Activist Sylvia Vasquez-Lavado discusses her inspiring work against sexual violence and her memoir In the Shadow of the Mountain with journalist Kirsty Lang. A businesswoman named one of the twenty most influential Latin Americans in Silicon Valley, Vasquez-Lavado was struggling with past trauma when she discovered mountaineering. In 2014 she founded Courageous Girls, a non-profit organisation that helps survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking find their inner strength through mountaineering. The following year she became the first Peruvian woman to reach the summit of Sagharmatha (Mount Everest), and in 2018, the first woman from the LGTBQ+ community to climb the seven highest summits on each continent.
