Vanessa Audi Rhys O'Brien is a British and American mountaineer, explorer, public speaker and former business executive. She became the first American woman to climb K2 and the first British woman to climb K2 on 28 July 2017, successfully leading a team of 12 members to the summit and back on her third attempt. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Member of The Scientific Exploration Society. O'Brien received a Fearless Girl Award in 2019 and was awarded Explorer of The Year in 2018 by SES. She set a Guinness World Record for climbing the highest peak on every continent in 295 days, the fastest time by a woman. O'Brien has also skied the last 60 nautical miles or 111 km to the South Pole and North Pole completing the Explorers Grand Slam in 11 months, becoming the first woman to do so in under a calendar year and the 8th woman in the world to accomplish this. On June 8-9, 2020, along with Kathy Sullivan, O'Brien became the first woman to reach the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the ocean.
Vanessa is an Honorary Advisory Board member of the Scientific Exploration Society. She is also a Community Ambassador for the outdoor equipment company, Arc'Teryx, Soho, New York, and a Goodwill Ambassador for Pakistan, an Honorary Ambassador of the US Nepal Climbers Association Inc., and is an active member of The American Alpine Club. O'Brien previously held board positions at The Explorers Club, the American Pakistan Foundation, and was a former Advisory board member for Thomson Safaris. O'Brien has contributed to a number of research and scientific projects including investigating the effects of nocturnal hypoxic exposure on high-altitude mountaineering, testing the thinning of high altitude glaciers, and illustrating the impact of climate change at the equator in advance of COP21 in conjunction with Project 25Zero.
Summits and poles
Having trekked to Mount Everest base camp and reached the summits of a number of notable mountains, including five of the world's fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, including summiting two eight thousanders back-to-back just 8 days apart, O'Brien decided to build on her passion for mountaineering and set herself the challenge of achieving the Explorer's Grand Slam. The Explorer's Grand Slam entails reaching the Seven Summits, the North and South Poles, as well as meeting the Three Pole Challenge.
Challenger Deep
Vanessa joined Caladan Oceanic's Ring of Fire expedition to the Pacific Ocean to survey the bottom of the three pools that constitute Challenger Deep in partnership with NOAA. On 12 June 2020, Victor Vescovo and Vanessa descended to the "Eastern Pool" of Challenger Deep spending three hours mapping the bottom, with the dive scanning approximately one mile of desolate bottom terrain, finding that the surface is not flat, as once was thought, but sloping, and by about 18 ft, subject to verification.
Other sports
After taking the American Red Cross flag to the North Pole in 2013, O'Brien completed the Boston Marathon in 2017 to help the American Red Cross raise over $512,000 for charity. O'Brien has the following photography credits at Forbes magazine for Motorsports in 2018 covering The National Hot Rod Association Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway in Charlotte, NC: Don Schumacher, Leah Pritchett, Tony Schumacher, and Antron Brown. O'Brien also has the following photography credits at Forbes magazine for Motorsports in 2015 covering Pocono Raceway: Justin Wilson, Mario Andretti, Rick Mears, and Sage Karam. Additional photos include Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi, Mike Hull, and Pippa Mann.
