10 Under 30 :: 2012

July 2012

SAM takes its annual look at the new talent in our industry. This next generation of leaders is full of drive, enthusiasm and creativity.

Written by: Staff

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About six years ago, leaders across the industry looked around and asked themselves, “where are the future leaders who will take over for us when we want to retire?” A good deal of anxiety followed, as upper management didn’t see an obvious line of succession.

To help clarify the outlook, SAM profiled a “Top 10 under 30” of likely candidates. And truthfully, it was not easy to find 10 young guns that top managers felt were up to the task.

But that was then. Over the past several years, hundreds of younger employees have stepped forward and into positions of greater and greater responsibility. As with leaders before them, they saw a challenge, and they determined how to meet it. It turns out that there were lots of people willing and able to pick up the mantle of leadership. All they needed was a chance to show their stuff.

That’s how it looks to us, anyway, based on what we’ve learned in researching articles such as this one.

As with last year’s under-30 profiles, we have presented only a portion of the story here—there’s just too much to say. And speaking of volume, we once again gave our 10 a very small, yet surprisingly difficult, challenge: to capture their life’s story in six words. You can see these bios here, but we invite you to go online and read their full stories, and then vote for the 6-word bio you like the most.

And please, tell us about your own future leaders. It’s a great way to recognize and inspire them and to reassure current leaders that the industry will be in good hands.

—The Editors

Gregg Blanchard
Age: 29

Founder, Slopefillers.com, and
Director of Communications, Ryan Solutions
Six word bio: “Dig marketing. Love mountains. Devour Reubens.”

As a child, growing up in Utah but only skiing four or five days a year, Blanchard cherished every outing on snow. “Every day I went skiing was like a birthday,” he recalls.

The founder of Slopefillers.com, a ski industry blog about resorts’ use of digital media and social marketing, Blanchard skis a lot more these days. And that’s by design. His insights into marketing have now put him in the enviable position of making money doing what
he loves, all while working in an office five minutes from the base of Beaver Creek.

JESSE CLEVELAND

Age: 29
Snowboard Supervisor
Liberty Mountain Resort, Pa.
Six word bio: “Adventurous, reliable, goal-oriented, happy, enthusiastic, curious”

Talented females give rise to more talented females. That’s the premise that Liberty Mountain Resort’s Jesse Cleveland has used to shape one of the most successful women’s learning programs in snowboarding. Snowboarding’s seemingly unending growth has hit a wall in the past few years, and that makes Cleveland’s contributions especially important.

Cleveland fell in love with snowboarding (and instructing) at an early age. “I took a lesson at about 10 or 11,” she says, “and knew immediately that I wanted to teach.”

“I love teaching,” she adds. “It’s really cool to watch people get it.”

JEFF CULLINANE

Age: 25
Financial Analyst
Intrawest, Colo.
Six word bio: “Young professional, passionate about ski industry.”

If you want to win a pond-skimming contest, says skimming whiz Jeff Cullinane, “It’s all about the lean. You have to shift your weight back and get as much speed as possible.” The rest, he says, is easy.

Cullinane has a knack for making things look easy. “If anyone has a problem with either financials, complex on-mountain machinery or a control room, Jeff always knows how to see the big picture and figure out how to fix it,” says Stratton’s Meredith Morris, where Cullinane got his start in the industry. “He doesn’t just fix the problem, he will explain how he is thinking, and how others can further prevent it.”

Currently a financial analyst in Intrawest’s department of financial planning and analysis in Denver, Cullinane got his start at Stratton as the manager of a mid-mountain lodge. “I started seasonally,” he says. “I was able to take a snowmobile to work every day, and drive a snowcat around the mountain at night.” He’d also hike down the mountain under a full moon. He found that, after that first winter, “I loved it so much that I stayed,” he says.

JARED EMERSON
Age: 28
Jack Of All Trades
Saddleback Ski Area, Maine
Six word bio: “Do something fun for a living.”

Jared Emerson pauses when asked, “what exactly is your title, anyhow?” The question arises during our interview because Emerson has been talking about installing lifts, ski patrolling, grooming the mountain, and plunging into the overgrown Maine forest with chainsaw in hand during summer operations. He does a lot of things at Saddleback, but what—exactly—should SAM call him? “Well,” he admits, “I wear a lot of hats.”

Indeed he does. The 28-year-old has taken advantage of every opportunity that has presented itself to dive into all aspects of mountain operations at Saddleback. He’s currently the director of ski patrol as well as the grooming and park director. In the summer, he oversees glading operations, including the ongoing development of Saddleback’s Casablanca Glades, which commenced in 2009. He’s also supervised the installation of two lifts and the relocation of another chair. The man does it all.

ERIC HASSEL

Age: 28
Base Area Operations Manager
Durango Mountain Resort, Colo.
Six word bio: “Work hard, have fun, teamwork.”

“Well, I can ski quite a bit,” admits Eric Hassel, Durango Mountain Resort’s base area operations manager, of the major motivation for his current position at the mountain. He laughs, “That’s why a lot of people get into this business, right?”

Hassel didn’t always get to ski at will. A native of the nearby town of Durango, he grew up skiing but later joined the Navy to, in his words, “see the world.” Hassel spent six years in the service before returning to the mountains.

“There’s a lot of water out there,” says Hassel of his time on a boat. “But the Navy really helped me with my management skills and with working with people.” He’s putting that experience to good use at Durango Mountain Resort, where he oversees a diverse group of employees who all work there for the same reason he does, “to ski.”

KYLE MARTOLA
Age: 23
Park Manager
Sunburst Ski Area, Wisc.
Six word bio: “Last push, first chair, hello Wisconsin.”

Kyle Martola has always been a snowboarder. “I knew from day two on a board that it was what I wanted to do,” says the park manager for Wisconsin’s Sunburst Ski Area.

And that’s exactly what Martola has done ever since that second day. Sunburst’s park manager is also a sponsored rider, representing Rome snowboards, and an integral part of the summer camp scene, working at Windells. So it’s not altogether surprising that he’s taken a small hill in the Midwest and turned its park offerings into a big deal.

“Everything I do at Sunburst is based on what I see in my travels,” says Martola. “Windells and the Mount Hood scene is a showcase of everything interesting that has happened in the past year in the park scene. I bring it straight home, it keeps our hits progressive when it comes to our layout.”

LAURA PARQUETTE
Age: 26
Senior Communication Manager
Keystone, Colo.
Six word bio: “Unexpected chapters turned into lifelong pursuits.”

For Laura Parquette, senior communications manager at Keystone Resort, it’s about the people. “I love the personalities,” she says. “The snowmakers, the lift ops, all the people behind the scenes, who are out there every day.”

And Parquette is out there every day, too, looking to tell their stories. “I arrived in Keystone in December, and it was really exciting coming to Keystone once the season had already started, it’s a big place!”

A lifelong skier, Parquette got her start in the ski industry at Snowshoe, W. Va., where she was hired by Bill Rock (now GM at Northstar-at-Tahoe) to oversee communications for the Mid-Atlantic resort. “He scared the hell of out me in my interview,” laughs Parquette. “But he’s a great person, and he was a true mentor.”

ALEX SAVITSKY

Age: 27
Mountain Operations Manager
Tahoe Donner, Calif.
Six word bio: “Moved west. Learned love. Found life.”

Blame it on a woman: Alexander Savitsky ended up in Tahoe because of his better half. “We spent our honeymoon looking for a place to live in the mountains,” says Savitsky. That particular journey started in Mammoth, took him to the beaches and urban sprawl of Southern California, and wrapped up on the shores of Lake Tahoe. “We moved to Truckee on a whim,” he recalls. “We had no jobs, but we had found a place slopeside at Donner. I looked at those guys and thought, ‘I bet I can help.’ So I tracked down the GM and the rest is history.”

Savitsky was far from raw when he walked into his position at Donner. A Wisconsin native, he cut his teeth at Mammoth, were he worked a variety of positions for mountain operations. “I started at the bottom working as a lift op,” he says, before also gaining experience in shipping and receiving and retail. A summer job in construction rounded out his experience.

Then love intervened. “I met my wife in Mammoth,” says Savitsky. “But she was headed to Southern California for school, so we made a deal: After she finished school, we’d go back to the mountains.”

JULIAN TYO
Age: 28
Lift Supervisor
Sun Valley, Idaho
Six word bio: “Creating a ski season for summertime.”

It was, admits Sun Valley lift supervisor Julian Tyo, a bit of a scam. A serious mountain biker with a jones for lift-accessed, gravity-fed riding, he “recognized a deficit in the [resort’s mountain bike] trail offerings,” and he knew that “the way to get trails built was to get involved in the company.”

The company in question was Sun Valley, where Tyo started in retail (renting mountain bikes, to be exact) and then quickly moved up the ladder. Currently, he’s the lift supervisor for Sun Valley’s Dollar Mountain, the original ski mountain at Sun Valley that now combines a learning area with freestyle terrain and a halfpipe.

While he’s received kudos for running the show at Dollar, where he coordinates everything from ski patrol operations to overseeing seasonal lift attendant staff, it’s his mountain bike savvy that makes him exceptional.

SOLVEIG VICK
Age: 27
Ski Patrol Director
Lutsen Mountains, Minn.
Six word bio: Outdoorsy, excited, competent, creative, efficient, caring.

A ski area in Montana is about to get really, really lucky. “I’m out West right now looking for a job,” says Vick when SAM finally tracks her down in early June. “I’m hoping to stay in Montana.”

Vick would be an asset to any mountain. The ski patrol director for Minnesota’s Lutsen Mountains, Vick has skiing in her blood. She grew up at the resort, where she says she got into trouble for trying to ski without a pass. “I was always so exited to go skiing once I got my gear on,” she laughs, “that I’d always run out the door without my pass. The patrol director would always make me go back and get it.”

As patrol director herself, Vick oversaw a varied staff of pro patrollers and National Ski Patrol volunteers. She also worked closely with almost every other department on the mountain.

For Vick, the highlight of her position was this collaboration. “A lot of people have been there 20 or 30 years,” she says. “And I grew up there. So you get to know everyone and you work with everyone.”

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10 Under 30 :: 2012