Episode 2: Whitney Wasko Living in Stockholm, Sweden

How We Impact the World with Eric Fransen

Whitney Wasko came back to the University of Minnesota after spending spring break in Sweden and told her Swedish professor, “I’m going to move to Sweden.” Her professor asked a reasonable question, “How are you going to do that?” The girl from small-town Two Harbors replied, “I don’t know, but I’m going to figure it out.” That was in March of 2017. Wasko graduated in May, and that August she left for Sweden.

This is the type of attitude I see all the time with entrepreneurs. Once they have their heart set on something, they figure out how to make it happen. Perhaps Wasko didn’t know she had this mindset, but she proved it in the summer of 2017 when she boarded a plane to start her new life. That plane trip brought her to the part of the world in which her ancestors lived their lives, which (of course) included taking saunas (I’ll get to this in a bit).
Wasko’s move in 2017 came quick, but also made sense. When she decided she wanted to move to Sweden, it was perfect timing. She had just finished college, wasn’t dating anybody, and didn’t have a job lined up in the states. Wasko said, “It was the first time in my life where I was kind of like, the world is your oyster. If you’re going to take off and move to Europe, now is the time to do it.”

2013 Two Harbors High School graduate Wasko continues to live in Stockholm, Sweden and works with the women’s luxury French brand, Maje Paris. “It’s a luxury fashion brand and we’re trying to spread French chic throughout the world,” said Wasko. She is Maje Paris’s store manager in Stockholm, and visual merchandising ambassador/coordinator for Scandinavia. This unique position for an American requires her to speak English, Swedish (fluent) and French (a bit). Besides managing the day-to-day in Stockholm, Wasko works with the other stores throughout Scandinavia on the visual merchandising side and communicates directly to the main office in Paris.

Let’s get back to those saunas. Full disclosure, I spent many an evening on Salo Lake at the Wasko family cabin when coaching hockey with her dad, Steve Wasko. I have memories of Whitney and her twin brother Austyn loving the sauna life.

Turns out the Waskos still love their saunas. A few years ago, the Wasko family visited Whitney in Stockholm. Their master plan for the trip was spending a day in Helsinki, Finland to take a sauna and swim in the Baltic Sea. The family went to Löyly, which is one of the finer public saunas in Finland, and their mission was accomplished.

What’s next for Whitney Wasko? The plan is to be in Europe for the foreseeable future. She’s made Stockholm home and is very happy there. She does work for a French company, so it is quite possible that she ends up Paris. But for now – Stockholm is home. Whitney Wasko… she’s impacting her world from Stockholm, Sweden.

It’s difficult to tell somebody’s full story in a weekly column. To hear the complete interview with Wasko you can listen to the podcast by the same name – How We Impact the World. I’m Eric Fransen, and today I’m impacting my world from Charlotte, North Carolina. If you have comments, feedback, or column ideas you can email [e-mail].