Rad Women

The outdoor industry has lost One Tough Mother. Gert Boyle, Chairman of the Board (she hated the term “chairwoman”) and former CEO of Columbia Sportswear, died on Sunday, November 3, 2019, at the age of 95.  Gert never retired; she loved going to her office at the brand’s ...read more

Leading up to the second annual Women-Led Wednesday on Nov. 27, Cassie Abel is building her directory of companies either founded by or led by women. She’s calling any businesses with women at the top to join her community of more than 300 brands of all sizes, so far representing ...read more

Up until July 2018, the last time I'd been around 16 other women in the woods was as a teenager at Girl Scout camp. So when I was invited to the Project16x women's leadership summit in Telluride, Colorado, needless to say I felt a little self-conscious about being new to the ...read more

The outdoor industry is a progressive one. It is filled with idealists, people in search of no less than a better world. We publicly take stands for environmental conservation, for clean water, and social justice. We risk our reputations, we speak out, and we moved our biggest ...read more

Last year, Noa Ries was stuck in a rut. After founding a women's activewear company that took off with investors, she no longer felt like it was her own. As much as it was painful to part ways, her epiphany that she was no longer fulfilled led her to start The Nook Online with ...read more

Up in quaint Ketchum, Idaho, Cassie Abel always has something to do. As the owner of women's apparel brand Wild Rye and founder of White Cloud Communication, as well as being an active skier, hiker, mountain biker, and dog owner, you can find her firing off emails and ...read more

From the moment that sliding down a mountain on wooden boards strapped to a person’s feet became a popular pastime, it’s been a male-dominated activity. Today, men still make up the majority of the ski industry’s market, but there's evidence the gender tides are slowly ...read more

When Erica Engle started working toward her American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) certification in 2006, there were only a few female role models in the guiding industry. More men than women taught her the ropes. But now, thanks to a grant by The North Face, the AMGA ...read more

Victoria Payne describes herself in 2006 as a non-athletic, African American single mom who was trying to climb the corporate ladder as a number cruncher in corporate America. Her closet was filled with colorful silk tops, pant suits, and pumps. She sat in a cubicle and she was ...read more

*This article is the third in a three-part series about developing women’s events in specialty outdoor retail shops. Part 1 covers the development and goal-setting; Part 2 covers securing speakers, sponsors, and brand involvement; Part 3 covers marketing the event. The scariest ...read more

*This article is the second in a three-part series about developing women’s events in specialty outdoor retail shops. Part 1 covers the development and goal-setting; Part 2 covers securing speakers, sponsors, and brand involvement; Part 3 covers marketing the event. It was ...read more

Anyone who bumped into Carol Momoda was always glad they did. Just the sight of her made people smile and her laugh made them smile even bigger. Described as a larger-than-life personality, Momoda was an icon in the outdoor industry and worked at REI, Lowa Boots, and Smartwool. ...read more

This article is the first in a three-part series about developing women’s events in specialty outdoor retail shops. Part 1 covers development and goal-setting; Part 2 covers securing speakers, sponsors, and brand involvement; Part 3 covers marketing the event. There wasn’t an ...read more

At the end of November, Outdoor Industry Association will have a new voice in Washington, D.C. to help press forward the industry's increasingly demanding agenda on trade and land conservation. Patricia Rojas-Ungár, OIA's VP of government affairs, comes from the U.S. Travel ...read more

Business owner, veteran guide, female powerhouse, and so much more have set Angela Hawse up for her new role as President of the Board of Directors of the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA). The industry’s excitement is evident as the multifaceted Hawse—who has more ...read more

There's Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, Black Friday—and now there's Women-Led Wednesday. Even though women are more than half of the population and the professional-level work force, only 25 percent of executives and senior management officials are women. ...read more

“I’m so glad you could meet me in my jail,” Sarah Uhl says, leaning in for a hug. The one-room brick building she welcomes me into has been her art studio for the past year. But, once upon a time, it was the place Carbondale, Colorado, locked up its public troublemakers. Leaning ...read more

A 2016 survey conducted by the National Park Service found that less than 20 percent of park visitors were non-white. For many reasons, including economic and safety issues, the outdoors can be intimidating, particularly for people of color. Chevon Powell, founder of  Golden ...read more

Buena Vista's The Trailhead is smack in the heart of Colorado Fourteener country—a short drive from 15 of the monster peaks. But for all outdoor recreation in the area, the shop's marketing manager, Susan Wood, and other businesses felt the town still lacked opportunity for the ...read more

From mountain biking to dancing to surfing to praying in the woods, all types of adventure activities practiced by all types of women are highlighted during the fourth annual No Man's Land Film Festival.  The films will be screened this weekend at the flagship festival in ...read more

On the way to the Beaver Falls, the most remote set of cascading waterfalls in Havasupai, Arizona, Adriana Garcia and Luz Lituma came across something they had never seen before while hiking. Carved into one of the ladders leading to the falls was an arrow and the phrase “Por ...read more

Bronx native Mirna Valerio first laced up running shoes for a 5K—and just kept going. She now has almost a dozen 50K trail ultramarathons under her belt and is well-known in the ultra world and on social media as The Mirnavator and author of the memoir A Beautiful Work in ...read more

Andrea Gabbard, one of the most influential and prolific outdoor industry trade writers, who not only retold stories of others, but lived them herself, died on July 15 after a fall. She was 71. Gabbard got her start as a writer after two of her colleagues at Pacific Mutual Life ...read more