MY LIFE JOURNEY

“Blindness is not about not being able to see, it’s about seeing further than you thought possible”

 

My name is Thibault Trancart, I was born on October 18th 1991, and currently live in Geneva. Of Swiss nationality, I grew up in this city, where I also fought the battle of my youth against a double retina cancer. Through nine years of treatments including: chemotherapy, protontherapy, radioactive plates, radiotherapy, cryotherapy, and 85 medical interventions, I now have total victory over the cancer, but at the ultimate cost of my sight at age 14.

 

Despite the affect on my life of countless medical interventions and the loss of sight, I refused to be treated differently to others. I followed a normal academic path, obtaining an International Baccalaureat from the International School of Geneva. In 2009, whilst still in high school, I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, which was successfully removed. I then went on to study at McGill University, becoming the first blind person to graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce from the Desautel Faculty of Management. Regardless of the obstacles generated by my handicap, I was able to enjoy my student life to the fullest.

 

In the fall of 2015, I decided to throw myself into a new challenge: Paralympic Alpine Skiing. This adventure started as a joke with a friend, neither of us had any training in competitive sports and it ended at the Europa Cup level in March 2020. In these four and a half years my guide and I created the Blind Trust Ski Team, competing first at national level and then in the international circuit as part of the Development Section of the Swiss Paralympic Ski Team. We participated in races all over Europe, as well as in the US, skiing down slaloms, Giant slaloms and even some Super G…

 

During the 2019 summer, I spent five months at Procter & Gamble as an Assistant Brand Manager intern, making this my first experience in the business world.

 

The end of my competitive skiing allowed me to join a newly created association Trust To Achive (www.trust-to-achieve.com), where as an active member I participate in the realization of its mission: to remedy the lack of integration in the work space of visually impaired people, while on a personal side I was approached by Hult International Business School with a proposal to of join the MBA program 2021 in Boston, which I have accepted.

 

Since November 2020, I am an intern at the Services Industriels Genevois (SIG) in the communication team. I will be with them until the end of January 2021, when I start at Procter & Gamble as a Brand Manager.

 

From these experiences came the desire to share with people all the challenges I face in my life, and above all the will to destigmatise society’s perception of handicap and blindness. What our society and most people perceive as a disability has in fact enabled me to try and achieve on a level I might not have been challenged to had I had my sight. This has led me to want to encourage, motivate and inspire ALL people sighted and unsighted to strive to reach their objective, their dreams. And this is the beginning point of NoBlink©.

I Then. during the Fall of 2015, I decided to throw myself into a new challenge… Paralympic Alpine Skiing. Starting of as a jalk with a friend and no sports background , this adventure ended at the Europa Cup level in March 2020. For four and a half years, my guide and I created the Blind Trust Ski Team, competing first at the national level and then in the international circuit as part of the Development Section of the Swiss Paralympic Ski Team. We participated in races all over Europe, as well as in the US, skiing down slaloms, Giant slaloms and even some Super G…

From this background , came the desire to share with people all the challenges I had to face in my life. The will to destigmatise society’s perception of handicap and blindness. What our societies and most people perceive as a disability ; has in fact made me « More-abled. » Loosing my sight offered an invitation and I have tried and achieved on a level I might not have been challenged to do so had I had my sight. My experiences have led me to want to encourage, motivate, and inspire ALL people those who are unsighted and sighted to fight to reach their dreams, their objectives. And this is the beginning point for NoBlink©.

To learn more about my life, link to these videos: