Rodrigo Jordan

Rodrigo Jordán Fuchs (born June 30, 1959 in Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean business man, a University Professor, social entrepreneur and mountaineer. He is a founder and president of Vertical S.A., Leadership Professor in Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s MBA (MBA-UC) and Faculty member of Executive Education at Wharton School of Business in the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2018, he is also president of the Comunidad de Organizaciones Solidarias. Considered an accomplished mountaineer, he led the first South-American expedition to summit Everest in 1992^[1]. He repeated the ascent in 2012^[2] and 2016^[3] by different routes, making him 1 of only 3 people to have summited Everest on each of its faces. He has also been in many expeditions on mountains around the world and has authored a series of books and documentary films that recount these adventures.

Family and Studies

His father was Ricardo Jordán, and his mother was Sonia Fuchs, the renowned executive director of the fiction department of TVN (Chile’s National TV channel), who passed away in an aircraft accident in 1991^[4]. He has two brothers: Ricardo and Pablo. He attended San Gaspar School and The Grange School, both in Santiago, were he graduated in 1976, after earning the “Best Student of the Class” distinction and the “García Oldini Cup” for the best student in mathematics and physics^[5].

In 1983, he graduated as an Industrial Engineer from Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he received the distinction “Roberto Ovalle Aguirre” for the best engineer thesis awarded by the Chilean Engineers Institute^[6]. He also graduated from Oxford University, United Kingdom, where he earned his Ph.D. for his thesis on Innovation and Urban Poverty.

He has three daughters: Sofia, Natalia and Elisa.

Professional career

Back in Chile after finishing his Ph.D. in the United Kingdom, he was Director of the Directorate of Distance Education (Dirección de Educación a Distancia) of Pontifical Catholic University of Chile –TELEDUC- between 1990 y 1994. He also worked as Executive Secretary of the President’s Advisory Council of the Republic of Chile for Sport and Recreation (Consejo Asesor del Presidente de la República de Chile para el Deporte y la Recreación)^[7].

Mountaineering and expeditions

Parallel to his academic formation, Jordán has developed a sports career that began with rugby union, which he practiced during his schooling becoming part of the national youth team. When he was a university student, he began his career as mountain climber, by taking courses and climbing high mountains in Chile, Argentina, Alaska, Peru and Bolivia. From the beginning he stood out in this activity and gained the distinction for the “Best Athlete in Climbing”, awarded by the Sports Journalists Circle of Chile^[17].

In addition to developing his Ph.D thesis in Oxford he specialized as mountain instructor at the National School for Outdoor Activities of Great Britain.

He was awarded the Irvine Travel Award, given by Oxford University to the best expedition of the year, for his expedition to Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro, in Africa^[18].

On May 15, 1992, he led the first South American group who reached the peak of Everest (8,848 m / 29,029 ft), the highest mountain in the world.^[19] This experience was vital on his professional development, since the idea of creating Vertical S.A. was born there. The route they took was on the east face, known as the Kangshung face, that given its extreme difficulty, up to 2018 it has only been climbed 4 times^[20].

In 1996 he led another successful Chilean expedition, this time to K2, in the Karakoram range. This was the first integral ascent of the South-SouthEast ridge.

Between November 2002 and January 2003 he led a scientific-sporting expedition to Antártica^[21]. During 54 days and without any external support, they covered 400 kilometers of unexplored mountain terrain, and collected valuable ice and rock samples for scientific research on Antartica. Also in 2003 he made possible the first educational expedition for the MBA program of the Wharton School to Patagonia.

Later, in May 2004, he led his fourth expedition to Everest^[22] guiding it by the Khumbu Glacier route and placing nine climbers on the peak. Among the members of that team stands Andrónico Luksic Craig, one of the owners of the Luksic group, a leading business conglomerate in Latin America.

In May 2006 he conducted another successful expedition to the fourth highest mountain in the world, Lhotse ( 8,516 m / 27,940 ft) He placed eleven climbers on the peak and aimed to celebrate the contribution of Professor Claudio Lucero to the development of mountaineering and outdoor education in Chile.

In January 2008 he participated in the National Geographic Society and the New York's Explorer Club^[23] expedition to Antartica. During six weeks they explored on kayaks the west part of the Antartic Peninsula to record and evaluate the effects of climate change in that continent. That same year, he led an expedition that included kayak and hiking to Greenland, also meant to record the effects of climate change on the north ice.

In May 2012, to celebrate the 20 years of the first South-American ascent to Everest, he led an expedition with young climbers on the normal route through Nepal. This would be his second time on the summit of Everest^[24]. This time, the expedition successfully took 18 climbers to the summit.

The following year, in February, he reembarked on the Pelagic Australis for a month long international expedition of Antarctic mountain climbing, led by Stephen Venables and Skip Novak. He climbed Mount Scott and Mount Agamemnon. In September 2014, again under the command of Stephen Venables and Skip Novak, he goes on an expedition to South Georgia Islands, where he makes the first ascent to the three summits of the Trident, discovered by Ernest Schakleton 98 years before. The American Alpine Journal published an article of that expedition the following year^[25].

In 2016 he leads a sixth expedition to Everest, this time on the north face, through Tibet. On this opportunity he accomplishes his third Everest ascent 18 and becomes the only westener to have climbed the three faces of Everest^[26].

Distinctions

Throughout his entire career he has received many awards and distinctions.

Time magazine, in 1995, named him one of the leaders of the next millennium^[27]. He has been a member of the Royal Geographic Societyof the United Kingdom, and vice president of the International Union of Alpinist Associations (UIAA). For his work giving back to the community in a creative and significative manner, he was selected as an “Endeavor Entrepreneur” in the United States. Between 2000 and 2008 he was invited by the Rolex Awards for Enterprise as a member of the jury to award the Rolex Prize for Spirit of Enterprise.20

In September 2004 he was honored by the Ministry of Education of the Chilean Government with the Orden al Mérito Docente y Cultural Gabriela Mistral with a knighthood,21 distinction that is awarded to national or foreign people that have made a great service to benefit education, culture and the praising of the service of teaching.

In 2008 he was honored by the Center of Geographical Education Gilbert Grosvenor of the Texas State University with the Gilbert M. Grosvenor (president of the Director’s board of National Geographic) medal. This was the first time this award, given to whom stand out for their contributions to the education of geography, was given to a non-American citizen.

The Asociación Nacional de Avisadores awarded him the ANDA prize 2010,23 in recognition of his important contributions to the development of communications.

Publications

Much of the material collected on expeditions led by Rodrigo Jordán has been published in:

See also

• List of Mount Everest summiters by number of times to the summit
• List of 20th-century summiters of Mount Everest

References

External links

• www.vertical.cl
• www.institutovertical.cl
• www.fundacionvertical.cl
• www.wharton.upenn.edu
• www.fundacionpobreza.cl