Karla Wheelock

Karla Wheelock

• Mexican mountaineer and expert on teams, leadership, high performance and overcoming challenges
• Bestselling author and first Ibero-American woman to reach the highest mountain peak on each continent
• Member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Communication Committee

Karla Wheelock is a famed Mexican climber. She has dedicated her professional life to linking high-performance sports with excellent performance in the corporate environment through motivation, training, and the development of people in leadership positions.

She is also vastly involved with environmental and social causes concerning the younger generation. Her appointments as General Director of W Consultores and as President of the KW foundation have allowed her to lead projects with a positive impact on entrepreneurs and young people for more than twenty years.

A member of the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Communication Committee, Karla Whitlock has been able to keep up with initiatives on the care and conservation of the environment. She is also a National Councilor of Scouts and a member of  Women for the Conservation of CAPLAC. Her work life has seen her work in different public institutions, including the Presidency of the Republic, the National Women’s Institute, and the Ministry of Commerce and Industrial Development. She has also made vast inroads in the private sector.

Concerning her education, Karla Wheelock obtained a law degree from the Autonomous University of Coahuila. She also sports a Master’s degree in Socio-Environmental Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Environmental Law and Public Policy. The Inter-American Senate awarded her a Doctor Honoris Causa in 2017.

An avid mountaineer, Karla Wheelock became the first Ibero-American woman to climb the highest mountain peak on each continent in 2005. She was also the first Latin American to reach the top of Mount Everest via the northern slope. She achieved this remarkable feat in 1999. Besides winning various awards in recognition of her achievements, she is also a bestselling author who, in recent years, has promoted various projects involving children. She aims to help develop sustainable ethical leaders.

Karla Wheelock currently works for W Consultores as a consultant and lecturer. The company aims to train and deliver talks to various government entities, universities, and businesses across the globe. She is also involved in projects on environmental education, leadership development, and the empowerment of women.

Karla Wheelock – Speaker

A sought-after conference speaker, Karla Wheelock focuses on merging what she has learned as a successful mountaineer with business, environmental responsibility, and entrepreneurship. She lives in Mexico City and speaks and presents in Spanish, English, and Italian.

Speaker Topics

• Reach the Top: Karla Wheelock converses on the concepts of leadership, teamwork, and empowerment and how they relate to what she learned during her Everest ascent. “Making a summit” is a metaphor used to analyze the performance of human behavior, individual and collective, in business and personal life. Aspects covered during her delivery include:

1. What are the main objectives and actions of a team leader to ensure that all the innovation potential emerges in his collaborators?
2. What makes the difference between a team with low performance and productivity and a team that achieves amazing results?
3. What actions of the leader and the team generate value for customers, employees, and shareholders, who expect, in turn, to satisfy some need through the performance of that team?

• Exploring the Limits: The talk focuses on the adaption of work teams within organisations that have situations that require high commitment. Resilience, risk and crisis management, commitment to a team, adaptation to change, responsibility, breaking paradigms, and setting objectives will be key pieces to achieving goals in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Throughout this presentation, and by listening to the analogies of the experiences that for almost 30 years Karla Wheelock has learned in the different ascents in the highest mountains in the world, she shares the tools needed to find the mentality required in a terrain of constant innovation and evolution.
• How High Do You Want to Go? This talk sees Karla Wheelock address the concerns and uncertainties resulting from the current social contingency that we are going through as humanity. She makes an analogy that highlights the abilities of the human being that are key for us to achieve our own goals, regardless of the existence of difficult conditions. At the same time, we accompany Karla Wheelock’s ascent process to the highest peaks of each continent.
• Women at the Top: The objective of this presentation is to promote the empowerment of women through the bases and foundations of international organisations such as the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) that were specifically expressed at the III Congress of Protected Areas in Latin America and the Caribbean (Lima, 2019), a committee where Karla Wheelock is a member. These proposals meet the objectives and priorities of the role of women in Latin America, such as changing the perspective, ensuring our rights, materializing equity, and recognising the contribution of all parties involved. By listening to this talk, which relates the aforementioned aspects to nature conservation, attendees take with them the key elements to get to know each other.
• We Are All Nature: This talk motivates us to recognise in us the elements of nature for its conservation and achievement of goals. In this conference an analogy is made that highlights the elements of NATURE that are key for people to achieve their own goals, regardless of the existence of extreme conditions or limited resources. We share how and why nature is the great teacher. By recognising ourselves as part of it and learning from it, we discover all those aspects that we already have and with which we will seek to potentiate our leadership. This conference deals with tools that will allow us to recognise ourselves as part of an ecosystem because #TodosSomosNaturalezaKW
• The White Giant: A motivational talk where the experiences lived in the 7 expeditions to the Antarctic continent are shared. In these expeditions, an “exceptional team” work program was developed, which could be defined as one that, together with obtaining exceptional results, achieves an exceptional coexistence among its members, makes them feel satisfied and motivated while living the process and when they evoke it. subsequently. Manage the commitment of a team that formulates and assumes a shared purpose.
• ADVENTURE: Motivational talk developed to recognise in each of the attendees their ability to explore the Adventure in each of the personal and professional goals or objectives. In this conference, tools and values ​​are shared that allow us to be prepared for what is to come: ADVENTURE, making an analogy with the key skills and resources in the ascent of the highest mountain on each continent. As well as building resilience in times of change.