Did you know that one of Canada’s top female entrepreneurs was born in her grandparents’ kitchen in a tiny village in Portugal, is 5 feet tall, deathly afraid of heights — and has stood on top of the world? Ema Dantas is a keynote speaker, author, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate whose life defies every convention about what is possible. In 2000, as a single mother to two daughters, Ema founded Language Marketplace from her basement apartment with no business plan and no outside funding. By 2012 she was recognized as one of Canada’s Top Female Entrepreneurs; by 2013 Language Marketplace had made the Profit 500 list of Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies. When she sold the company in 2022 it was generating over $3.5M in annual revenue, debt-free, with a staff of 24 and more than 1,500 freelancers under contract. In parallel, Ema spent four and a half years completing the 7-Summit Challenge in both the Messner and Bass versions, summiting Everest on May 13, 2022, the same year she exited her business. She is the first Portuguese person and one of approximately 130 Canadians to have accomplished both versions of the challenge. Her memoir, Mental Mountains, is not a mountaineering book. It is an unflinching account of mental health, faith, and the refusal to let fear write the ending.