Chief Change Officer
#368 Chris Schrader: From Rainy-Day Idea to Global Movement—The 24 Hour Race Story–Part One
Tue, 13 May 2025
Sometimes the biggest movements begin with a simple question: What can I do?In Part One, Chris Schrader, founder and executive chairman of the 24 Hour Race, shares the unfiltered origin story behind the world’s largest student-run movement to fight human trafficking. What started as a walk across England in memory of a friend became a 24-hour endurance race, then a global platform that’s raised over US$20 million across 25 cities.But Chris doesn’t romanticize it. He breaks down how it all came together—messy, accidental, and fueled more by belief than a master plan. From skeptical school principals to six-figure fundraisers, this episode explores what happens when students stop waiting for permission and start building real impact from the ground up.Key Highlights of Our Interview:The Walk That Started It All“Six months after a joke about walking across England, we were actually doing it—and raised HK$200,000 for rare diseases.”From Expedition to Endurance Sport“We turned a 150km trek across Hong Kong into a run-swim-row challenge—just to prove what students could really do.”The Birth of the 24 Hour Race“A simple idea: teams running a 24-hour relay. No elite athletes, just anyone willing to push themselves for a cause.”Why He Chose Human Trafficking—Without Knowing Much About It“It wasn’t the topic at first. It was the intensity. We needed a cause strong enough to power people through the pain.”Ignored by Schools, Backed by Students“Principals laughed us out of the room. So we went straight to students—and they built the movement themselves.”From One-Off Event to Global Force“What was supposed to be a one-time race exploded. Within a year, we were oversubscribed and scaling city by city.”Beyond Fundraising: Creating Life-Defining Moments“It’s not just money. Over a million young people have done the race. We want them to remember it when they’re 80.”Why They Treat Charity Like a Marketplace“People come for the music, the sleepover, the fun—and that’s fine. We win them over without preaching.”Raising Future Leaders, Not Just Dollars“Student directors interview NGOs, ask hard questions, and learn how to be real fiduciaries—not just fundraisers.”_____________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Chris Schrader --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and guests of this podcast episode?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chan, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world.
Today's guest is Chris Schrader, founder and executive chairman of 24 Hour Race, which is a global movement against human trafficking that has raised over 20 million US dollars in the last decade. I've known Chris for almost 10 years. Our first encounter was back in 2016 when I invited him to be a panelist at an event I hosted on education technology.
Chris is sharp, well-read, and definitely unconventional. He took a leave of absence from Harvard Spent an extended period of time away and eventually finished his studies in neuroscience while also building and growing tech businesses around the world. Along the way, he founded a charity based on his love for expeditions.
And it's safe to say he sees life and business leadership as a journey too. We'll be talking for about an hour, split into two parts. In this episode, part one, we'll dive into the genesis and evolution of 24-hour race. What started as a casual suggestion on a rainy day turned into a life-changing journey for a teenager. The world across England raised five figures in U.S.
dollar and sparked an eight-figure U.S. dollar global movement. Tomorrow's episode, part two, will focus on Chris' approach to leadership and team building, drawing parallels between leading an expedition and managing a business team. This episode highlights how lessons learned from life or death situations in the wilderness translate into effective leadership strategies in the corporate world.
Chris also offers his heartfelt advice for young ambitious talents on balancing life goals, family expectations, and career direction. Welcome, Chris. Welcome to my show.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Chris, do you remember that I invited you to an in-person event hosted by me back in 2016? And I can't believe that after so many years, I got the second chance of inviting you back now in a virtual format.
Thank you, Vince. They say that lightning never strikes the same place twice. But in this case, I think we can both agree that's a good thing. And I'm very excited to be chatting with you again for a second time with a decade that doesn't really feel like it should have been a decade later.
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Chapter 2: What is the origin story of the 24 Hour Race?
And less than a few years later, less than a year later, my mother was born here. And I was actually a similar product. So my mother, who grew up in Hong Kong and went to school here, went to the Netherlands, found herself a hub and basically said, if you want to marry me, you've got to find your way back to Hong Kong. And that was my father, who was studying medicine at the time.
For him to get qualified as a doctor, he had to go spend a year of training in London. And I have been there. Be Catholic accident, I think is the way to put it. But within a few months of my birth, we were all back in Hong Kong. And the rest of my siblings, I'm one of four, were all born in Hong Kong. So I grew up really at the tail end of Hong Kong's colonial era.
And I had, for all intents and purposes, a really happy childhood and upbringing. I got to the age of about 13 or 14, and then I went to school in the UK. I went to a small boarding school with a military background.
Up until this point... You had what seemed like an uneventful childhood, but then something happened while you were attending boarding school in Britain that planted the seed for what would later become the 24-hour race. Can you dive into that? Could you share more about what happened in detail?
While there, one of the more defining events in my life happened, and that was the passing away of a childhood friend of mine who had a rare congenital illness. At the age of 14, I didn't have money. I didn't have resources.
I didn't have any talents to contribute to his legacy, but I figured what's something I could do that would encourage people with resources, with money to maybe join that fight. And so on a typically cold, rainy English day, me and a few friends were sitting together talking about, of course, our summer plans.
And it was a joke and kind of in a serious way, I suggested, why don't we walk across England? And I remember all of my friends laughing lightheartedly, except for one who looked at me dead straight and said, let's do it.
And sure enough, through the support of parents, teachers, and friends, six months later, myself and my friend found ourselves walking across England, albeit the short way, that is the length way rather than up to Scotland. So we started at Land's End in the southwestern most point of the UK and walked back to our school just outside of Reading, close to London.
And in the process of that, we raised something like 200,000 Hong Kong dollars, which was more than I could have possibly imagined. Perhaps more importantly, we raised a ton of awareness about the plight of people suffering from illnesses that are so rare, they basically don't get any attention from the pharmaceutical industry. And this began my journey of
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Chapter 3: How did Chris Schrader's multicultural background influence his journey?
And so it was on my mind, how could I provide this platform connecting endurance activities pushing yourself mentally and physically so far that people think you're a little bit crazy and want to know the reason why and of course the reason why being philanthropy being charity so i came up with a pretty simple concept nothing new at 24 hours why did i pick 24 hours because
It felt like something anyone could do, regardless of whether you were a seasoned athlete or not. The 24-hour race is participated in teams of eight. So you do laps in this team in a sort of relay-style race. And if you're tired, you tag yourself out and a friend goes. If you're feeling good, you do a couple laps. You can run, you can walk, you can jog. In some cases, you can crawl.
So the platform felt accessible to everyone. What was harder was picking a cause. I knew from my two expeditions with Charles that when things were really tough, it was our respective causes that gave us the energy to carry on.
But how did you end up transforming the whole race into a movement against human trafficking?
By nature, me picking rare diseases wasn't something I thought every student could buy into. So there was a teacher at my school who I got along very closely with because he himself was ex-military. He was a huge six foot eight Irish ex-paratrooper. And I think he was a national athlete. And he said, have you heard about human trafficking?
And if I thought of human trafficking at the time, I assumed it was Liam Neeson-style, taken, gorgeous young woman gets kidnapped by Rich Shake on the streets of Paris rather than what we know of the issue as today.
I was curious, and he introduced me to one cause he was working with, which was the trafficking of children from rural communities in Nepal into circuses in India where they were subject to all kinds of abuse. And the situation was so horrific, it didn't take me long to say, yeah, this is something that any student could buy in.
But it's important to know I didn't really know anything about human trafficking or modern slavery. I really just cared about sharing the experience of pushing yourself for a good cause, which in my view was life transformational. The 24-hour race, the first event took place in 2010 and was originally supposed to be a one-off event.
I remember actually pitching it to teachers at various schools in Hong Kong, and they were sympathetic but ultimately dismissive because the idea that their students, who they could struggle to recruit for charity walkathons, would be giving their free weekends to run 24 hours non-stop seemed a little comical.
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Chapter 4: What inspired the first expedition walk across England?
let alone doing as well as it is in spite of events like COVID. So I had, if you want to use a sort of Thelian analogy, I had some secret about the world, although I wasn't really aware of it.
And that secret was that young people in the age of health and safety and helicopter parenting wanted independent opportunities and they wanted risk and they wanted to push themselves physically and mentally beyond what anyone around them would think is possible. I had experienced this myself. I figured students would enjoy that too. That was really the foundation. And I think that was luck.
I believed in it and have the right support around me. But I don't think, I don't really think that there was any sort of genius inception moment for the 24-hour race movement in spite of its success since then.
So exactly how much have you raised over the last 10 years or so?
I would say at least 150 million Hong Kong.
Wow, that's 150 million Hong Kong. That is about how much in U.S., like 20?
Yeah, 20 million U.S., roughly.
Yeah, and that is a big chunk of money you've raised over the years.
Yeah, I would say so, but I'm careful. I think there are people who, or rather than just people, there are organizations that raise that sort of money overnight. Our main strength, we quickly realized wasn't in raising money was important. And we picked the charity partners that we work with because we ourselves are not an anti-human trafficking grassroots NGO.
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Chapter 5: How did the 24 Hour Race evolve from a walk to an endurance race?
But in many ways, like that's where we think the biggest difference will be. You know, it's not about raising hundreds of millions, even though that has an impact that saves lives. It's important. It's more the awareness and advocacy that comes with young people becoming particularly engaged with an issue.
I was wondering, while raising money isn't your main focus, when you do receive a significant amount of money, how do you use it? How do you allocate those funds to create the most impact?
Yes, when we raise a dollar, 80 to 90 cents of that will go towards charitable activities. And those can be direct support for our partner NGOs. Right now we work with a global partner, A21, who has anti-human trafficking initiatives at the grassroots level all across Asia and indeed in the United States too.
And so we work closely with them to identify projects that we think will resonate with students, that will encourage them to engage with the cause and fund it. And then the rest is awareness and advocacy through the 24-hour race, through its events, etc.
So right now we're operating at around a 90% efficiency mark towards every dollar that gets generated, whether that's through ticket sales or fundraising efforts, which we're fairly happy around.
So basically, you allocate the funds across different NGOs. All of them are involved in fighting against human trafficking. Is that how you turn the money into real action?
The students themselves are still, to this day, organizing our races. We get them to engage with the leaders in these NGOs to understand what's happening. what it is exactly that they're funding. And we want them to view this as leaders with the kind of fiduciary responsibility of any charity executive.
You know, your student director in a country like Hong Kong or Singapore, wherever, will directly interview these project stakeholders to determine whether it's a good use of cash or not. And that in itself is a really important lesson. For a lot of young people who just write checks blankly, right?
A lot of, not even young people, a lot of us, and this is a personal peeve of mine, but a lot of us relegate our charitable activities to annual contributions to NGOs without really knowing too much about the mechanics of where that money is going. And I believe to some extent that it's much easier to write a check for a good cause than it is to actively engage with a particular issue.
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