Maj Forsberg always considered the entire world her neighborhood. She’s been to 60 countries and has a list of 50 more she’d like to visit.

“I never had any fear, never felt confined by the boundaries of a small country like Denmark,” Forsberg said in a phone interview Friday, from Portland, Ore. — where she might be during the 65 days of the year when she isn’t traveling. “I’ve never identified with just one place.”

That’s why, at age 17, she was at a New York Knicks basketball camp and exploring the rest of the city when her parents thought she was visiting a friend in Copenhagen.

“It was an incredible experience, staying in the Bronx and going to the Boys &Girls Club in Harlem,” she said. “My parents never knew about it. I told my mom a few years ago.”

That independent spirit and sense of curiosity are big parts of how Forsberg ended up halfway around the world at the University of Hawaii a year later, and then all over the world on her way to becoming one of the planet’s top basketball referees.

Today, in Minneapolis, Forsberg is chief of the three-official crew at the NCAA women’s national championship game between UConn and South Carolina.

It’s her second year in a row in that role and comes after recent career milestones, like working the Olympics last summer and becoming the WNBA’s first woman crew chief last season. This is her fifth Final Four.

As a young player in Denmark, Forsberg was a junior national team member, and legendary Hawaii Hilo men’s coach Jimmy Yagi discovered her at a camp in her hometown of Horsolm. Rainbow Wahine coach Vince Goo trusted Yagi’s recommendation and liked her highlight tape enough to offer a scholarship.

UH was loaded at guard from 1996 to 2000, and Forsberg rarely played. Of course, it was disappointing at first, but she adapted.

“I understood the group dynamic, and that maybe my contribution wasn’t at the game, but in practice,” she said. “And to help the team GPA.”

That she did, with a cumulative 3.7 while triple-majoring in finance, international business and information technology.

“I wanted to be an investment banker, the Wolfette of Wall Street,” she said. “I graduated in 2001 and was getting ready to go to New York, and we all know what happened that September in New York. It became very difficult for a foreigner to get a job, and I started refereeing to pay the bills.”

She did eventually put all that schoolwork to use, working for the Honolulu-based Kamakura Corporation as an analyst, and rising to vice president of risk information services.

Meanwhile, she developed a passion for officiating — and, as she rose through the ranks, word got around that she was very good at it. In 2008, Forsberg was hired to work WNBA games.

“That’s when the idea of doing it full-time and year-round kicked in,” she said.

Since the WNBA season is in the summer, she’d be free to work college and other games the rest of the year. Since 2014, Forsberg’s only job has been officiating basketball games — around 150 of them a year. During the college season she lives on the east coast, because of its proximity to more high-level conferences and games.

Forsberg has worked men’s games in Europe, but has no NBA aspirations.

“The WNBA can be a stepping stone to the G League and the NBA, but that’s a whole different path, grinding it out in the G League for three or four years,” she said. “For me, I feel like I’ve developed my career, and I like the women’s game better.”

Over the decades, Forsberg has kept in touch with Yagi and his wife Jeanne, and Jeanne’s sister, Joan.

“Maj is like our adopted daughter,” Jimmy Yagi said. “To see her progress in her career has given us many proud moments. We can imagine it’s like what Coach Vince and his staff must feel to watch a player reach the upper levels of what has become her profession.”

She’s not sure what her future holds, other than golf and kiteboarding … preferably, a lot of it in Hawaii.

“My house is a very expensive storage unit, and I’m here one day a month. Copenhagen’s my second home, but Hawaii is my favorite home,” Forsberg said. “My lifelong ambition has been to become a woman of leisure, travel and eat really good food. And to come back to Hawaii.”