Adventurer and Academic Leader to Address Wilson College

Trailblazing adventurer and academic leader Tori Murden McClure will address the Wilson College Class of 2025 at the 155th annual commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 4. 

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McClure retired from Spalding University in 2024 having worked there for 25 years and serving the last 14 years as president. She is perhaps best-known as the first woman and first American to row a boat solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She accomplished this 3000-mile journey in 1999 after 81 days at sea in her boat “American Pearl,” a 23-foot plywood rowboat she crafted by hand and later donated to the Frazier History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. A decade earlier, she was also one of the first two women and first 10 Americans to ski cross country to the South Pole as part of a 50-day, 750-mile Canadian-led expedition.

In 2009, Harper Collins published her memoir, “A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean,” which details her life and journey across the Atlantic. The book is the basis of a stage musical called “Row,” which made its world premiere at the prestigious Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts in 2021.

“It is an honor to have renowned adventurer and scholar Tori Murden McClure providing the Commencement address to our undergraduate and graduate degree students this year,” said President Wesley R. Fugate, Ph.D. “Not only will her extraordinary journeys and academic insights help celebrate this occasion, but it is my hope that her experiences will also encourage Wilson’s graduates to embark on their own journeys with a sense of lifelong learning and adventure.”  

As an accomplished mountaineer, McClure has completed major climbs on several continents and served as a former Board Chair of the National Outdoor Leadership School, a nonprofit global wilderness school based in Wyoming. She also worked as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and Wilderness EMT for almost twenty-five years, while also providing EMT instruction to firefighters. 

As a former college athlete, McClure is a proponent of collegiate and amateur athletics. While attending Smith College as an undergraduate, she was a dual-sport Division III student-athlete in basketball (team co-captain) and varsity crew and served as a student athletic trainer. As a senior, the College honored her as the student who best represented the ideals of a Smith scholar-athlete, the College’s highest athletic honor. She joined the Smith College Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame in 2000. She served a term as Vice Chair of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Board of Governors—the top governing body in collegiate athletics, chaired the NCAA Division III Presidents Council, and was Acting Chair of the NCAA Board in 2020.

During her extensive career, she worked as a chaplain at Boston City Hospital, director of a Louisville, Kentucky women’s shelter, policy assistant to the Mayor of Louisville, and the first full-time employee of the Muhammad Ali Center. McClure holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Smith College, a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Spalding University.