Life can be hard among the 30,000 islands of the Stockholm Archipelago, where most populations don’t have enough kids to run their own schools. Tourism generates a fair bit of money, but the season is short­—until now, that is. Michael Lemmel ’88 has been building the Stockholm Archipelago Trail, a one-of-a-kind hiking trail that opened last fall and made National Geographic’s list of the 25 best places to travel this year. The 167-mile trail may be a “lifeline for the outer archipelago, for people to be able to reside there year-round,” says Lemmel. The trail relies on ferries to connect 21 islands—but many of those ferries are seasonal.

If the trail takes off, it could provide a strong business case for ferries and other services to stay open longer, for both tourists and islanders.

Lemmel played soccer and studied international commerce at Brown, then returned to his native Sweden to complete his military service. Recruited for a Wall Street  job, he quit before his first day, heading for the South Pacific to work on a sailboat for a year. Then he moved to Chamonix, France, to work for Patagonia. “The whole feeling of Patagonia is that you can do anything,” he says. “Just do it, you know? I think it was a fantastic school for me.”

Since then, Lemmel has also competed as an adventure racer, founded a sports marketing company, and co-invented the sport of swimrun. Swimrun races consist of alternating between distance swimming and running, and they’re now held all over the world. 

Having a job where he’s able to combine his love for nature with a business sense is exactly where he wants to be, Lemmel says. 

“I was asked the other day [after vacation], ‘Oh do you feel bad going back to work?’” he says. “And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I love my work.’”