Insights: video

Mark Pollock helps people to build resilience and collaborate with others so that they achieve more than they thought possible. Unbroken by blindness in 1998, Mark 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. In 2010 a fall from a second story window nearly killed him. Mark broke his back and the damage to his spinal cord left him paralysed. Now he is on a new expedition, this time exploring the intersection where humans and technology collide on his personal mission to cure paralysis in our lifetime.

Mark speaks about what it will take to cure paralysis in our lifetime. In particular he focuses on why it will take a cocktail of interventions and the importance of collaboration across disciplines.

The therapies that have the ability to make a difference are locked inside university labs or underfunded start-ups. Mark presented that problem to his colleagues in the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders during an education module in Oxford along with his fiancée Simone George. The result was the formation of an initiative called the Druid Collective and a $5 million investment fund to develop spinal stimulation technology that will change people’s lives in the next 5 years.

Through Mark’s connections in the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders, we supported NeuroRecovery Technologies to move one step closer to commercialising their trans-cutaneous spinal stimulators. As a founding member of WEF’s Druid Collective Initiative – www.druidcollective.org – Mark and Simone catalysed the formation of a $4 million venture philanthropy fund with Prescidio Partners in San Francisco and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation in New York.

Professor Yury Gerasimenko of the Pavlov Institute electrically stimulates Mark’s spinal cord during some baseline testing at UCLA. And, for the first time since his accident 3 years earlier, Mark voluntarily pulled his knee to his chest.

Watch at https://www.markpollock.com/stimulating-voluntary-movement-at-ucla/

Mark explores the potential of promoting neuro-plasticity in his nervous system by following a daily aggressive physical therapy programme in the US. And, with the support of his former South Pole teammate, Simon O’Donnell, they continued the training back in Ireland.

Watch at https://www.markpollock.com/promoting-neuro-plasticity/

After losing his sight in 1998, Mark competed in the inaugural Gobi March – The Race Of No Return – with his teammate Nick Wolfe. One year after winning silver and bronze medals at the Commonwealth Rowing Championships, Mark  swapped the rivers and lakes for the desert to run 6 marathons in 7 days.

Watch at https://www.markpollock.com/gobi-march-2003/