Show Notes:
Lisa’s Links:
Episode Intro:
Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Female Guides Requested podcast, this is your host Ting Ting from Las Vegas.
Today, I’m thrilled to host Lisa Van Sciver, a renowned mountain guide based in the Tetons with nearly two decades of experience.
Lisa’s journey is one of passion, balance, and profound impact. She’ll share with us how she went from being a porter who thought guiding was “ridiculous” to one of the most respected figures in the industry, and how an early request for a female guide completely changed her career path.
We’ll talk about her unique strategy for achieving career sustainability in a feast-or-famine industry, the power of female guide collaboration (or as her mentor, Amy Barnes, calls it, the “sisters of the rope”), and why interacting with people, learning their stories, and witnessing their inner breakthrough is the most rewarding part of the job.
Lisa also shares with us her recent venture: an inspirational fundraising climb up Kilimanjaro. She’ll walk us through her project, “Elevate Education,” which is about creating an experience much “bigger than me”—using the mountains to provide educational opportunities for students in Kenya.
Get ready for an insightful conversation on climbing, career longevity, and finding purpose beyond the summit. Let’s welcome Lisa Van Sciver.
Quotes:
- The big thing that pulled me into guiding instead of that was I really enjoy people.
- We always have a lot of different things going on, but you deep dive into one topic at a time.
- I think guiding can be a super long career, but you have to be very dynamic with it.
- Where I’ve found sustainability for myself is I’ve always had a second career.
- As much as we’re technical guides, were also entertainers. we are creating experiences for these people.
- It’s shifted my own desires as far as I still have a lot of desires of objectives I want to climb and things I want to accomplish in my life, but I think it just gave me more pause on a greater awareness of what people deal with in the world and how I can continue to look for ways to be compassionate and supportive.
- in some ways it’s easier to get a job as a woman, but then it’s harder to get promoted. I think that’s been from my own personal experience. everyone wants to add to their female roster, but then once you’re there, you don’t necessarily get the same treatment.