CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
£2.5K TO £5K
"One of the most inspiring speeches we've ever heard."
Association of Colleges
YOUR FEEDBACK
"Karen left me and others with a feeling of awe, inspired by her achievements."
Unilever
TOPICS
Change Management, Diversity, Overcoming Adversity, Peak Performance
SPEECH TITLES
Overcoming real adversity
Teamwork and Leadership
Diversity and Inclusivity
BIOGRAPHY
Karen Darke was a keen runner and mountaineer. Then at the age of 21 she fell from a cliff and became paralysed from the chest down.
Determined not to let her condition get the better of her, Karen embarked on a series of testing adventures. Within four years of her accident she was hand-biking over the Himalayas, a 1200 mile trip. Since then all her exploits have focused on breaking down the barriers between disabled people and the outdoors.
Karen has crossed the Tien Shan and Karakoram mountains of Central Asia and the Japanese archipelago by hand bike. She has also sea kayaked a 1200 mile length of the Canada-Alaska coastline and skied the Valle Blanche. Perhaps her most impressive feat to date is her 600km traverse of Greenland's ice cap, one of the last great wildernesses where winds reach 200mph and temperatures drop to -40C.
To add to this, Karen has been selected for the London 2012 Para-cycling team. She started her campaign by winning two silver medals at the World Cup, an important step towards qualification.
Self-belief forms the basis of Karen's work as a performance coach and motivational speaker: "If we can know ourselves better, we can explore our abilities and achieve all manner of things we may previously have thought impossible." When we fall down, why do some of us pick ourselves up and carry on, whilst some do not?
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