I connect with nature just by looking at a plant for a long time and realizing the beauty of it. If I try hard enough, I think I can become part of it. I have this view of nature, that it's something that's living and communicating. Every plant is communicating with another plant, but in a different way, maybe slower, so we don't understand.

There's this nice quote by Leonardo Da Vinci, "learn how to see, realize that everything connects to everything else." I think when you start seeing this, to understand this, you'll be able to appreciate it and co-exist in a deeper and nicer way.

I was born and raised in the Alps in a really conservative family who expected me to find a forty hour per week job. When I turned eighteen, I started to feel kinda trapped in the mountains among four hundred people, where, if you do something wrong, then everybody will talk about it. I needed anonymity in a big city, so I moved to Vienna, where I started studying environmental and bio resource management. After finishing my studies, I took a one-year break during which I went to South America. I traveled across Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru, where I fell in love with my now husband and the rainforest. There, the tribes accept other life forms as equal to themselves, so I realized that I love plants and I'm very into ecosystems themselves. Then, I decided to get a Master's Degree on Environmental Science here in Europe, moving between Scandinavia and Vienna.

I've never fancied the opinion that many people in Europe have, that humans are the most advanced species, so that's why we can simply remove plants, because they’re just plants. My parents are also from the mountain area, and they have many plants in the house, but I think they’d laugh at me if I told them that plants have energy. Despite this, studying in Scandinavia made me develop this scientific part of myself. I always try to look for something, research, find the essence, understand the process behind things and explain them in simple words. I found this in science.

I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship. The mix between environment and science, enjoying what I do and finding the right hands-on partner, made it possible for me to actually work on the “natural chewing gum” project. Now we’re finishing the prototype, and then we’ll have this chewing gum in the supermarkets as an alternative to normal chewing gum. People in Europe will choose natural gums and I think then there’ll be a lot more natural options.

I think that doing what I want is the right thing for me. I moved to the big city, traveled to South America, studied the environment, married an Argentinian guy in Denmark, and now I want to make natural chewing gum, even when my mum hates chewing gum.