Laura Youngson on kicking goals, breaking world records and the shadow side of ambition.

Have you ever set yourself a crazy big hairy audacious goal, and found yourself against the odds somehow achieving it?

Women climb invisible mountains every day.

But Laura Youngson's eureka moment came on a volcanic ash pitch, 5,714 metres above sea level, on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro in June 2017.

Youngson, an ambitious entrepreneur, gender activist and Co-Founder of global non-profit Equal Playing Field and Ida Sports, had a crazy idea that if she could convince two teams of female soccer players from 20 countries to join her on an expedition up a mountain to set the Guinness World Record for the highest altitude game of soccer ever played, they could literally change the game for women and girls the world over. 

The record made news across the planet, and set Laura on a path she could never have foreseen.

This is a conversation about what happened next, about change, showing up, and how it’s mostly the failures that shape us and make us. Laura shares with us the shadow side of striving, the relentless juggle of businesses and babies, and that if we can each just summit the limits we impose on ourselves, women and girls can do anything they put their minds to.

SHOW CREDITS

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Guest: Laura Youngson
Links: Ida Sports, Equal Playing Field, LinkedIn

Technical Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

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