about
I've spent three decades
integrating the unexpected.
WHO I AM
I am a professional climber and anthropologist by training, a writer, a mother, and the founder and CEO of Legado, a climate justice organization working alongside more than 100 communities across three continents.
At the center of that work is Thriving Futures, a whole-life methodology that helps communities define their own priorities and turn them into lasting, institutionally-backed action.
I am the author of three books, including More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood. My work has been featured in The New York Times, Fortune, NPR, The Economist, and Outside, and I spent six years writing my column Whipped for Climbing Magazine. I have been a Patagonia climbing ambassador for over two decades.
The thread running through all of it is simple: I am interested in who gets listened to, and what becomes possible when their voices are heard.
I am also the mother of twins. Nothing rearranges your idea of leadership and power quite like an instant firehose of double newborns. It reinforced something I keep finding everywhere I work: people are far more capable than most systems give them credit for.
Currently, I am most focused on what lasts, and who gets to build it.
None of it is separate.
Timeline
Nothing in my life happened in a straight line. Ironically, this timeline is. From a hill in Minnesota to right now, this is the shape of it.
The beginning
The Beginning
Minnesota
I grew up ski racing in Minnesota, chasing the next fast line down a hill. Somewhere in there the mountains got hold of me and never let go. By the time I could choose, I chose rock and ice, and I have been choosing them ever since.
1998
Princeton
BA in Anthropology, cum laude
I studied anthropology, which was really a formal way of asking how people live, and why. To do so I obsessively paired climbing with academic and experiential learning and time smashing them all together in Nepal, Alaska, Ecuador and beyond. Later I added a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. The question I started with, who gets listened to, still runs everything I do.
1999
Intro to guiding
Sharing the mountains
I started guiding in 1999: rock, ice, and expeditions. I took on the adventure and all the judgment and risk analysis that comes with taking other people out and up. Guiding taught me how to read a situation fast and make it work, which turned out to be the same skill everything else would need.
2002
Fourth woman in the US to earn early AMGA certification
American Mountain Guides Association
In 2002 I became the fourth woman in the USA to earn an AMGA certification, back when that still felt like trespassing. I went on to become the first woman to earn the AMGA Ice Instructor certification, and I served two terms on the association's board. I’ve spent 25 years serving on Mountain Rescue, these days in the White Mountains.
Since 2005
Two decades with Patagonia and counting
Professional climber and Ambassador
Patagonia has backed my climbing since 2005, and along the way so have Clif, Petzl, and Scarpa, and many others. What they support was never just the climbing. It's everything the climbing kept leading to.
2006 - 2016
Additive Adventure
Adventure with a stake in the place
For a decade I ran Additive Adventure on one conviction: adventure shouldn't happen in a vacuum. I built Ethiopia's first trail race, sport and philanthropy programs with local youth, and cervical cancer screening campaigns alongside women in coffee-growing communities.
2008
First book: Vertical Ethiopia
Shortlisted, Banff Mountain Book Award
I went to Ethiopia to climb where almost no one had, and came back with a book. Vertical Ethiopia was shortlisted for the Banff Book Award and launched a 50-city speaking tour about what happens when adventure happens in a global reality and not in a vacuum of Americanized wilderness.
2004 - 2011
Whipped Column
Climbing Magazine
For seven years I was a Senior Contributing Editor at Climbing Magazine, where I wrote Whipped, my regular column. Why splitting your climbing gear is harder than severing your relationship, how to de-mouse your camper van, how to get over yourself and your vertical obsession just long enough to be a real human.
2010
Waypoint Namibia
Film · Executive Producer
I produced my first film, Waypoint Namibia, about a climbing expedition on Namibia’s highest granite walls. It played international festivals, aired on Universal Sports, and earned me an EPIC Emerging Artist nomination as Executive Producer.
2010
Legado
Founder and CEO
I went to Mozambique to climb a mountain with local and international scientists to find new species. I came home with the beginning of an organization instead. It started with $11,000 and a blurry photo of a granite peak. We stopped bringing the solutions we assumed people needed and started backing the priorities they name for themselves. That one shift is the whole model. Today, Legado's Thriving Futures works alongside more than 100 communities and has been proven across three continents and a decade of testing. From being a Mulago Henry Arnhold Fellow, to support from social impact leaders like Patchwork, Pilot House and Greenwood Place, Thriving Futures is now growing even further.
2011
Coffee Story: Ethiopia
Second book · featured by Starbucks
My second book traced the length of Ethiopia's coffee, from the farmers who grow it to the cup. Starbucks featured it in 2013, and it came back for a second edition in 2018.
2016
Irenna and Kaz
The twins
My twins, Irenna and Kaz, were born in 2016. Nothing rearranges your idea of leadership and power like an instant firehose of double newborns. It reinforced what I keep finding everywhere I work: people are far more capable than most systems give them credit for.
2016
Namuli
Film · PBS · 50+ international festivals
Namuli is the film of the climb that started Legado: a first ascent on Mozambique’s second-highest mountain, made so scientists could reach habitat no one had studied. It played at more than 50 international festivals and later aired across the US on PBS. The climbing, the science, and the work in one frame.
2023
More
Pegasus Books · Next Big Idea Club Must Read
More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood is an epistolary memoir addressed to my twins, about becoming a mother without surrendering the rest of who I am. Kirkus called it "raw, passionate, stinging." Emily Oster and Anne-Marie Slaughter put their names on it. It's the fullest version of the thing I keep circling.
2023
We're doing conservation wrong
Essay · Fortune
In Fortune I argued that we are doing conservation wrong. Climate justice means the people most affected sit at the table when plans get funded, and get to decide what a good outcome even is. Fortune gave me the space to make the argument fully.
Now
What's next
Today
Building Thriving Futures, climbing, writing, and, still being rearranged, and more than ever curious about what's coming next. None of it is separate, and all of it is the work.
Timeline
Nothing in my life happened in a straight line. Ironically, this timeline is. From a hill in Minnesota to right now, this is the shape of it.
The beginning
The Beginning
Minnesota
I grew up ski racing in Minnesota, chasing the next fast line down a hill. Somewhere in there the mountains got hold of me and never let go. By the time I could choose, I chose rock and ice, and I have been choosing them ever since.
1998
Princeton
BA in Anthropology, cum laude
I studied anthropology, which was really a formal way of asking how people live, and why. To do so I obsessively paired climbing with academic and experiential learning and time smashing them all together in Nepal, Alaska, Ecuador and beyond. Later I added a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. The question I started with, who gets listened to, still runs everything I do.
1999
Intro to guiding
Sharing the mountains
I started guiding in 1999: rock, ice, and expeditions. I took on the adventure and all the judgment and risk analysis that comes with taking other people out and up. Guiding taught me how to read a situation fast and make it work, which turned out to be the same skill everything else would need.
2002
Fourth woman in the US to earn early AMGA certification
American Mountain Guides Association
In 2002 I became the fourth woman in the USA to earn an AMGA certification, back when that still felt like trespassing. I went on to become the first woman to earn the AMGA Ice Instructor certification, and I served two terms on the association's board. I’ve spent 25 years serving on Mountain Rescue, these days in the White Mountains.
Since 2005
Two decades with Patagonia and counting
Professional climber and Ambassador
Patagonia has backed my climbing since 2005, and along the way so have Clif, Petzl, and Scarpa, and many others. What they support was never just the climbing. It's everything the climbing kept leading to.
2006 - 2016
Additive Adventure
Adventure with a stake in the place
For a decade I ran Additive Adventure on one conviction: adventure shouldn't happen in a vacuum. I built Ethiopia's first trail race, sport and philanthropy programs with local youth, and cervical cancer screening campaigns alongside women in coffee-growing communities.
2008
First book: Vertical Ethiopia
Shortlisted, Banff Mountain Book Award
I went to Ethiopia to climb where almost no one had, and came back with a book. Vertical Ethiopia was shortlisted for the Banff Book Award and launched a 50-city speaking tour about what happens when adventure happens in a global reality and not in a vacuum of Americanized wilderness.
2004 - 2011
Whipped Column
Climbing Magazine
For seven years I was a Senior Contributing Editor at Climbing Magazine, where I wrote Whipped, my regular column. Why splitting your climbing gear is harder than severing your relationship, how to de-mouse your camper van, how to get over yourself and your vertical obsession just long enough to be a real human.
2010
Waypoint Namibia
Film · Executive Producer
I produced my first film, Waypoint Namibia, about a climbing expedition on Namibia’s highest granite walls. It played international festivals, aired on Universal Sports, and earned me an EPIC Emerging Artist nomination as Executive Producer.
2010
Legado
Founder and CEO
I went to Mozambique to climb a mountain with local and international scientists to find new species. I came home with the beginning of an organization instead. It started with $11,000 and a blurry photo of a granite peak. We stopped bringing the solutions we assumed people needed and started backing the priorities they name for themselves. That one shift is the whole model. Today, Legado's Thriving Futures works alongside more than 100 communities and has been proven across three continents and a decade of testing. From being a Mulago Henry Arnhold Fellow, to support from social impact leaders like Patchwork, Pilot House and Greenwood Place, Thriving Futures is now growing even further.
2011
Coffee Story: Ethiopia
Second book · featured by Starbucks
My second book traced the length of Ethiopia's coffee, from the farmers who grow it to the cup. Starbucks featured it in 2013, and it came back for a second edition in 2018.
2016
Irenna and Kaz
The twins
My twins, Irenna and Kaz, were born in 2016. Nothing rearranges your idea of leadership and power like an instant firehose of double newborns. It reinforced what I keep finding everywhere I work: people are far more capable than most systems give them credit for.
2016
Namuli
Film · PBS · 50+ international festivals
Namuli is the film of the climb that started Legado: a first ascent on Mozambique’s second-highest mountain, made so scientists could reach habitat no one had studied. It played at more than 50 international festivals and later aired across the US on PBS. The climbing, the science, and the work in one frame.
2023
More
Pegasus Books · Next Big Idea Club Must Read
More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood is an epistolary memoir addressed to my twins, about becoming a mother without surrendering the rest of who I am. Kirkus called it "raw, passionate, stinging." Emily Oster and Anne-Marie Slaughter put their names on it. It's the fullest version of the thing I keep circling.
2023
We're doing conservation wrong
Essay · Fortune
In Fortune I argued that we are doing conservation wrong. Climate justice means the people most affected sit at the table when plans get funded, and get to decide what a good outcome even is. Fortune gave me the space to make the argument fully.
Now
What's next
Today
Building Thriving Futures, climbing, writing, and, still being rearranged, and more than ever curious about what's coming next. None of it is separate, and all of it is the work.
Timeline
Nothing in my life happened in a straight line. Ironically, this timeline is. From a hill in Minnesota to right now, this is the shape of it.
The beginning
The Beginning
Minnesota
I grew up ski racing in Minnesota, chasing the next fast line down a hill. Somewhere in there the mountains got hold of me and never let go. By the time I could choose, I chose rock and ice, and I have been choosing them ever since.
1998
Princeton
BA in Anthropology, cum laude
I studied anthropology, which was really a formal way of asking how people live, and why. To do so I obsessively paired climbing with academic and experiential learning and time smashing them all together in Nepal, Alaska, Ecuador and beyond. Later I added a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. The question I started with, who gets listened to, still runs everything I do.
1999
Intro to guiding
Sharing the mountains
I started guiding in 1999: rock, ice, and expeditions. I took on the adventure and all the judgment and risk analysis that comes with taking other people out and up. Guiding taught me how to read a situation fast and make it work, which turned out to be the same skill everything else would need.
2002
Fourth woman in the US to earn early AMGA certification
American Mountain Guides Association
In 2002 I became the fourth woman in the USA to earn an AMGA certification, back when that still felt like trespassing. I went on to become the first woman to earn the AMGA Ice Instructor certification, and I served two terms on the association's board. I’ve spent 25 years serving on Mountain Rescue, these days in the White Mountains.
Since 2005
Two decades with Patagonia and counting
Professional climber and Ambassador
Patagonia has backed my climbing since 2005, and along the way so have Clif, Petzl, and Scarpa, and many others. What they support was never just the climbing. It's everything the climbing kept leading to.
2006 - 2016
Additive Adventure
Adventure with a stake in the place
For a decade I ran Additive Adventure on one conviction: adventure shouldn't happen in a vacuum. I built Ethiopia's first trail race, sport and philanthropy programs with local youth, and cervical cancer screening campaigns alongside women in coffee-growing communities.
2008
First book: Vertical Ethiopia
Shortlisted, Banff Mountain Book Award
I went to Ethiopia to climb where almost no one had, and came back with a book. Vertical Ethiopia was shortlisted for the Banff Book Award and launched a 50-city speaking tour about what happens when adventure happens in a global reality and not in a vacuum of Americanized wilderness.
2004 - 2011
Whipped Column
Climbing Magazine
For seven years I was a Senior Contributing Editor at Climbing Magazine, where I wrote Whipped, my regular column. Why splitting your climbing gear is harder than severing your relationship, how to de-mouse your camper van, how to get over yourself and your vertical obsession just long enough to be a real human.
2010
Waypoint Namibia
Film · Executive Producer
I produced my first film, Waypoint Namibia, about a climbing expedition on Namibia’s highest granite walls. It played international festivals, aired on Universal Sports, and earned me an EPIC Emerging Artist nomination as Executive Producer.
2010
Legado
Founder and CEO
I went to Mozambique to climb a mountain with local and international scientists to find new species. I came home with the beginning of an organization instead. It started with $11,000 and a blurry photo of a granite peak. We stopped bringing the solutions we assumed people needed and started backing the priorities they name for themselves. That one shift is the whole model. Today, Legado's Thriving Futures works alongside more than 100 communities and has been proven across three continents and a decade of testing. From being a Mulago Henry Arnhold Fellow, to support from social impact leaders like Patchwork, Pilot House and Greenwood Place, Thriving Futures is now growing even further.
2011
Coffee Story: Ethiopia
Second book · featured by Starbucks
My second book traced the length of Ethiopia's coffee, from the farmers who grow it to the cup. Starbucks featured it in 2013, and it came back for a second edition in 2018.
2016
Irenna and Kaz
The twins
My twins, Irenna and Kaz, were born in 2016. Nothing rearranges your idea of leadership and power like an instant firehose of double newborns. It reinforced what I keep finding everywhere I work: people are far more capable than most systems give them credit for.
2016
Namuli
Film · PBS · 50+ international festivals
Namuli is the film of the climb that started Legado: a first ascent on Mozambique’s second-highest mountain, made so scientists could reach habitat no one had studied. It played at more than 50 international festivals and later aired across the US on PBS. The climbing, the science, and the work in one frame.
2023
More
Pegasus Books · Next Big Idea Club Must Read
More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood is an epistolary memoir addressed to my twins, about becoming a mother without surrendering the rest of who I am. Kirkus called it "raw, passionate, stinging." Emily Oster and Anne-Marie Slaughter put their names on it. It's the fullest version of the thing I keep circling.
2023
We're doing conservation wrong
Essay · Fortune
In Fortune I argued that we are doing conservation wrong. Climate justice means the people most affected sit at the table when plans get funded, and get to decide what a good outcome even is. Fortune gave me the space to make the argument fully.
Now
What's next
Today
Building Thriving Futures, climbing, writing, and, still being rearranged, and more than ever curious about what's coming next. None of it is separate, and all of it is the work.
