Jen Gurecki
Change is out there Meet the American adventurer and CEO who’s on a mission to make the world a fairer place, one snowboard at a time Words LOU BOYD
Photography CHARLIE SHOEMAKER
Jen Gurecki has never been one to accept the status quo. The Nevadabased adventurer and entrepreneur has spent much of her life working to break down barriers in adventure and action sports. In 2014, angered by the traditional ‘shrink it and pink it’ approach to women’s snow gear, Gurecki launched Coalition Snow, a ski-and-snowboard company that designs equipment for women that “doesn’t suck” and champions the work of female athletes and creators. More recently, the 42-year-old – who describes herself on Instagram as a “PhD dropout” and “adventure addict” – turned her hand to publishing; in January last year, she and Coalition Snow’s creative director, Lauren Bello Okerman, created Sisu, an outdoors-focused publication that presents diverse and rarely heard voices and experiences from the action sports industry. We chatted to Gurecki about the importance of disrupting the industry you’re in, and what action sports must do to become more inclusive and open. : What was the inspiration behind your ski company? : Coalition [Snow] has always been a grand social experiment. What would happen if women decided to make skis and boards? Women don’t usually make
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hard goods – it’s not something we’re encouraged to do and there’s no pipeline of mentorship. We’re encouraged to make beanies and cute sweatshirts. I thought it would be interesting if women decided to get out of their lane and do something that’s really maledominated. How would the industry react? And the community? Would there be customers? There’s the social-justice side of me that’s all about being curious, but there’s also a side that’s just going, “Let’s see what would happen if we fucked things up a bit.” What has been the reaction to Coalition Snow? The industry continues to not really know how to handle us, because we’re an unapologetic, bold, feminist ski company. We’re not the nice-girls-next-door ski company. How have you approached designing snow equipment for women? When we first started out, the go-to strategy for women specifically was to take the man’s version [of a product] and shrink it, pink it and soften it. Women were tokenised by the industry as they realised it was an emerging market. We’re not doing that; we’re going to make the gear that we want. We’re not pretending to have some brandnew technology or some crazy intensive R&D [research and development]; we just make shit we like and that we know other women will like. People ask why our gear is women-specific. It’s because we’re women and we make it for us.
Why did you feel it was important to create another outdoorsfocused publication with Sisu? There are a couple of reasons why we started it. Coalition has grown into a platform, and over time it’s become clear that when we say things, people listen. Just talking about ourselves or snow sports was really limiting, because there’s so much else happening in the world, and if you have a commitment to justice, equality, diversity and inclusion, that means opening up our platform and allowing other voices rise to the top. We look at the magazine as blank pages to fill with non-normative perspectives that have always been there. Take [US non-binary photographer and artist] Shoog McDaniel, who identifies as queer and fat. Their photography celebrates others who identify as fat, queer, Black or Brown. It deviates from the ‘climb it, conquer it, suffer from it’ mentality that is in so many photographs [of people] in the outdoors. Their work is not only refreshing, it’s revolutionary. Do you think that action sports as a sector is gradually becoming more inclusive? I think that there are many more conversations about inclusivity and diversity happening in the outdoor industry as a whole, particularly in the US, but not so much in snow sports. There’s a lot of box checking happening, instead of real systemic change. Real change is messy and hard and takes a lot of resources. It takes everyone to really look at themselves, be open to the idea that your experience is valid and real, while also knowing that people have completely different experiences. Consider the systems you uphold in your recreation and your daily life, and whether they make it difficult for other people to get involved. Then you can start to break down those systems. coalitionsnow.com; sisumagazine.com
THE RED BULLETIN