Mina Guli is a renowned water advocate and ultrarunner who has dedicated her life to solving one of the world’s most urgent issues - the global water crisis. Following a successful 15-year career in law, finance and climate change, Mina founded Thirst - a non-profit focused on changing how we think about water. 

Since its launch in 2012, Thirst has educated more than 2 million students in China, trended on Chinese Twitter, set a Guinness World Record, and with the support of the Chinese Government, run innovation competitions with the participation of over 700,000 students.

Concerned at the pace of change, in 2016, Mina set out to demonstrate the power of having big, audacious goals, and the determination to do the hard things needed to achieve them. A confessed non-runner, that year Mina ran across 7 deserts on 7 continents in just 7 weeks, including Antarctica – a continent that left an indelible impression on her for its critical role in the water cycle. A year later, Mina ran 40 marathons in 40 days on 6 continents down 6 of the World’s great rivers – to promote the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 (water).

And in 2018 Mina set out to run 100 marathons in 100 days, breaking her leg at Marathon 62. Rather than end the campaign, a global movement of people across the planet stepped up to share their stories and to run for water. The Run Blue movement was born.

From March 2022 to March 2023, Mina ran 200 marathons in 32 countries across the world, continuing to build Run Blue to become the biggest global grassroots movement on water in history, with the participation of people from over 200 countries and territories, over 3.5 billion media impressions and a wave of momentum built in advance of the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York.

Along each of her routes, Mina interviews local people and water experts, sharing their stories with governments and corporations worldwide through images, stories, films and exhibitions, including at international events such as COP and the UN Climate and Water Summits.

Mina is a highly acclaimed public speaker and frequent media commentator, featuring in hundreds of national and global newspapers, magazines, and television programs around the world including the BBC, CNN, CBS, CCTV, ABC, France 3, Fox and Al Jazeera, and in the New York Times, Guardian, Forbes, Fortune and the LA Times. She has served as the MC for high-level events at the UN, including at the recent UN High Level Political Forum, and for an opening event at the UN Water Conference attended by the King of the Netherlands and the President of Tajikistan.

In recognition of her incredible achievements, Mina received YPO Global Impact and Innovation Awards, and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of Australia’s most influential women, a “Global Visionary” by UBS and by Fortune Magazine in 2016 alongside Angela Merkel, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos and the Pope as one of the 50 greatest leaders in the world.

Download Mina’s Bio