Shaken from his sleep, Maíra Liguori's father had barely opened his eyes as she shouted for him to get out of bed. It was Christmas morning in Atibaia, Brazil, and an 8-year-old Liguori had beaten Santa Claus to the drop-off.

Stuffed between a wall and a sofa in the living room was a bicycle in a big cardboard box.

The sun was only just started shining through the curtains, but she wanted to ride it. Her father, Matheus, rose from his slumber and assembled the bike for Liguori, planting the seeds for what would become a lifelong passion.

"That bicycle was my first love," Liguori says. "People would joke that I was head, shoulders, knees and pedals."

Liguori, now the director for Think Olga, a Brazilian NGO aimed at challenging gender stereotypes and empowering women through information, rode her bicycle everywhere as a girl.

As she grew older, the sense of fun and freedom that riding symbolized in her life was buried under the pressures of being a teenager. Being drenched in sweat after an afternoon of bicycling with the boys was no longer normal.

She moved away to study at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, where she earned a bachelor's degree in journalism in 2002. The city of 11 million people was less conducive to cycling, and by then Liguori was struggling with body image issues and insomnia. The advertisements in the streets and the trainers in her gym told her getting fit would help her feel beautiful and strong and that it would make her doubts about her body disappear.

Through endless yoga and spin classes, swimming and running, the uneasiness in the pit of Liguori's stomach remained. The treadmills and yoga mats became instruments of an oppressive environment. But Liguori wasn't working out to find a boyfriend or fit into a bikini. She just longed for the peace she felt as a little girl racing down streets on her yellow bike.

"Sport is too big to only be about fitness and beauty," Liguori says. "I exercise because I love my body, not because I hate it -- not because it is a problem that needs fixing."

At the age of 27, Liguori and her husband, Ricardo Kenski, moved away to Barcelona, Spain, where she worked in marketing research while finishing a master's degrees in business communications and anthropology.

One day, she was on her way to the university but didn't have money for the subway, so she decided to rent a public bike on the street. As soon as she pedaled off and felt the wind hit her face, the memories came flooding back. She rushed home that night and told her husband: "I will never stop riding again."

"At Think Olga, we always say we work with a burning passion inside of us," says Juliana de Faria, founder and one of Liguori's closest friends. "Maíra embodies that passion perfectly."

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In August, Liguori received confirmation that she would become the fifth Brazilian woman to participate in the U.S. Department of State and espnW Global Sports Mentoring Program (GSMP). With the aim of growing the impact of her work with Olga Esporte Club, Liguori was partnered with Julie Eddleman, global client partner at Google.

Eddleman previously mentored three Brazilian women in the program and has a long resume of accomplishments as a former marketing director and mentor at Proctor & Gamble. It's been her mission to help Liguori condense her ideas and create a long-term strategy that will make Olga Esporte Club, which is the sports branch of Think Olga, financially and programmatically sustainable.

"You hear these legends about Brazilians having this incredible passion and this zest for life, and it's been absolutely true with all of my mentees," Eddleman says. "I'm here to offer a little inspiration, a lot of connection and a way for them to take those steps toward a long-term, strategic vision."

"I'm here to offer a little inspiration, a lot of connection, and a way for them to take those steps toward a long-term, strategic vision," says Julie Eddleman, Liguori's mentor. Jaron Johns

Thanks to her mentor, Liguori has met with leaders at both P&G and Google, as well as innovative thinkers such as David Knox, chief marketing officer of the digital innovation firm Rockfish, and Kash Shaikh, chief executive officer of Besomebody, a mobile app that connects people with similar passions, which earned Shaikh a spot on the popular ABC television show Shark Tank.

Liguori calls the GSMP one of the deepest experiences of her life and knows it will lead her forward in spreading the idea of sport for empowerment and social change across Brazil.

"Before I was living my life trying to make things happen," Liguori says. "Now I am changing my life to come to the U.S., meet new women, engage in something I never would've dreamed of before, in order to make my dreams with Olga Esporte Clube come to life."

Her husband, one of her biggest supporters, is a witness to the impact the program has made in Liguori's life. The two have been together for "three World Cups and one Olympics," he says. Fourteen years, if you're counting.

A producer for HBO Latin America, Kenski realizes the importance of his wife's work as he deals with questions from others during her time in the U.S.

"Sometimes even the women at work try to provoke me with questions about feminism," Kenski says. "It's bizarre. Men will say to me, 'How are you changing (their 15-month old son) Tom's diapers?' It's not a radical thing to change diapers, man."

Ultimately for Liguori it comes down to that basic element: awareness. Whether it happens when a woman clicks on a link to one of Think Olga's articles, or when a man challenges the stereotypes that women should look and act a certain way at work, or when a little girl rides her bicycle freely down an empty neighborhood street -- when the light bulb goes off, there is no way to stop the movement.

Editor's note: Brian Canever is the digital content manager for the Center for Sport, Peace, & Society at the University of Tennessee, and works closely with the GSMP participants.