Emma Schwerin is an American mountaineer focused on pushing the boundaries of what girls can achieve and promoting an active life in the outdoors as a key component of mental health. She aims to be an advocate for female empowerment and join a growing group of girls doing amazing things.

At age 15, she began a quest to climb the Seven Summits, summiting six of the highest mountains on each of the seven traditional continents in 13 months. In December 2024, she became the youngest female to summit Mt Vinson, Antarctica at age 16. In April 2025, she is heading to Nepal to climb Mt. Everest and Lhotse. If successful, she will become the youngest female to climb the Seven Summits, the youngest American female to summit Mt. Everest, and the youngest person to summit Lhotse.

Growing up in her hometown of Bozeman, Montana, Emma never wanted to stay on the trail or take the easy path. As a young child, she was always climbing up steep pitches, skiing right behind her dad into the trees and launching herself off of jumps. As she grew older, she discovered that she loves any activity that involves an element of risk. And as fate would have it, in 8th grade, she found herself in English class where the teacher decided to do a unit on Mt. Everest. They read Into Thin Air and The Climb, two different perspectives on the 1996 Everest disaster. They also watched a documentary which showed mountaineers crossing ladders set over large crevasses on the Khumbu Icefall. While most people found the documentary terrifying, Emma found it exhilarating.

So, at age 14, she trekked 100 miles through the Himalaya to Everest Base Camp and back, to see what it was like. She fell in love with the journey, the people that you meet along the way, the stories that you have time to tell and hear, the majesty of the mountains, and the quest itself. By the time she returned to Montana, she was already thinking about what was next, and her quest to climb the Seven Summits was born.