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Growing up in a rural setting in Minnesota, I was raised with the outdoors and a sense of adventure.

Once I graduated from university, I wanted to climb and be outdoors as much as possible. I worked as a part-time carpenter and kept up a relationship with The North Face. One thing led to another, and I'm lucky to be where I am now. It was a circuitous path with lots of adventure throughout.

I came into Chicago in winter - I'd never been so cold in my life! I was very homesick, and a poor student at that time. America seemed so different and so filled with amazing things - and almost all of them were out of my reach.

I grew up in England, went to a nice public school, then didn't want to go to university, so I thought I would wander around. I did a season skiing, a bit of sailing, typical spoilt brat stuff. I ended up in the Caribbean. I was having a blast.

One day I undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature I met with in this charming season, expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought.

I just was mesmerized by all of this life everywhere I looked. And so I wanted to be a marine biologist.

I was sure I was going to be a doctor of global health or tropical medicine in some underdeveloped country.

My career's been a steady, interesting, weird, frustrating, fun journey at all different times.