Quick Facts
Biography
Tina Sjögren is the first woman to have completed the Three Poles Challenge − climbing Mount Everest and going to the North and South poles − in 2002.
She was borne in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on 26 May 1959, and left the country 9 years old as a political refugee. She ended up in Sweden, where she married the Swede Tom Sjögren in 1983. The couple emigrated to New York City in 1996.
In 1999, Tina and Tom Sjögren (known as T&T) climbed Mount Everest, and then broke the record of high altitude broadcasting.
In November 2002, they were the first to broadcast live pictures and sounds from the Antarctic ice cap. On February 2, 2002, they reached the South Pole after 63 days of skiing. On 29 May 2002, just four months after having returned from Antarctica, they reached the North Pole completely autonomously at record speed (118 days), and also transmitted the first ever live broadcast of satellite images and sounds from the Arctic pack ice.