An ultra-endurance athlete will be the guest speaker at Peninsula College's next Studium Generale.

Rob DeCou is an educator, entrepreneur, and an ultra-endurance athlete who uses his passion and unique ability to persevere and push his limits, from ultra-triathlons to “Everesting,” for the purpose of raising awareness and building community around important issues.

He will present "Athlete with a Cause" at the Studium on Thursday, Jan. 5.

The program will start at 12:35 p.m. in the college's Little Theater.

The free presentation will also be on Zoom at pencol-edu.zoom.us/j/89779530051 (the meeting ID is 897 7953 0051).

In 2020, DeCou became the seventh person to complete the world’s toughest ultra-triathlon, the “Uberman,” raising more than $55,000 to fight human trafficking.

He swam 31 miles in 2019 across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, Canada to prevent trafficking. And in 2017, he completed the world’s toughest foot race, a 146-mile run across Death Valley to the top of Mount Whitney, raising more than $700,000 for the Rotary’s global campaign, “End Polio Now.”

The prior year, he completed the solo “Race Across America,” known as the world’s toughest bicycle race — a 3,000-mile journey from coast to coast — to fund brain cancer research.

DeCou is also the founder and CEO of Lux Virtual, a full-service digital marketing agency designed to illuminate ideas through video and animation storytelling, augmented reality, websites, and social media content. He serves as a tenure track business instructor at Peninsula College and is a member of the Nor'Wester Rotary Club.