My Story

I, Sophie Gripenberg, grew up in a small town outside of Stockholm. My passion for the wellbeing of our planet started already at an age of eleven when I decided to become an vegetarian long before the diet became a norm.

At university, I decided to study a double bachelor degree in peace- and development studies as well as economics, were I figured social and economic interests were often contradictory. To develop my understanding of these two conflicting interests of mine and interlinkages between different development issues, I studied a master in socio-ecological resilience for sustainable development. I am qualified in areas such as planetary boundaries, resilience, system-thinking and measures of welfare that goes beyond GDP, amongst many more. How we measure prosperity and human wellbeing is my academic speciality.

Apart from the academic work I started my career as a change maker at the age of 21, when I joined the Red Cross Youth organisation. I spent the first months coordinating education to promote fair trade. Eventually I became the chairperson of the local youth organisation. We created a platform where newly arrived young refugees could meet young people in Sweden. It became one of the first in Sweden within the movement. Today, thanks to my hard work, I am now coordinating the sustainability work at the Swedish Red Cross.

I first started as an consultant for the private sector was when I was as young as 23, where I started to qualify restaurants as organic. It accelerated quickly from restaurants to the hotel business, where I have, for instance, been coordinating with sustainability according to the method of Nordic Choice Hotels. Recently, I joined the clean energy sector to provide customers with hydropower made from plastic waste.

Despite the years of studies and work in Sweden my major passion is to travel. I went on my first world trip when I was 21 where the inequality in Brazil and Peru first made me interested in social issues. Since then, I have scuba-dived in the Great Barrier Reef, volunteered in rural areas in Nepal, learned about small-scale Agroforestry farming in Kenya, spent Christmas in Bethlem, interviewed migrant workers in Indonesia, lived on an abounded island for a week, hitchhiked from Sumatra to Myanmar, stayed in several monasteries, explored India and Sri Lanka by hitchhiking form state to state for several months, worked remotely from Bali, Vietnam and the Philippines and road tripped the West coast of USA.

Did I mentioned I have ten years of experience of yoga and am a qualified Hatha yoga teacher with five 10-days silent retreat of Vipassana too?

I am extremely passionated about life itself and to create possibilities for healthy living. Let´s meet.

Read my resume

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