Photo credit: Blake Kessler @blakessler.nef
Age: 29
Where you grew up: Warwick, RI
What do you do and is this what you always wanted to do?
I work as a ski patroller at Northstar California Resort. I started working here when I came back to the US after 10 years of living in Japan. I had worked in search and rescue in the mountains there, and wanted to come back home and pursue outdoor medicine here as well.
Not at all! Growing up I didn’t do a whole lot outdoors, and I was never much into sports. I went on exchange to Japan for a year in high school, and ended up completing a bachelor’s degree in traditional Japanese Painting at Tama Art University in Tokyo, where I joined the alpine club without fully understanding it was a mountaineering club. I absolutely fell in love with everything to do with the mountains, which is what ended up leading me to where I am now; but it took a bit for me to come into my own as a strong participant in these spaces, let alone as a leader.
What is your favorite part about your job?
I find a lot of satisfaction in the hard and gritty parts of what we do. I love being able to help people when they’re injured and at a really low point, but I also really like being able to train other people and see them fulfill that role confidently as well. Starting last year I’ve been training with Griffin, my avalanche rescue dog in training at work as well, which has been a huge collaborative effort, so seeing him grow, and seeing how invested everyone else is in his progress too has been really gratifying.
What challenges have you faced by being a woman in the outdoor industry? How did you overcome them?
I feel like I faced more challenges early on, especially while working at mountain huts as a staff member in Japan. I remember having trouble being trusted with the very difficult roles, and feeling like my male colleagues were given more opportunities to try a task right at the edge of their abilities, even if they might fail, while I was given easier tasks. This could be tricky to overcome because it came from a really well intentioned place, but it also wasn’t helping me to progress, and getting past it took some very honest conversations about the level of work I actually wanted to take on.
How have you built confidence/resilience over the course of your career?
Feeling like I’m performing at a high level, and actually putting my best effort into my work is really important to me. This has served as a great benchmark for me, because in no way will I ever start doing something new and immediately be the best, but if my measure of my success is more tied to my effort than anything else, I can still go home each day feeling good about how things went. A lot of my confidence has just bloomed from this over time. Every hard situation I’ve made my way through, a puzzle I’ve had to solve, and a storm I’ve braced my shoulders through has added to that, bit by bit, over time. Every time that I haven’t handled a situation as well as I would’ve hoped, and still have felt the support of everyone around me, and realized that I’m still fine has helped build resilience. Resilience is also something I build and maintain by trying to manage my stress levels. Acknowledging and writing what I feel, taking time for my own thoughts, and trying to be as forgiving of myself as I would be of someone else I care about. I’m not the best at any of these, but any effort I put in there seems to pay dividends.
What do you think needs to happen for us to reach gender equality in the workplace?
I think sometimes the idea of what real job proficiency is needs to be re-examined. A lot of times outdoor jobs can be looked at really simplistically as “you need to be really strong to complete these tasks, men are stronger and therefore better suited.” I don’t think this tracks with the reality of most jobs though. I once had a male mentor in an incredibly male-dominated space tell me “If the guys around you have to use their absolute full-strength to complete a task then they aren’t doing it very well.” Thanks Hachi! True skill has a lot more to do with efficiency and having good systems than with brute strength. I think that focusing the conversation on men vs. women in outdoor jobs solely on strength takes the conversation away from how skilled people perform. The playing field is much more level for functional strength than people would always have you believe!