Edurne Pasaban did not grow up dreaming of becoming a professional alpinist. In Tolosa (Guipúzcoa), where she was born on 1 August 1973, doing mountain sports is something common in her life, but she never thought of devoting her life to it. She therefore finished her Industrial Technical Engineering studies at the University of the Basque Country, completed the Senior Executive Programme at ESADE Business School in Barcelona in 2005-2006 and then got a masters degree in Human Resource Management also at ESADE. Her first professional job was as an engineer in the family business in the construction of paper cutting and reeling machinery, PASABAN, S.A. (www.pasaban.com) a leading company in the international paper sector. She would later found her own business: a small rural hotel and restaurant in the Basque Country, "Abeletxe" (www.abeletxe.com). She still runs this business and also teaches as an associate teacher at the IE Business School in Madrid, as well as giving talks in companies and multinationals in the country and abroad.