TA's video clip

TA is an adventurer, outdoor educator, and author from St. John’s, Newfoundland. After summitting Mount McKinley in 2005, she set a goal of climbing the seven summits, the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. Throughout this journey, she has aimed to inspire others to have big dreams and big goals by sharing her adventures online and through motivational speaking.

Nurturing big dreams and climbing big mountains requires leaps of faith, heaps of humour, dashes of discipline, lots of luck, tons of teamwork, and the ability to ride large waves of emotion. Accepting the invitation to dream is the first step followed by intensive planning, training, and outreach. She utilizes this model repeatedly when nurturing her own dreams and the dreams of others.

In the spring of 2010, she returned to Nepal to climb Mount Everest. She climbed Everest in honour of her grandmother and in recognition of her life-long love of learning and in TA's role as an educator, she named the climb, “Mountain of Learning".

Biography

TA has received international and national recognition for her innovative teaching and inspirational speaking:

• In June of 2008, TA was awarded a prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellowship.

• In 2008, Minnesota State University named TA as the “2008 Distinguished Alumnus” in the Humanitarian category.
• In 2007, TA received the Karl Rhonke Creativity Award from the Association of Experiential Education.
• In 2006, The Globe and Mail named TA, “A Class Act” and she received the Association of Atlantic Universities Distinguished Teaching Award.
• The Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport named TA to their 2006 Top Twenty Most Influential Women in Canadian Sport and Physical Activity List.
• TA received the Memorial University Presidents Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2005.
• the Association for Experiential Education named TA the Outstanding Experiential Teacher of the Year in 1999.

TA regularly inspires audiences big and small with multimedia presentations of her various adventures. She is a gifted speaker who has her audiences laughing out loud one moment and deep in thought the next. TA tailors each presentation to the unique needs of the audience from Scout groups to Boardrooms. Her highly entertaining shows overflow with passion for adventures of the body, mind, and soul.