Figure skater from the desert, New York financier, ethnic puzzle: Camden Pulkinen thrives on being an “enigma" in sport
Olympics.com spoke to the USA athlete about the leaps of faith that have changed his life trajectory, finding the perfect balance between figure skating and his finance sector job, and his dislike for office cubicles.
Figure Skating
Camden Pulkinen never wanted to be like the others. When his Arizona classmates laced up for the school's American football team, he laced up his skates. When everyone went to university, he went to the ice rink. When everyone went to the ice rink, he went to university. When fellow athletes bustled to get ready for the Olympic Games, he got a job in New York’s bustling finance sector.
A lone figure skater from the desert who is simultaneously pursuing a personal best score on the ice and a healthy balance sheet for his clients, Pulkinen brings together a unique mix of Finnish, French and Thai ethnicities, and is someone who is impossible to put in a box.
"I've always wanted to be someone different. I've always wanted to do things differently,” Pulkinen told Olympics.com. “The way I would describe myself is an enigma to the world. I don't think I do things the normal way. If everyone goes right, I like to turn left."
It is a game of contrasts that has worked well for the 24-year-old athlete. A bronze medallist at the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Pulkinen is consistently among the best male skaters from his country with a line-up of original programs that showcase his eclectic background.
He has competed at nearly every major figure skating competition and now only the Olympic Games are missing on this list – an omission he hopes to turn around this season when the quotas for the Milano Cortina Olympic Games 2026 are decided.
USA, Finland, France, Thailand – an ethnic blend that made Camden Pulkinen
Usually quick with his replies, Camden Pulkinen pauses and falls silent when asked which of his ethnic origins he identifies with most. His father is of Finnish and French descent while his mother is Thai. Their son was born and raised in Arizona and has since lived in two other USA states.
"That's the question. What am I? I'm not sure," Pulkinen finally says with a smile as he tries to summarise this remarkable ethnic mix.
His European and Asian backgrounds mostly come to the fore in the skater's eating habits. Pulkinen's diet includes copious amounts of fish – a nod to his Finnish roots – while Thai is his go-to comfort food.
Pulkinen has never been to Thailand and wants to explore this side of his identity more, whereas Finland and France are often his assignments of choice on the Grand Prix circuit. The Grand Prix de France and the Finlandia Trophy are his two stops during the 2024-25 season. He also travelled to France in 2023 and to Finland in 2022, finishing fifth on both occasions.
The multicultural atmosphere of the figure skating world is a place where Pulkinen feels completely at ease, happily exchanging greetings in different languages and discovering the other skaters’ cultures.
"Having this multicultural identity has allowed me to be more accepting of other people and when I meet new people, I'm very interested in their life and seeing what their culture is like," Pulkinen said. "I love meeting people that are like, 'Oh, I'm half this and half that'. So I'm like, 'Do we have shared experiences?'"
Camden Pulkinen: A figure skater from the desert
The shared experiences that Pulkinen found in figure skating were something he was mostly missing while going to school.
He grew up in Scottsdale, a city in the greater Phoenix area hailed as “The West’s Most Western Town”. It is located at the northern point of the Sonoran Desert, the second largest hot desert in North America that stretches over 310,000 square kilometres sprinkled with cacti and yucca plants. In the summer, temperatures range in the mid-30s but can easily exceed 40 degrees Celsius.
Played on Arizona's sun-drenched landscape, baseball and American football are the most popular sports in the area. Pulkinen, however, chose a different route.
As a five-year-old, he followed his older sister Elena to the ice rink and while she has since cast figure skating into the realm of hobbies, Pulkinen stayed in the sport. This made him the only figure skater in a high school of 4,000 students.
Wishing to progress his skating further, Pulkinen considered a jump to another desert state to train at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Centre in Colorado. His parents were not thrilled with that option. It would be an expensive undertaking, they said, and cautioned that he could be throwing his life away for sport.
"I was only 16, so I'd be living alone and that's a hard thing for a parent to allow their kid to do. I also didn't have the best results in skating prior to moving to Colorado," Pulkinen said. "It's not like, 'Oh I just won nationals and I need to do this'. It was more like, 'I got 12th or 11th at nationals in juniors out of 12 people and I think I can do it. I feel it somewhere inside me'."
“That's the weird thing about life is you go with what feels right. And for me, skating's always felt right," Camden Pulkinen to Olympics.com
With this gut feeling spurring him on, Pulkinen packed his bags and made the 1,200-kilometre journey from Scottsdale to Colorado Springs.
It proved the right choice. The young skater enjoyed his best seasons after the move, finishing second at the U.S. Junior Championships in 2017 and moving up to first place in 2018. He also had two podium finishes at the Junior Grand Prix in 2017 and finished second in the Final.
“All these things happened because I moved to Colorado, because I took that leap of faith," he said.
Camden Pulkinen is a U.S. junior champion and senior bronze medallist.
The school and skate balancing act: Camden Pulkinen's different worlds
The move to Colorado was just the beginning of Pulkinen’s nomadic lifestyle. The next move he made was an even bigger one – to New York City – when he transferred from the University of Colorado - Colorado Springs to Columbia University to pursue a degree in financial economics.
"Growing up, I was always thinking about how I would make money for skating," Pulkinen said about what interested him in finance. "Now understanding how businesses do it, how a person does it, it's been really nice to understand how money flows in and out of an entity, whether it's myself or whether it's an ice rink."
Balancing skating with studies at one of the most prestigious universities – Columbia is 17th in the World University Rankings 2024 – was no easy feat, but some helpful advice from Olympic silver medallist and Harvard alumni Paul Wylie helped Pulkinen find the right formula.
"The advice that he gave me was whenever I exit the Columbia gates, I'm now the skater again and that's my time to shut my brain off, escape from school and it's my time to be back in that skating mode. But then as soon as I step onto the gates of campus, I'm now that student again," Pulkinen said. "Trying to think of skating as rest for my mind and school as rest for my body has been really helpful.
"When I'm on the ice, I can't be thinking about a difficult problem set that I have to do when I get home and some calculus equations. I can't be doing that. I need to be focused on the skating. And when I'm in the classroom, I can't be stressed about the competition next week. I have to be focused on the material."
While Columbia University was the main draw for Pulkinen, so was the prospect of living in USA's most populous city. Not having lived in a megalopolis before, he wanted to see whether a move to New York might change him as a person. As he expected, it did.
"I accepted my letter to Columbia before I had even gone to New York, so I didn't even know what New York City was like. I was going in blind. And the biggest change is I've learned to be more crafty and more independent," Pulkinen said. "I had to find my way to get around the city and I had to find myself in the city, and I would do it 10 times over because I really found more independence. I found more ownership over what I'm doing."
Figure skating and finance: Pulkinen's next multi-tasking quest
While Pulkinen picked up his economics degree in May 2024, his balancing act between books and skates did not end there. Now instead of studies he juggles skating with a full-time job in the corporate strategy department of Capital One bank in New York City.
What has come to an end, however, are the late nights Pulkinen used to spend poring over textbooks. Whereas before he could be carried away with studying until one in the morning, he now keeps more structured working and training hours, which has allowed him to be “more calculated in my days”.
Fortunately for Pulkinen, his company’s generous work-from-home policy means that few of these days are spent in an office cubicle.
"I think cubicles suck the soul out of people," he said with a laugh. "I don't think people should have cubicles. I'm very thankful I don't have one."
It is the combination of things that, at first glance, do not go together – figure skating and finance, banks and ice rinks – that thrills Pulkinen so much. Never one to be conventional in his choices, he likes the mix of afternoon strategising over cash inflows and outflows followed by a trip to the rink where he fills his programs with the kind of passion and emotion that rarely seep into the cool-headed world of finance.
"Now with my job, it's remembering that when I'm on the ice, it's a moment to express and perform," said Pulkinen, who associates himself more with the emotional side of the brain. "While I'm working this job, there's not really much room for me to just move my arm out and skate to beautiful music, so it's been nice to have that duality."
That duality has an additional perk – watching the surprised reactions of his bank colleagues when he tells them about his international figure skating career.
"It's three worlds away," Pulkinen said about the gap between the figure skating and finance worlds he navigates with such ease. "It's been really nice to meet other people that don't really know anything about skating. And then sometimes I tell them I skate and they're like, 'Oh my God, that's so cool! I don't know anything. Is that a jump? Is that a spin? What's an Axel?' And that's been really nice to be like, 'Yeah, I'm Camden, not just the skater."
Milano Cortina 2026: The last item on Camden Pulkinen's wish list
As much as he enjoys switching between his figure skating and banking personalities, Pulkinen said he might become a full-time athlete in 2025 as he tries to qualify for the next Olympic Games. Honing his technical skills and adding another quad, or two, into the program are among his key priorities.
If he succeeds in securing a quota, Milano Cortina 2026 would mark an Olympic debut for the skater who has competed on every other major stage, including the world championships, Grand Prix and Four Continents.
"To be on that Olympic ice and hear my name, that would truly bring me to tears," Pulkinen said. "Every time I'm on the ice and I hear 'United States of America, Camden Pulkinen', I feel a sense of pride not just because it's my country, but because of everything I've done, all the leaps and all the risks I've taken in my life.
"I just feel so grateful that I get to continue my career and skate. What I love is skating and I'm so thankful that I get to continue to be the enigma that I am."