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Topics
- Adventure
- Change Management / Organizational Change
- Leadership
- Teamwork / Teambuilding
- Women's Empowerment
- Work-life Balance
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Jennifer Pharr Davis The Trailblazer: Hard-earned Lessons from the Appalachian Trail and Beyond
Jennifer Pharr Davis is "the Serena Williams of long-distance hiking" (Baratunde Thurston, PBS America Outdoors). An internationally recognized adventurer, speaker, author and entrepreneur, she translates her experiences into a path that enables people to better navigate their work and their world.
An expert on self care, stress management and "what it takes to keep going," Jennifer has covered more than 14,000 miles of trails on six different continents. In 2011, she set the overall (male or female) record on the Appalachian Trail, finishing the 2,185-mile footpath in 46 days, for an astounding average of 47 miles a day. She is the first and only woman to hold this title.
Jennifer is a proponent of "moving women forward" in every season of life. And she has embodied this ideal this by backpacking 700 miles in her second and third trimesters of pregnancy, walking across North Carolina while nursing her newborn son, and hiking in all fifty states with her two-year-old daughter.
Jennifer has shared her hard-earned trail lessons hundreds of times with Fortune 500 companies, conferences, secondary schools and universities across the United States, Canada, and Europe.
She has published ten books, including her recently released "empowering blueprint on resilience" The Pursuit of Endurance and her best-selling Appalachian Trail memoir Becoming Odyssa. She has also penned articles for The New York Times, Outside magazine and Backpacker.
Jennifer founded North Carolina-based Blue Ridge Hiking Company in 2008 and was named the Asheville Chamber's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019. She appeared in the 2020 IMAX film Into America's Wild (narrated by Morgan Freeman), the PBS shows America Outdoors, and Amazon video's The High Pointers.
She currently serves on the President's Council for Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, is a past board member for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and has received numerous accolades, including 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, one of Men's Journal's 25 Most Adventurous Women of the Past 25 Years, and the governor of North Carolina's prestigious Laurel Wreath award for athletic achievement.
More than her accomplishments, though, it is Jennifer's capacity to connect with people and inspire them that makes her... The Trailblazer.