Rikke Dam

Rikke Dam is a Danish marathon and extreme-environment runner and Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ixdf.org. She became the 2026 North Pole Marathon Female Champion with a winning time of 6:54:02 on one of the toughest courses in the race's history: ankle-deep slush ice and meltwater covered half of every lap, with deep, drifted snow and ice covering the rest. She started running 9 months before competing at the North Pole. She chose Antarctica as the perfect place to start running, at age 50, because she loves extreme challenges. She had just two months to ramp up from a fit lifestyle with weight training and zero running to a full marathon. During the Antarctica Marathon, she discovered that she loved running. Since then, she's trained hard and consistently, running several half marathons each week with her sons and her husband, with whom she's been traveling the world for the past 1.5 years. The North Pole Marathon was a key part of this family adventure. Rikke loves wild challenges. When she feared water, she became a professional scuba diver. Born on a pig farm, she used Denmark's free access to high-quality education to build a life of freedom, working and living around the world. For decades, she and her co-founder, husband, and running buddy have worked to give people everywhere access to affordable, high-end education in design, technology, and AI so they can design lives they love too, no matter their background