnance Survey’s consumer businesses, and the current Chair of the UK Outdoor Industries Association. He joined OS in 2012 to originally turn around the dwindling consumer business taking this from loss making to 7 figure profitability. During his time at OS, Nick founded both the OS Maps application (the UK’s premier outdoor exploration application with over 8m users and 500,000 subscribers) and the GetOutside initiative giving outdoor inspiration to millions of people. He has reinvigorated OS’s publishing business, expanding guidebooks (including the Uk’s first accessible guidebook), books and reinventing the iconic paper maps. Prior to OS Nick’s career has been through marketing agencies and within the financial services sector running business portfolios of over £300m per annum as well as several non-exec positions.

Nick has a passion for helping more people to get outside more often and is committed to enabling more people to enjoy more enjoyable, accessible, and safe outdoor experiences. He has been a frequent visitor and longtime supporter of Plas y Brenin over the years and is an avid hill walker and (a very!) amateur mountain biker, climber, and paddler. He has a love for watersports and can often be found open water swimming or messing about with boats and boards whenever given the opportunity.

In 2022 he was awarded an OBE for improving the health of the nation for his work in encouraging and inspiring millions of people to reap the benefits of activity in the great outdoors.