Petra Nemcova

Petra Němcová is a Czech model, television presenter, and philanthropist whose work after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami reshaped her public profile from fashion industry figure to disaster-recovery campaigner. She survived the tsunami at Khao Lak in Thailand by clinging to a palm tree for several hours after her partner, the photographer Simon Atlee, was swept away and killed.

Born in 1979 in Karviná in what was then Czechoslovakia, she began modelling internationally in the late 1990s and became known to American audiences after appearing on the cover of the 2003 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She continued to work for fashion houses and cosmetics brands while taking on television presenting roles, including stints on the Czech version of Let's Dance.

In 2005 she founded the Happy Hearts Fund, later renamed All Hands and Hearts, to rebuild schools in regions hit by natural disasters. The organisation has reported the construction or rehabilitation of more than one hundred and fifty schools across countries including Indonesia, Haiti, the Philippines, and Nepal, and merged with the disaster response group All Hands Volunteers in 2017.

She has held formal advisory roles with United Nations agencies on tourism and disaster preparedness and has spoken at the World Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative. She continues to divide her time between modelling work, television in the Czech Republic, and the field operations of her foundation.

The forename Petra is the feminine form of Peter, from the Greek petros, meaning stone or rock, the same word Jesus uses in the New Testament when renaming the apostle Simon. The name has been popular across Czech, German, and Dutch-speaking regions throughout the twentieth century, and her career has made her one of the most internationally recognised bearers of it from Central Europe.