Mark Pollock

Northern Irish adventurer, Athlete, Rower and Author

Mark Pollock

Northern Irish adventurer, Athlete, Rower and Author

Mark Pollock helps people achieve more than they thought possible. Acting as a high-impact catalyst, Pollock helps people act with the courage to make it happen. Over the last 20 years, Mark Pollock has studied how to build resilience and collaborated with others so that they achieve more than they thought possible. Unbroken by blindness in 1998, Pollock became an adventure athlete competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts, mountains, and the polar ice caps including being the first blind person to race to the South Pole. He also won silver and bronze medals for rowing at the Commonwealth Games and set up a motivational speaking business. In 2010, a fall from a second story window nearly killed him. Pollock broke his back and the damage to his spinal cord left him paralysed. Now he is on a new expedition, this time to cure paralysis in our lifetime by exploring the intersection where humans and technology collide. Co-Founder of the global running series called Run in the Dark, Pollock has been selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and is a former member of the Global Futures Council on Human Enhancement. He is a UBS Global Visionary, is on the Board of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (USA) and is a Wings for Life Ambassador (Europe). Mark Pollock is the subject of the acclaimed documentaries ‘Blind Man Walking’ and ‘Unbreakable –The Mark Pollock Story’, and has been awarded honorary doctorates by The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and also from Queens University Belfast. He holds a diploma in Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century from Harvard University, degrees from Trinity College Dublin and UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School.

About Mark Pollock

Mark Pollock helps people achieve more than they thought possible. Acting as a high-impact catalyst, Pollock helps people act with the courage to make it happen. Over the last 20 years, Mark Pollock has studied how to build resilience and collaborated with others so that they achieve more than they thought possible.

Unbroken by blindness in 1998, Pollock became an adventure athlete competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts, mountains, and the polar ice caps including being the first blind person to race to the South Pole. He also won silver and bronze medals for rowing at the Commonwealth Games and set up a motivational speaking business.

In 2010, a fall from a second story window nearly killed him. Pollock broke his back and the damage to his spinal cord left him paralysed. Now he is on a new expedition, this time to cure paralysis in our lifetime by exploring the intersection where humans and technology collide.

Co-Founder of the global running series called Run in the Dark, Pollock has been selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and is a former member of the Global Futures Council on Human Enhancement. He is a UBS Global Visionary, is on the Board of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (USA) and is a Wings for Life Ambassador (Europe).

Mark Pollock is the subject of the acclaimed documentaries ‘Blind Man Walking’ and ‘Unbreakable –The Mark Pollock Story’, and has been awarded honorary doctorates by The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and also from Queens University Belfast. He holds a diploma in Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century from Harvard University, degrees from Trinity College Dublin and UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School.

Topics

  • Overcoming adversity and crisis
  • Challenging conventional wisdom
  • Creating teams to think differently
  • Developing courage to take risks
  • Leading through uncertainty