Building Resilience: Presentations on Running, Resilience, and Climate from Around the World

Pavel’s highly visual and dynamic presentations help audiences understand and explore the role of the individual in making conscious decisions to build community and ecological resilience.

Building on a decades-long career as an endurance/adventure athlete and teacher, Pavel illustrates — through captivating images, video, and unforgettable storytelling — how moving through landscapes can more intentionally connect us with the natural world. Over the past 5 years, Pavel has completed several high-profile endurance runs across the Scandinavian arctic and sub-arctic as well as in his home state of Vermont.

His presentations include stunning photographs of remote mountain landscapes and portraits of nature that speak to our intimate connection with the places we inhabit and travel through.

Pavel is a veteran of more than 25 years of teaching and public speaking, and since completing his first ultra-distance trail run across New Hampshire’s White Mountains in 1989, he has been running and following his love of adventure around the world. He is Associate Dean of Academics, Faculty of Environmental Humanities, and Director of Athletics at Vermont’s Sterling College. The author of many articles and books on the environment, Pavel has inspired audiences to transform thinking and help build a more resilient approach to both our local ecology and the global climate.

Download the Building Resilience promotional flyer here!

Pavel offers presentations specifically tailored to audience needs in the following areas — Adventure Running, Building Resilience, and Climate Resilience

Adventure Running

In 2015, he completed a 3-day trans-Icelandic run of 150 miles through glacial, volcanic, and arctic terrain across Iceland’s remote interior from the south to the north coast. 

In 2017, Pavel finished an 8-day 260-mile run on the Nordkalottleden along the border of Norway and Sweden from Sulitjelma to Abisko. Fording rivers swollen deep with snowmelt, following trails hidden by undermined snowfields, and traversing miles of alpine tundra among reindeer and the silence of endless arctic summer days.   

Between July 24 and 26, 2018, Pavel ran to the summits of seven of the Faroe Islands’ highest peaks — each between 620 and 880 meters above sea level — exploiting the few fair weather days during his week-long visit to summit several trail-less peaks guarded by cliff-bands, steep slopes, and territorial skuas.     

Earlier in 2018, between June 20 and 30, Pavel and his support team, Team Climate Run, completed a 500-mile bike & run double-crossing of Vermont. On June 20, Pavel rode from the Canadian border to Massachusetts, covering 213 miles of beautiful Vermont roads before starting a run along the 272-mile Long Trail from North Adams, Massachusetts. After completing nearly 200 miles of the run, an injury sidelined Pavel, but a host of community members and fellow runners completed the next stages, setting the stage for Pavel to return and complete the last section to Journey’s End with a group of community members and their families a week later. In all, more than 25 people participated in supporting, pacing, and section running the LT during the Vermont Climate Run.

Additionally, Pavel can speak to a long resume of ultra running events — from regional 50 kilometer races to the Leadville 100 mile trail race, which he completed in 27 hours and 40 minutes in August 2016 — and his role as coach of the nation’s first Trail, Mountain, Ultra Running Team at Vermont’s Sterling College.

Building Resilience: Self, Community, and the World

In today’s world, we can no longer afford to think of ourselves in isolation — whether that’s from one another in our communities or from the larger ecological systems we are a part of. This presentation is perfect for community groups, corporate retreats, school and university visioning, and similar venues where a whole systems approach to organizational structure.

Rooted in Pavel’s expertise as in college administration, teaching, and curriculum design — as presented at SXSWedu in 2017 — this presentation is tailored to meet the needs of organizations looking to look deeply at both their internal systems and their place in a network of external relationships.

Founded in an ecological approach to thinking about organizational relationships — and underscored by brief stories and images from Pavel’s experiences in the Arctic — Building Resilience can help be a catalyst for rethinking

Building Resilience can be delivered in a hands-on workshop format or presentation as appropriate.

Climate Resilience

The Climate Resilience presentation weaves together lessons and stories from running hundreds of miles through remote, mountainous regions of the north with reflections on our relationship with our environment.

Two key parts of this presentation look at, first, how we are all as much a part of the ecological systems in which we live as we are a part of our own bodies, and second, how it is critically important, moving forward, that we reframe our narrative around climate change to be one of resilience rather than one of crisis and catastrophe.

Through vivid photos, video, and engaging storytelling, Pavel traces the connection between athletics and resilience helps audiences find ways to build a new ecological paradigm that is inclusive, intentional, and understanding of our roles in a complex world.

Recent Presentations & Workshops:

2018

August 1-19, 2018
Ecological and Cultural Resilience in Arctic Norway
Sterling College Global Field Study Course
Norway

Thursday, March 27, 2018
Green Mountain Club Visitor Center
Waterbury, VT

2017

December 13, 2017
Albany Community School
Albany, VT

October 14, 2017
Northwoods Stewardship Center
East Charleston, VT

Ecology as a Model for Teaching
Thursday, March 9, 2017
SXSWedu
Austin, TX

Thursday, February 16, 2017
Craftsbury Outdoor Center
Craftsbury, VT

2016

Saturday, Nov 4, 2016
Whitney Center
Jackson, NH

Tuesday, Oct 11, 2016
Sterling College
Craftsbury Common, VT

Monday, Feb 22, 2016
Cannon School
Concord, NC

Friday, Feb 19, 2016
Green Mountain Club Taylor Series Talk
Green Mountain Club HQ
Waterbury, VT

Thursday, Jan 14, 2016
Albany Community Middle School
Albany, VT

2015

Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2015
Craftsbury Middle School
Craftsbury Common, VT

Saturday, Nov. 14, 2015
Catamount Trail Association Annual Meeting
Green Mountain Club HQ
Waterbury, VT

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2015
Hathaway Brown School
Shaker Heights
Cleveland, OH

Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015
Mansfield Nordic Club Annual Meeting
Town Hall, Underhill, VT

Thursday, Sep. 24, 2015
Outdoor Gear Exchange
Burlington, VT

Monday, June 22, 2015
University Center of the Westfjords
Isafjordur, Iceland

Thursday, May 28, 2015
‘The Climate Run Project: Athletes and Climate Resilience’
New Narratives of the Postcolonial Arctic
Roskilde University
Roskilde, Denmark

For more information, please contact Pavel.