Our Story

Jeff Svedahl grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota. He now lives in Heber City, Utah. Two different places, same spirit — tight-knit communities where people know their neighbors, take pride in where they live, and embody the kind of authentic American life he wants to share with the world.

In 1988, as a painfully shy sophomore in college, Jeff did something that terrified him: he signed up for a summer study abroad program in Spain. Not because he was adventurous — because he wasn't, and he knew it. He needed to push himself. He traveled across Europe that summer and came home a different person. Not because of where he went, but because of what he discovered he was capable of when he stopped playing it safe.

That trip set a pattern that has defined his life ever since. When something feels hard or uncomfortable, lean into it. The best experiences — and the best stories — almost never come from the plan that went perfectly.

That spirit has taken him to Ecuador, where he lived at a biological research station in the rainforest and helped start a recycling program — and of course spent a week in the Galápagos. To Africa, where he landed with a return ticket and no itinerary, arranged his own safaris on the ground, spent time with mountain gorillas in Uganda, and climbed Mt. Kenya — spending a night at the summit in temperatures that made a kid from northern Minnesota feel cold. That last part takes some doing. To India, multiple times — including one safari where he never saw a single tiger, which somehow became one of his best travel stories. You'll have to ask him about that one when you meet him.

More than 25 countries across five continents. Every single trip had at least one moment that seemed like a disaster and became, in time, the story worth telling. That is not a coincidence. That is the nature of travel — and it is the philosophy behind every Freedom Roads itinerary.

In Ecuador, he surveyed students across multiple schools expecting to find a world that resented America. The result stopped him cold: virtually every student who knew what the United States was — wanted to live there.

Throughout a lifetime of travel, study, and coming home again, one word has always risen to the surface: FREEDOM. Not as a political statement — as a lived experience. It is the one word that defines what makes America unlike anywhere else on Earth. And it is the reason people from every country in the world, when they actually show up here, fall in love with the place.

Jeff is done trying to tell people that. Freedom Roads exists to show them.