Blind adventurer challenges ENGAGE attendees to reach new heights

Even mighty Mount Olympus in Greece can’t measure up to what Erik Weihenmayer has accomplished in his life, yet the adventurer who became the first blind person to reach the peak of Mount Everest stood in wonder at the thousands gathered to hear his inspirational words to kick off AICPA & CIMA ENGAGE 2024.

“You’re in a really hard industry. I mean, it’s Greek to me what you guys do,” Weihenmayer said. “It’s incredibly difficult – all the regulations and rules that are constantly evolving and changing and devolving, that you’re trying to struggle to understand and stay on top of. It’s got to be absolutely overwhelming.”

Yet, those who heard Weihenmayer’s words Monday in Las Vegas exited the room – after saluting him with a standing ovation – with a sense that truly anything is possible.

“I had an opportunity to spend some time with Erik backstage this morning – just an incredible person,” Barry Melancon, CPA, CGMA, the CEO of AICPA & CIMA, said as he welcomed about 5,000 participants to ENGAGE. “We’re an incredible profession with incredible people in it, and we can also learn from the commitment that people have for overcoming challenges. That’s what we do for business as trusted advisers.”

The word “trust” has as much meaning to Weihenmayer as it does to anyone on Earth. When a rare condition called retinoschisis began eroding his eyesight in middle school, Weihenmayer trusted his father to help keep him pushing forward. His sense of adventure was fleeting, as the driveway ramp he loved traversing with his mountain bike disappeared day by day before his very eyes.

His father extended by six months the time that his son could see a sliver of light to keep making those jumps by painting the ramp the brightest of oranges. Soon after even that faded, Weihenmayer put trust in himself with his family’s support by signing up for a rock-climbing program for the blind in his native Connecticut.

Fast forward to 2021, two decades after Weihenmayer landed on the cover of Time magazine after climbing Everest, and the color orange came to the forefront again. During the filming of the National Geographic television series Welcome to Earth, Weihenmayer experienced a surreal moment standing on the rim of a spewing volcano in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu when host Will Smith described to him that it looked like “orange fireworks shooting out of the ground.”

Could Weihenmayer as a frightened child in his driveway have imagined a future filled with such moments?

“Yeah, I was afraid to go blind and see darkness. But even more than that, I was afraid that I would be shoved to the sidelines, into that dark place,” he said. “Going blind was scary; not living fully was terrifying, way more terrifying than anything blindness could do to me.”

That has driven Weihenmayer to truly great heights, and he challenged those hearing his story to attack life – in and out of the office – with the same zeal.

“I think the most exciting part of life, and the most daunting part of life, is when we see ourselves as pioneers,” Weihenmayer said. “That doesn’t mean that we’re climbing Everest or we’re rocketing to Mars or we’re curing cancer. What it means is that we’re engineers of our own lives.

“And we’re constantly looking for these new ways of reaching out and, beyond convention, crossing through those blurry lines between what maybe other people see as impossible, improbable, unlikely – but what we believe in our hearts to be fully possible.”

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Bryan Strickland at Bryan.Strickland@aicpa-cima.com