Building a Career in the Mountains on Her Own Terms: Guiding, Bodywork, and Moving through Trauma with Kat Schaumberg | See Her Outside Podcast
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Kat heard the conventional advice to prove her worth by climbing high mountains – but she ended up ditching the toxic culture to pursue true leadership instead.
Kat Schaumberg began her career in outdoor education at 18 and went on to work as a mountain guide, instructor, and logistics coordinator for organizations including Outward Bound, Inspiring Girls Expeditions, the American Alpine Institute, and AWExpeditions. She’s spent hundreds of days on expeditions across Alaska, Yosemite, Patagonia, Ecuador, and Nepal, and has been featured in Climbing Magazine writing about the vulnerabilities of being a female guide in a male-dominated space.
Kat holds certifications in massage therapy and abdominal therapy and has studied with herbalist and healer Rosita Arvigo in Belize. She also co-founded the Mossy Mentors, a forest school that served over 150 children in its first year, and recently completed a two-year, 10,000-mile sailing journey around the Northeast Pacific.
Kat and Angie talked about:
Getting hired at guiding companies and feeling treated as less competent than male coworkers
What it meant to be a “marketable female guide”: the pressure to be strong, charismatic, likable, and professional all at once — while suppressing her personal self
A trifecta of traumas that ended her full-time guiding career and sent her toward healing
Bringing bodywork and somatic awareness into expedition guiding
The menstrual cycle and outdoor adventure
Co-founding a forest school and completing a two-year, 10,000-mile sailing journey: “always lead with the lungs, follow with the feet”
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