Géraldine Fasnacht is a Swiss snowboarder and wingsuit pilot.
She is a three-time winner of the Verbier Extreme in her home resort of Verbier, in south west Switzerland. She competed in the Freeride World Tour for 8 years.
In 2014, she was the first person to wingsuit off the Matterhorn, the iconic Swiss mountain. And she has other wingsuit firsts; flying off peaks in Antarctica, Baffin Island and Iran to name but a few.
In this interview, she teaches me that it is not all about the adrenaline seeking rush of popular belief. Rather about freedom, peace and communing with nature as she finds the perfect lines either in the powder on her snowboard or down the sides of mountains in her wingsuit.
We discuss her early career and the choice to give up a good, sensible job to take a chance on becoming a professional athlete and how that dream did not happen overnight. It took hard work, dedication and perseverance.
We discuss the passion she shares with her husband for wingsuit flying and how since they became parents nearly a year ago, they have not given it up but have changed how they approach it.
In common with many of my high-achieving guests, nature and being outside are a great force for good and a way to reconnect to what is really important. And she talks about how she equates what she does to the trust and communication needed in the workplace and in life.
Géraldine is an ambassador for Verbier www.verbier.ch, one of the world’s finest ski resorts, something of which she is enormously proud.
You can follow Géraldine on Instagram on @geraldinefasnacht and on her website www.geraldinefasnacht.com