11 inspiring people from 11 years of Escape: Emily Penn

When we first started Escape the City back in 2010, we had no idea how many incredibly inspiring people we'd meet along the way. We set out to help ambitious and talented people to do work that matters to them and the world, and through the years we've encountered thousands of people who demonstrate that it's possible to do something different with your career and make a difference in the process. While it was hard to choose just 11 stories, here we've outlined a few of the people who we come back to regularly when we're looking for a bit of inspiration ourselves.

We hope you enjoy reading their stories and that they can be an inspiration to you, too! This is the first in our series of inspiring people, check out the whole list here.

Emily Penn - The Ocean's champion

About Emily:

After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in Architecture, Emily began her career. Whilst writing her architecture dissertation on an eco-city that was being built in Shanghai, she thought, ‘I can’t take an aeroplane to travel to a zero-carbon city.’ So she ended embarking on a trip travelling by train, plus a few days on a horse and camel, across Europe, through Russia, Mongolia and down into China.

This trip sparked Emily’s love for travel, particularly slow travel. This newfound love resulted in her getting a job onboard a biofuel boat called Earthrace. This was a way to hitchhike around the world to a job as an architect in Australia, without using an aeroplane. One night in the middle of the Pacific, she heard something hit the hull – and the next day saw all this plastic. There wasn’t any running water on that boat, just three litres of drinking water a day, so to wash they basically had to stop the boat and jump off the back. And doing that daily is what got Emily so close to that part of the ocean – she’d jump in the water to wash and be surrounded by plastic, nearly 1,000 miles from the nearest land. 

They would then stop at these small islands, and see how they were struggling so much with waste management, especially plastic. And then they’d land on beaches of uninhabited islands that had more plastic on them. After those moments of seeing it first-hand, she just couldn’t really look back.

The problem-solving, ‘architect’ part of her brain kicked in and she started to not just see the problem, but solutions. That began with community clean-ups, which led her to be much more inquisitive about the mid-ocean gyres and wanting to understand more about how plastic was moving around our planet. That led to expeditions and actually trying to solve the problems – something that needs a whole community of people.

She organised the largest ever community-led waste cleanup from a tiny Tongan island, trawled for microplastics on a voyage through the Arctic Northwest Passage, rounded the planet on the record-breaking bio fuelled boat Earthrace, and worked on a sailing cargo ship trading western supplies for coconuts.

Emily then started eXXpedition - a series of all-female voyages which focus on the relationship between plastics and toxins and female health. She also co-founded Pangaea Explorations, to enable scientists, filmmakers and everyday people gain access to the most remote parts of our planet; collecting data on global issues and along the way discovered previously unknown oceanic gyres – huge areas of plastic pollution accumulation.

Emily has shared her experiences around the world at TEDx conferences, universities and global companies, sharing both her adventures and an understanding of the issues relating to our oceans, human mindset and future society.

Emily was honoured with the Fitzroy Award at the 2016 Ocean Awards and is also the youngest and only female recipient of both the Yachtmaster of the Year, awarded by HRH Princess Royal, and the Seamaster of the Year award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical society and in 2017 was elected as a member of the Cordon Rouge Club.

What we love about Emily’s story:

Emily is an incredibly inspiring example of someone who followed her curiosities and allowed herself to be led by a drive to solve the problems she saw in the world. Emily has put her skills and talents as a trained architect to use in a unique and creative way, shining a light on potential solutions to one of the greatest challenges our planet faces today.

Instead of getting stuck in the trap of thinking an architect can only ever use her skills in architecture, she allowed herself to see her skills in new ways and therefore create opportunities for herself.

Emily was working on ocean plastics and cleanups well before Planet Earth shone a light on the issue, and she has spent a huge amount of time and energy encouraging and inspiring the next generation to do the same. It’s Emily’s steadfast commitment to the ocean and the work she does that inspires us so much.