This week's inspiration is Marie Hessel, who started in the Dakar Rally on a motorcycle and who has chosen to study abroad as an adult.
You have started in the Dakar Rally. That's impressive! What made you take on this challenge?
My mother and I had a tradition of following the rally on TV, after a few years I thought that this can't be impossible and decided to give it a try, not really knowing what to expect. Said and done, I bought a motorcycle and tentatively started learning to ride enduro, started in the Gotland Grand National and other Swedish competitions, learned to mechanize, got the best advice from Olle Ohlsson who had started in the motorcycle class in Dakar before, talked to sponsors who wanted to join my adventure and sent in the application. The process of getting to the finish line took a few years, but in the end I stood on the starting line of the world's greatest adventure.

What lessons and experiences did you get from this adventure, and how have you benefited from it in your professional life?
The start in Dakar has above all given me the insight that dreams and visions can be realized, they can be transformed into our concrete goals that are also realized. Sometimes it may take a few changes of course before you get there, but it is rarely completely impossible. This realization has also helped me accept that, in a professional role, I will not climb the career ladder by remaining in the same role or company for many, many years, something that I previously saw as desirable and also considered normal. Today I see that my qualities and characteristics are developed by changing environments, people and assignments, then I come into my own.

Later in life you chose to study full-time and internationally outside Sweden. What motivated you to make this brave choice?
A desire to develop and be challenged, to break away from what, at the time, was my everyday life. To let go completely. I have rarely chosen the easiest or straightest path in my life, many times my choices are about the unknown, the one that has no facts. The same was true for the choice to study political science and live in Italy, Portugal and Spain for four years as an adult. The biggest challenge of moving to a new country is to cultivate new social contacts, and since I studied remotely, there was no natural network or platform to build on. But this has been and is something I am challenged by, finding the right forums, activities and places where meetings with new acquaintances start, which then turn into lifelong relationships.