On his third, and final attempt, Lucas J. Carbonaro joined an elite group of 2,500 elite athletes that have swum the English Channel in the last 150 years. But there was one big difference - Lucas is not an elite athlete. A completely average swimmer, Lucas discovered average can be extraordinary in the right environment. Lucas J. Carbonaro is half Italian and half Scottish and self-identifies as European. He grew up in Sicily and graduated in Mathematics from Catania. He pursued his Master's in Statistics at LSE before completing three years of research on computational finance at the University of Oxford. After completing his MBA at HEC Paris, Lucas continued his finance journey and currently works for the European Investment Bank. Between 2010 and 2015, Lucas helped raise $150k for charity, supporting educational causes through various sports challenges. In 2016, he took a sabbatical to set up a Luxembourgish fund supporting low-income students gain access to best-in-class universities.

Lucas enjoys sports and believes in life-long learning, taking weekly lessons in Russian and chess. As Lucas likes to say, "It is well known that humans can do amazing things, and in my opinion, this is easier when one has a clear goal, a step-by-step approach and is surrounded by people sharing the same objective."

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx