Bismarck Native Combines Passions for Biking and Outreach to Mak - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

  From tragedy to triumph.

One native Bismarck woman rebounds from a life-altering episode by combining her passion for mountain biking with outreach in regions of conflict.      

After her rape at knife-point in 1993 -- Bismarck High School graduate, Shannon Galpin, was determined to act.  She launched the non-profit -- Mountain2Mountain -- to educate and empower women and girls to be change agents in conflict regions, especially in Afghanistan.

"The bike has opened up all these conversations for me with Afghan men.  It's been an incredible ice breaker, and so the irony was here is something that women can't do over there and yet, by me trying to push on these gender barriers by riding a bike, they're so flabbergasted that often, it just invokes this really natural conversation and we end up talking about the work that I do," says Shannon Galpin, Founder of Mountain2Mountain.

You still have time to get to Bismarck State College tonight where Galpin will be presenting her work in Afghanistan and elsewhere as a women's rights advocate.  The event starts at 7:30 p.m., in Sidney J. Lee Auditorium, Schafer Hall.  For her work, Galpin has been nominated by National Geographic as a 2013 Adventurer of the Year.