Sophie Storm Roberts: Turning Personal Courage into a Movement

Sophie Storm Roberts is an adventurer, endurance athlete and founder of TrailBlazers, an organisation helping teenage girls build confidence, courage and resilience through adventure and challenge. After leaving a successful career in the tech industry, Sophie found that pushing herself beyond her comfort zone transformed not only her physical capabilities, but also the way she saw herself and what she believed was possible. Sophie’s work centres on a simple idea: courage isn’t something we’re born with, it’s something we can train.

In this conversation, she shares her journey from the corporate world to adventure, the lessons she learned through some of her toughest expeditions, the thinking behind TrailBlazers, and why she believes we should stop waiting to feel ready and start living the life we’re capable of.

I worked in the growth team at one of the UK’s fastest-growing tech companies, and on paper everything looked great. I had a brilliant job. I was ambitious. I was surrounded by smart, driven people, and I was ticking a lot of the boxes I thought I was supposed to tick. But underneath that, I had this growing feeling that I was living someone else’s version of success.

Sport and adventure weren’t part of my life growing up, so the idea that I might one day build a life around endurance, adventure and challenge would have sounded completely ridiculous. When I discovered adventure, it opened up a whole new world to me. It made me realise that confidence, courage and resilience aren’t things you’re either born with, they are things we can train. Adventure inspired me to rewrite my story.

I think the desire for more was always there. I was curious. I loved pushing myself. I loved travel and new experiences. I loved that feeling of being alive when you do something outside your comfort zone. At first, adventure was more of a side quest. I started saying yes to adventures and challenges, and every single time I did something I didn’t think I could do, it blew my mind about what I could achieve with my body and my mind.

That changed the whole game for me. That was the seed. That ignited my fire and after that there was no going back! Adventure became the door to becoming the person I always wanted to be - confident in who I am, brave in the way I live my life, and resilient in the face of the storms life sends us.

I remember looking around and thinking: is this it? I had a good life, but I could feel I was capable of far more. My 9-5 felt so restrictive and I couldn’t ignore that pull. Adventure began changing me from the inside out. I wasn’t just getting fitter. I was becoming braver. I was building self-trust. I was proving to myself that the story I had about who I was wasn’t fixed. That’s when I became really interested in the question: what happens when we start deliberately doing hard things? What happens when you go towards fear instead of running away from it? That changed my life.

I didn’t have a perfect five-year plan. I had a strong feeling that I wanted to build something around challenge, adventure and helping people realise they are capable of far more than they think. Before I quit my job, a friend said to me: “A ship in a harbour is safe, but that’s not what a ship is built for. Go sailing.” And that was exactly what I needed to hear. It fired me up.

I think that fire in life - when you feel it, you’ve got to go for it. It doesn’t always come around again! That fire is the whisper. That’s courage calling you. And when you feel it, grab it and go. In the early days, I just started doing the doing. I took on challenges, I started blogging and used social media as a way to share my journey. I didn’t wait until I felt ready, because I don’t think you ever do. I just started taking the next step. Big dreams and baby steps! Confidence doesn’t come before we do the thing. It comes after.

From the outside, it didn’t necessarily look like the sensible choice. I was stepping away from a stable, successful career path into something that didn’t have a clear job title or an obvious roadmap. The people closest to me could see that I had this fire inside me, and there wasn’t anything that was going to stop me. Sometimes people won’t understand the choices you make and that’s completely fine. You have to trust yourself. If you wait for permission, validation or the perfect time, you might wait too long and miss the moment. Or the courage you need!

There were days when I was exhausted, cold, scared, and questioning how I was going to continue. It’s in these moments that you meet yourself in the most raw, authentic and powerful way. Every moment you decide to continue, you train your courage - every single step of the way. Getting back on the bike after having a meltdown on the side of the road. Taking the next step across a glacier when I was completely freaked out. Standing on the top of Mont Blanc in a whiteout and not being able to see where to go. Continuing after a bee stung me in the mouth while I was cycling. The Alpine Coast to Coast taught me that we don’t need to be fearless to achieve extraordinary things. Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the decision to move with it.

TrailBlazers comes from seeing how many teenage girls are struggling with confidence, self-belief and mental health, and knowing how powerful challenge has been in my own life. I realised that everything I’ve learned about confidence, courage and resilience, I learned after school. I learned it in the mountains and through adventure. TrailBlazers bridges the gap between what we’re taught in school and the skills we need to navigate the world. What if girls can learn that confidence isn’t something you are born with but something you build? What if they can feel, in their bodies, that they can do hard things? What if they learn to lead themselves through discomfort? What if they truly know that they are capable of far more than they think? I created TrailBlazers to give teenage girls access to adventure, challenge and community as a way to build courage from the inside out. A generation of young women who trust themselves.

You can tell someone they’re capable, but when they actually climb the mountain, cycle the distance, navigate the fear, go on a solo trip, have the difficult moment and keep going -it changes our identity. It creates lived experience that shapes who we become. Adventure takes confidence out of theory and creates evidence. It also changes our relationship with fear. Fear isn’t always a stop sign, it’s often a signal that we are on the edge of a breakthrough or discovery. When you cross that edge enough times, your identity starts to shift. You stop thinking, “I could never do that,” and you start thinking, “Maybe I can.” That mindset shift is everything.

Some of the girls I meet are in really dark places. Some are suicidal and can’t see a future for themselves. Supporting them to grow in confidence, start believing in themselves, build friendships, take on challenges, and see what might be possible for their lives - that is everything. Everyone needs one person who believes in them and that’s central to what TrailBlazers is all about.

I might be on stage one day, on a bike the next, in a strategy meeting the next, and then writing a talk or filming content. The thread through all of it is the same: helping people move from inspiration into action.

‘One life, live it’ is about remembering that this is it - there are no dress rehearsals! One day we won’t be able to do the things we keep putting off. One day, our bodies, our circumstances or our time may not allow it. But today is not that day. It means stop waiting to feel ready. Have the conversation. Book the trip. Start the side hustle. Say yes to adventures. Make new friends. Build the life you can’t stop thinking about!

I’m building Energy Training, which is about training self-trust under pressure. It brings together physical effort, mindset and purpose to help people practise who they want to become when life asks more of you. And L2P24 is a huge part of my world - taking people from London to Paris by bike in 24 hours and watching them achieve something they once thought was impossible. My mission across is to turn courage into something practical, trainable and unstoppable.

A huge thank you to Sophie for taking the time to chat with us! Keep up with Sophie and her adventures via her Instagram.