Good Life Project - Donna Carpenter | Building Burton: A Love Story

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

Donna Carpenter met Burton founder, Jake Burton Carpenter in a Southern Vermont bar on New Year’s Eve 1981. Within a year they married and became partners in business and life, working side-by-side dipping snowboards in polyurethane and answering the customer service line that rang in the bedroom. Donna quickly became a driving force, working with Jake to build Burton into the world’s leading snowboard company and also making Burton a brand of choice and employer of choice for women. In 2010, Donna stepped up to the role of President and eventually became Burton’s first female CEO.Over the last decade, Jake began to experience a series of health challenges, and in November 2019, he lost his life to a recurrence of cancer. His last words to Donna, as she shares later in our conversation, speaks so much to the way they live their lives, the relationship they had, the community they built, and the lives they created together. Earlier this year, Donna stepped out of the role of CEO to become Chair of the Burton Board of Directors, focus on advocating for the sport of snowboarding, being a strong climate activist, speaking up on behalf of sustainability efforts as well as advocating for more diversity on the mountain, in business, and in boardrooms.You can find Donna Carpenter at:Website : https://www.burton.com/us/en/homeInstagram : https://www.instagram.com/donnacarpenter/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have ever heard of the winter sports brand Burton, then you know Donna Carpenter's work. Wandering into a southern Vermont bar on a ski break when she was 19, she met a guy, Jake Burton Carpenter, just months after Jake had launched Burton Snowboards, out of this tiny workshop. And within a year, they'd fallen in love, gotten married, and joined forces to build Burton into what became a global brand that would forever redefine winter sports and really establish a radically inclusive counterculture for millions around the world. What started as days dipping snowboards in polyurethane

and answering customer service lines that rang in the bedroom rapidly expanded as Jake, Donna, and this kind of ragtag family of adventurers literally put snowboarding on the map. In the mid-1980s, she expanded Burton's business to Europe and ran the company's first international office in Innsbruck, Austria. But in 2013, moving forward, really realizing how important it was to reclaim Burton's ethos of individuality and equality,

she and Jake set out to reimagine Burton's offerings and culture, building it into a brand of choice and an employer of choice for women. Under Donna's leadership, Burton embraced progressive parent policies, mentoring programs, and a diverse leadership team. And in 2010, she stepped into the role of president. Then 2016, went on to become Burton's CEO before just recently passing the baton and becoming the chair of the Burton Board of Directors, a position formerly held by Jake, who very tragically passed away in November of 2019 from complications due to recurring cancer. Today, Donna remains a fierce advocate

for the sport of snowboarding and the culture around it and continues to be a strong climate activist, speaking up on behalf of sustainability efforts, as well as advocating for more diversity on the mountain and in the boardrooms. Really excited to be able to share so many of these stops along Donna's journey with you as we dive into not just the stories that are told on the surface, but the backstories, the deeper stories and awakenings that led to them. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest

Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to

previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. So I, being of a certain age, grew up on Long Island and was a snurfer. Wow, I don't meet many of those.

Right. I remember grabbing my snurfer when the snow came down, walking down the hill to the local golf course, which was at the end of my block, you know, trekking up to the top of Old Glory and just going for it until my lips were blue and I was shaking and it was time to go home. Me too. I grew up with a snurfer. We always took it sledding with us. Yeah. That was the sort of progressive edgy thing to do back then. I know you were born originally somewhere in East Texas, but at a pretty young age,

the family ended up jumping over to Greenwich, Connecticut or somewhere thereabouts. Curious what that was like for you. I mean, because as somebody who grew up outside of New York, I'm guessing that was a bit of a jarring change for you. That was a real culture shock. You know, I've been thinking about this. I think Jake and I, we both grew up in kind of suburbs of New York,

but neither one of us embraced those values. I mean, coming from East Texas, I didn't really understand them. You know, just the, one of my first memories is of my grandmother saying she won't visit us because Satan actually lives in New York. I don't know if you knew that, but that's his home address. So Jake and I, neither one of us kind of felt part of our tribes there. And especially when he decided to dedicate his life to snurfing, his tribe certainly didn't understand. That was not the expectation for him growing up in Long Island and, you know, expecting to go on Wall Street, really, I guess. So I think that that was one reason we were really attracted to each other and that we started to create our own community very early on. We realized that we were going to have to create family.

Yeah, now that makes a lot of sense. It seems like you also, you graduated high school early as well, right? Well, yeah, we're not the same age. We didn't know each other growing up, but I left Greenwich. I was determined to leave Greenwich. So I left at 16, spent a year in France that I'd probably rather not talk about, and then got very serious about college. And he had a very similar trajectory. He kind of got kicked out of a boarding school, got into a little trouble and then got serious about his future. So we kind

of had that in common. And honestly, Jonathan, I hadn't really met a whole lot of hardworking, decent, honest guys who were persevering at something nobody believed in. Again, I think that's why we were able to kind of create our own community. Yeah. I mean, so you ended up in Barnard and I guess as Lydian would have it, we're up in Vermont for a New Year's Eve trip, walked into a bar and Jake was there drinking Jack and milk.

And you know what else? I don't always, this is a newsflash. He was also chewing a little weed in his lip because he was pre-ulcerous. He had a really, like he was not taking care of himself. He was working 18 hours a day by himself pretty much. And he basically had an ulcer condition and the milk cut the jack and the weed helped his stomach. So yeah. Got it. So at that that point then he was, I guess, a couple of years into it already working maniacally. And it sounds like there was a quick connection, but you weren't

still, you were still at Barnard at that time. Yeah, I was still at Barnard and I can remember, you know, we're young, we're in New York city, we have the world in front of us. And he would come visit me and I'd tell my roommates, oh, my new boyfriend's coming. And he would promptly fall asleep on the couch for like eight hours straight. And they'd be like, nice day, Chika. So, yeah, he was in a kind of different phase of his life. Right. But something, you know, really appealed to me about it.

Yeah. I mean, you were, from what I know, also fairly heavily focused on women's issues and international studies. So to go from that to meeting a guy in a bar in Vermont, something like a year, you know, falling in love, something like a year later being married. On the one hand, it's interesting because, you know, the immediate thought is, well, okay, so you're giving up on that dream of international studies and women's issues. But then it really rapidly becomes a central part of what you do, not just long-term, but also pretty quickly as you start to work with Jay. I know. I feel so lucky to have Burton as a platform for those things that mattered. But I think those things always mattered to him.

He really came of age in the 60s. He's 10 years older than I am. He was born in 54. I was born in 63. And so he really came of age in the 60s and civil rights mattered to him and women's rights mattered to him. And when you start to create a community, you start to say, hey, it matters that we're a fair and just community and that we're all inclusive. So yeah. And even like environmental advocacy, I've been able to do with my platform. So yeah, it's pretty lucky. If I could tell my 18 year old self, just hang on, it'll all be good. It will show its hand. I mean, it's interesting also. So you're, you know, Jake was a decade younger than or older than you. I know he also lost his older brother in Vietnam. He lost his mom really young. And I'm curious whether you feel like that led to any kind of sense, because it sounds like when you met him, he was just all in on this, something that was completely counter to everything that he'd grown up thinking about. I'm curious whether, you know, he, this sort of like, let me just embrace this thing and go on and live for the day and live for the moment.

Do you have any sense for whether that might've been an outgrowth of his really early exposure to, you just never know what's going to happen on any given day? Exactly. For sure. I think so. It took him a long time to really open up to me about his mom and brother. You know, he came from a very close family, close sisters. And, you know, his dad nursed his mother for two years alone.

And so he comes from a great family, but he'll always say it's what made him independent. You know, it's what gave him that spirit of I'm the one responsible for me. Because like you said, tomorrow, anything can change. Yeah. So when you fall in love and you jump up to Vermont, curious how that landed with your immediate friends and family. Oh, my friends thought I had literally lost my mind. My mother had only met him once and I said, I'm getting married. And she said, that bear,

I'm not even sure he combs his hair. And I was like, I think you're right. I don't think he combs his hair. Yeah. So they thought we were a little crazy. I did have culture shock going from New York City to rural Vermont, southern Vermont. And after a few months, we actually, he had the idea in his head that the snowboard could be made like a ski, that we could steal skiing's technology and do steel edges, foam cores, or wood cores. And the only place that was done was in Europe. And like I said, we had both lived in Europe. We'd both done senior kind of gap years in Paris, you know, kind of nine years apart. And so I literally had another job lined up. I was going to be working for a nonprofit called the Experiment in International Living, recruiting Austrian

students to come live in the United States. And he was going to work on production there. And at one point before we left, he said, hey, would you take a look at these inquiries we're getting from Europe? And the rest was history. So it really, I joke because it really was culture shock for me. I was like, oh my God, I just married this guy. I'm 19 years old. I'm 20 years old and I'm living in rural Vermont. What am I going to do? And he said, hey, let's go to Europe. And I said, oh, that sounds like a good idea. So we actually spent almost five years there. Right. And, and I, you know, it's interesting also, because at that time, I think anyone who's fairly newly exposed to the world of snowboarding now just sees it as, well, it's, you know, it's interesting also, because at that time, I think anyone who's fairly newly exposed to the world of snowboarding now just sees it as, well, it's, you know, it's always been around. It's a, it's a huge part of winter sports. But having made the transition from snurfing to snowboarding myself, I remember in the very early days, well, first, you couldn't find a mountain where they would let you on the mountain. Well, more than that, it wasn't meant, Jonathan.

That wasn't his vision for it. You know, at the time, oil prices were very high. It was more and more expensive to go to ski areas. He really envisioned it as something that you did on your golf course or on the back hills. It was never meant to be ridden at a ski area. And it was sort of these young kids that started working for us in the beginning who said, Hey, what if we drive up at night and go to the top of Bromley and snowboard down? And then you're thinking, you know, then Jake's thinking, wow, wouldn't it be great to have a better binding?

Wouldn't it be great to have better edges? But it was never, he never envisioned it like, oh, I'm going to someday take over ski areas. It was an alternative to being at ski areas,

which it's a lot like what you see splitboarding now or something. What's interesting to me is it felt truly counterculture to me in the early days. And even though it's a lot like what you see split boarding now or something. Yeah. What's interesting to me is it felt truly counterculture to me in the early days. And even though it's become mainstream, it feels like we've still got a counterculture ethos. I think there's a creativity. I mean, I always say, you know, who first looked at a picnic table and said, I think I'll slide down that, you know, not a skier. So I think that there's this individuality, this creativity, this sense of freedom and maybe looking at the world differently.

We say we stand a bit sideways, you know, that attracted people who, I think like Jake and I, who felt a little tribeless. Yeah. You're in Austria. I know you connect when you're there with Kielski, who is the one manufacturer that says, huh, this could be interesting. Which, am I right in now the largest snowboard manufacturer in the world? So good to raise your hand early sometimes. And now being run by his grandson. Right, right.

You've got to love that. And it sounds like it really actually started to pop more in Europe before it started to pop here. Was that your experience? No, it had really started here. And again, there was no reason for us to leave here because things were really growing quickly. Again, these are the boards with the ropes on the end. The big technological advance was to have a center fin in addition to the side fins or whatever. But Jake really wanted to explore the manufacturing over there.

And literally, you know, they told us, hey, don't try to sell this here because there's such an entrenched Alpine tradition. Nobody will want to do it. Well, it was the exact opposite, I think, because people were looking for something new that it really took off there, you know, really quickly and then started to have some real influence on the sport. I always say when you walk into our headquarters, there's a sample of a board from every year.

And you can tell when we went to Europe because it all turned neon. Like it went from being black and gray to being bright pink and yellow. So, you know, we tend to be influenced. And we went into Japan very early. You know, we had an importer in the kind of mid to late 80s who started importing really quickly into Japan. So we became a global company very quickly, very early on. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned the sort of lineup of boards.

I've actually been to the office in Burlington and seen that lineup and it's like, and I was actually wondering, I'm like, what happened here? Yeah. What happened here? That all has a story. Every board has a story. Yeah. That's great. So you're building a life, you're building a family, you're building a company together. Very early on, I work with my wife and we've been in business together for years as well. So I know that doesn't always, you know, that can sometimes be a challenge. I'm curious, were there, were the conversations that had to be had or like, were you, were you guys intentional about sort of negotiating how you would develop both your relationship together and the business together in a way that was constructive? Yeah, like I said, I think if Jake was the visionary entrepreneur, I was the accidental one. I didn't go into the relationship thinking that I would be a part of it. I think what really helps is that it was always bigger than us. It wasn't about us and our personal success. It wasn't about our material success. It was about getting this sport off the ground.

Jake always says he actually started it as a get-rich-quick scheme. He thought, oh, somebody could turn this snurfer into a lot of money. And when it turned out not to be quite a rich, quick scheme, he started focusing on the sport and what was right for the sport and how to make the sport more accessible and easier. And everything else followed. All of a sudden, it became profitable. All of a sudden, there was growth because we were just trying to focus on what can we do to make this a better experience on the mountain. So I think he always had that vision of focus on the rider and everything else will follow. So it was always bigger. And he focused really a lot on the product and I focused a lot on the community and, you know, we had complimentary skills that way. Yeah. There was,

don't get me wrong. There were times when it was extremely stressful for both of us and we would do things like, okay, we're not talking business after six o'clock and we would really stick to that. You know, later on, it didn't really become necessary to do that. But early on, there were times when it definitely helped. Yeah. I mean, especially because when you think about building a company where, for lack of a better word, it's a hardware company where you've got actual manufactured goods. Manufacturing. Those tend to be extremely complex,

extremely capital intensive. And those tend to be the things where you have a number of friends who've been in business together. And those types of businesses tend to be the ones that are, they're the hardest on, they're really hard to build as business,

but they're also the hardest on the relationship if you have people together running. Whether you're a married on, they're really hard to build this business, but they're also the hardest on the relationship if you have a, you know, like people together running, whether you're a married couple, partners, or just really good friends. Jake used to joke that the only reason he started a manufacturing company was because he was young and naive and cocky. It really is a difficult business. And, you know, I was pointing to the time, there was a time when in the late 80s, where we were having some particularly difficult product problems, some quality problems. At the same time, I couldn't secure financing for the company. So we would literally go home and I'd say, we can't get a loan. And he'd say, the bindings are pulling out of the board. And we'd be like, don't talk to me and I won't talk to you. It's a really, really difficult business that way. Luckily, he was a very,

very disciplined business guy. We never took on long-term debt. We never took on investors. He always funded his growth. We always funded our growth through profitability. And I think that's why we're still here. Yeah. I mean, that certainly makes it harder in the earlier days, but if you can tip into that place of sustainability, and then when you hit the next threshold, tip again, it gives you a certain amount of freedom to make choices that probably a lot of companies that were heavily leveraged or even really, you know, obligated to, quote, maximize shareholder value to outside investors. Almost feel like you had to make different decisions yep i mean we've learned a lot from watching other industries make mistakes yeah mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

So you guys really started to really define and expand the entire industry. And as you did that, one of those industries that caught on to what you were doing was West Coast based and really sort of emerged out of the water-based version of what a lot of the snowboard, the counterculture people were doing on the snow on the East Coast. You know, Sims, which was early to skateboarding, started to say, like Tom Sims is like, hey, this is interesting. And it feels like there emerged this real East Coast, West Coast rivalry. But at the same time, it was fierce, but it seemed like there was a friendship there as well. I think that there, oh, I don't know that there was a friendship ever with Tom since.

That guy, I don't know how you feel about foul language on your show. You can say anything you want on the show. Yeah, that guy was not the most ethical person, but it pushed us, right? You had two dominant players, and so it really pushed the technology really quickly. And the other thing, quite honestly, they were way ahead of us on the freestyle movement. We came from the East Coast tradition of ski racing. Jake had been a ski racer growing up. I had grown up skiing and Sims was coming at it from that surf skate angle. And we honestly missed it and we were wrong. And that's when we hired, you know, started sponsoring Craig Kelly. And Craig said to us, I'll work for you. I really want to work for you. He came to us and said, I want to work for you, but you have to listen to me. And, you know, he was an engineer at heart, but anyway, we missed that freestyle movement because

we had come out of a different tradition and we were so focused on kind of competing against them rather than seeing what they were doing was working luckily when you make mistakes early on in the mid-80s you know the industry forgives you and we were able to course correct especially by bringing craig on board right craig craig was at sims originally actually wasn't Craig was at Sims originally, actually, wasn't he? He was at Sims originally. And he came to us and said, I want to work for you, but I signed a lifetime personal contract with Tom Sims. So anyway, that went to court. And I always say the judge was like, he looked at us and Sims and he's like, these are both degenerates. Like, what am I going to do with these people? But we won the court case and was, we were able to use, use Craig after that. So,

and again, he was the one who said, you know, he was always two steps ahead. I remember he was at the top of his game as a competitor. He was winning everything. And he came to Jake and me and said, I want to stop competing and I want to do nothing but film in the back country. That wasn't a thing then. And we were like, uh, uh, uh, okay, we said that we would listen, but we were really, really nervous. Here was our top superstar athlete giving it all up for a film career, which, you know, as you know, the entire industry followed him. Yeah. And I mean, I feel like it also, you talked earlier and I want to actually dive into a little bit more about the fact that Burton was always about something bigger. And it's almost

like Craig coming to you and actually being willing to say, this is actually what I want to do. You know, we just went through this huge thing. You guys fought for me. And because of the idea was for me to play this one specific role in the company and tap my sort of West Coast sensibility and engineering chops to develop, to create, you know, innovative product for you. But I want to go film. That was for him to feel comfortable saying that to you and Jake, and then for you to say, well, actually saying yes, kind of aligns with the core of what we're about. Even if, you know, we'd rather, you know, we'd really love to have you in this different capacity. We had learned our lesson by not listening.

So we were really committed to listening. And that includes when you're hearing something you don't want to hear and taking a chance. But just trusting that, again, Craig, I think, always cared deeply about the sport and not just his own standing in it. Yeah, which makes a huge difference. But it also, that window before he switched, it feels like that set in motion a deep commitment to sustained innovation also. That continues to this day. I mean, to, I am a proud owner of Step-On Bindings as of last year, you know, which there are things like that where, and I know that Burton took a shot at that, what, 10, 15 years ago, and it didn't quite work, or at least the way that that would have allowed for real mainstream adoption.

But instead of saying, well, that'll never work, it never quite went away. And you came back to it and came back to it and said, like, there's got to be a way to keep pushing until we figure it out. Yeah, I tell you, Jonathan, there was a catalyst to it. And it was about seven years ago, six or seven years ago. And Jake was snowboarding as you know, he would snowboard, try to get out there a hundred days a year to stay really connected to the sport. And he was snowboarding with our head engineer. And he said, dude, I'm almost 60. I've been bending over for 40 years. I can still do it. I'm okay there, but I don't want to do it anymore. He said, but I want the same performance as my buckle bindings.

And that took four and a half years in R&D, really like, I say, locking the engineers in a room for a few years. And, you know, that's where the big innovation in this company always came from was Jake having that real empathy with the rider and always putting himself in the mindset of a rider. You know, wherever we went around the world, he would never tell anybody on a chairlift or a gondola who he was because he wanted to grill them on, why are you riding this? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? Or even their jacket, like what made you buy that jacket? You know, so he was always trying to commit himself to what would make it a better experience. Yeah. Which is really, I mean, that sensibility also, it's really embodied in the entire organization, right? You talked about the fact that you and Jake had these sort of well

defined areas where you, you know, went, went narrow and not even narrow and deep, but fairly broad and deep into them. And Jake's sort of empathy, it sounds like it wasn't just him because with your focus on community and a whole bunch of other and culture within the company, I mean, that was a huge part of it internally also. It was basically, you know, creating the overlay of what do we do for the rider on the mountain and how does that infuse what Burton is to make it bigger than a brand, but actually, you know, almost like an ethos. And honestly, I think there was a moment when I realized we weren't doing enough to nurture that culture. You know, when you get bigger and more bureaucratic and, and, you know, you realize that people are coming to work for you out of passion, but you've got to keep them growing and developing to keep them excited about being there.

So I think it was about 10 years ago. It was really kind of during the economic crisis where I realized, wow, we have not been proactive enough with our culture. And we just really could have turned it around and made our mission. We got cocky. We got a little complacent that, yeah, people come work for us because we're a cool community. Well, unless you're really developing those people over time and showing them that you have a long-term commitment to them, you're not going to have the kind of culture you really want. What was happening in the company that made you take notice of that?

How was that actually manifesting before you said, okay, we actually need to really do something different? I think there had developed a culture of fear where people were afraid of not making the right decision, not being cool enough. I think we had gotten overconfident with our dealers, kind of forcing them to take product that maybe they didn't want. And kind of using our muscles to say, no, you're going to do this and forcing kind of salespeople to grow when maybe the market didn't call for it. And then with the economic crash, you're like, oh my God, we had too much inventory. Those weren't true sales. We were selling a lot off of discount. And again, that was never our vision. We used to call Jake Captain scarcity, because he would say, we've got to be scarce. We've only got to produce enough that we're going to sell. He used to think about a kid who saved their money to buy a snowboard in October and then to see it off price in November. You'll never do

that again. So we had gotten, you know, we were pushing growth kind of at all costs, even when probably employees were raising the alarms and saying, this isn't right. I'm being really honest here. And, you know, we had, and I also think in the beginning, what happens, and I've seen it happen to a lot of companies, right? You have this great culture and then you get to a point where you're like, oh, my God, we need expertise. So you start hiring people with the expertise without a regard to culture. And then you're like, oh, my God, I've got these great experts, but I've totally whacked my culture out. So then you find that balance. And I think right now we have, you know, the best team I've ever seen, senior team all the way down. And I think

because we've done a really good job of balancing skills and cultural fit. Yeah. I mean, emerging out of 2008, 2009, because a lot of companies got whacked. A lot of entire industries, anything that wasn't sort of essential took a huge hit. Do you feel like it was, I know that was a bit of a catalyst for you to sort of revisit everything. Did you change? I know you've always worked sort of hand in hand with Jake

and a growing leadership team, and you have always been a really substantial leader within the company. Around then, did your role change in a meaningful way? Oh, it did. That's for sure. Sure. At the time, I was really just handling women's internally, our gender program internally, as well as women's marketing and women's product. I was really focused on women's product. And Jake stepped back in as CEO. And I think 10 days before he took over, he said, you know, I'm putting you back in charge of all of international, right? And I said, I'm really comfortable with Europe, but I've never been responsible for Japan. I don't like going to Tokyo. I've never been in charge. And he said, I need somebody in charge.

And we had some particularly tough issues in Japan. So, you know, like everything else, you wear an entrepreneur's hat and you say, hey, I always say my leadership style is, I don't know, but I'll figure it out with everybody's help. You know, so for example, I went into Japan and I spent weeks and weeks and weeks there interviewing every single employee and really getting to the bottom of the issues and really trying to understand it. So yes, it did change. I always say that at every step of my career, it was Jake who imagined my next step. I never would have. When I came back from Europe, I was, you know, I just had my first child and I didn't know what I was

going to do. And Jake said, we need a CFO. And I said, I can't be CFO. And he said, of course you can. You just ran Europe for four years. You can do it. So I became CFO. And then, you know, then he puts me in charge of all of women's and then he puts me in charge of international. Even up to being CEO, he asked me several years before I became CEO, he said, you can do it. And I said, oh, I'm not ready. I need more experience here, here. And so he was actually always the one which, when I talk to a lot of successful women, there always seems to be that cheerleader behind them. I mean, it's an interesting perspective, especially given that, you know, you are a long-term champion of women, women in leadership, women in sport, women in business. And within the context of your own business, there was, I'm curious what happens in your mind that makes you say, I'm not ready. When all evidence to the contrary, from the outside looking in kind of says,

wow, you have earned this, you have skills, you have intelligence, you have an insane work ethic. You are. There's this real, what they call the confidence gap. And I had seen it in my own experience. When you have two equally qualified people and a promotion, the guy will tell you why he should have had that job yesterday. And the woman will tell you why she's not ready. And to find yourself doing it is really interesting. And it's really telling. And I think it's helpful for other women to hear me tell that story and say, yeah, sometimes you've got to take a risk. Yeah, I know within Burton, leadership, not just leadership, but mentorship, hiring, promoting became a real priority for you. I'm curious sort of, you know, in word and deed structure and in actual, like, how did that actually show up within what was your involvement and what was sort of built into the fiber of the company to create that?

It really happened through the Women's Leadership Initiative. You know, when we committed to changing the numbers, basically, I interviewed every, almost every woman in the company, a lot of former employees, team athletes. And I heard from so many of them that they crave a mentor that when you're the only woman in a room, it doesn't happen naturally. It can happen naturally between guys. They go out for a beer, they go out for a couple of runs or something, and you've kind of got this organic relationship. So other than, you know, the real first issue was accommodating women around maternity and post-maternity flexibility. After that, it was all about mentorship. So we created a mentoring program with women at Burton where more senior women would be paired with younger women to mentor them, it was so successful. I think after the first couple of years, 50% of the women who had participated had either been promoted or had moved to a different department more in line with their goals. You know, obviously you have highly motivated people who are signing up for this stuff,

but, you know, it didn't take too long before the guys said, hey, what about us? This looks like a pretty good program here. So we opened it up to all employees and we now actually do it cross globally where you can get a mentor in Europe or Asia. And I always say we became a mentoring culture, which I never would have imagined out of that small group of women who said they wanted mentoring. And we were able to do it on a small scale at first and figure out, we were able to do a lot of kind of testing and prototyping of training and development with these smaller groups of women and then say, wow, that really works. We should roll it out to the whole company. So we've become a much better overall company. Any guy will

tell you that we're a much more family-friendly company, that we look at employees as whole human beings. And they're taking advantage of childcare benefits, you know, kind of more than the women are. So it's just made us a better, stronger company, both internally, and then in our ability to reach the women's market, because I think women consumers sniff out pretty quickly when you're not authentic there. Yeah. I mean, there's, um, there's a marketing effect to it, but that wasn't, it's not why it's in existence. It really, and again, it ties back to that earlier ethos of the something bigger. It seems like what you kept doing was folding more, was sort of like

expanding what falls under that umbrella of something bigger that we want to, that's important to us, that matters, that we want to invest ourselves in. And inviting people into our community, not making them feel that they weren't welcome. I think that we were kind of counter-cultural, but then we might've become too exclusive and we didn't see great women's representation. They didn't feel as welcome as men did. A lot of that was because a lot of participants were coming out of skateboarding and surfing, which were pretty male-dominated. But we realized we had to be proactive about making sure people felt welcome in our community, because that was the most important thing to us, the community. Yeah. And I know that also showed up as Burton getting behind women athletes. You know, you from the earliest days of competition had really strong representation and sponsorship. And I think even from the earliest events that you guys created, there was equal prize money, which in the early days was really, I mean,

it's kind of horrifying to say, but it was really unusual. 37 years ago. Wow. And I remember it. I mean, it was such a little rinky-dink competition at this, you know, ski area that we had turned over the picnic table to use as the start gate. And I remember asking Jake, you know, I think there were just a handful of women who had the courage to go down this. And I said, what are we going to do about them? And he said, well, we would pay them the same. Like, why wouldn't we? And it was never like something where we sat around saying oh women should get

you know paid the same no it was like well why wouldn't you pay all these brave people the same if you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose we can get you there the university of victoria's mba inable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

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iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I know there's been a lot of attention that you've paid to gender representation on the business side and on the participation side. As you expand the lens out from there, and we're certainly doing that in every part of business and life now, I don't know the numbers. on the mountain for decades now is that when you look at the racial identity, the makeup of both skiing and snowboarding, pretty much all winter sports, it's still extremely homogenous. I'm curious whether you guys are looking at that as well these days. We are looking at that. We've always looked at that because I think Jake understood at a gut entrepreneurial and human level that we weren't going to thrive long term without gender and racial equality. And I think he was committed to that from the beginning, when we, for example, when we finally had an opportunity to give back in some

way, we were profitable enough, we started the Chill Foundation, which is 25 years old. We've served, you know, I can't even imagine how many kids we've served. We serve about 3,000 a year and they come from marginalized communities. They would never otherwise have the opportunity to do that. And Jake used to say, even if just a handful of those thousands of kids we serve choose the mountain lifestyle, come and work for a ski area or come and work for a ski company or a snowboard company, you know, that will have been worth it. I think we are more diverse than skiing, which is not saying a lot, but I know, for example, you know, in New York City, our community and in LA where we have big flagship stores, it's an extremely diverse community.

Have we done enough? No. But I think we're fortunate to have things to build upon. It's what I call another oh shit moment. You know, we had always thought, oh, we're welcome to women. We give them equal prize money. There's no problem here. We've always had female riders. And then all of a sudden you look around a room of leaders and you go, oh my God, there's only two women here out of 25 people.

We've got a problem. I say that this is another oh shit moment for us where if we don't do something proactive, we won't be living up to our values of inclusion. You know, we have a strategy, an internal strategy that we call the trail map. And it has three peaks. And one of them for the last five years has been radical inclusivity. So I think we're learning more about how racism is systemic and how we were contributing to that. And maybe we haven't been sensitive to what makes people not feel comfortable in our community, right?

So there's a lot of work to be done. But I think having a founder who was really committed to it, if anybody ever asked Jake who his personal hero was, it was Martin Luther King. And, you know, the Chill Foundation was meant to really kind of address that. But we've got to do more. All companies have to do more. I mean, Jonathan, 10 years ago, businesses weren't expected. You were not expected to take stands on these things. Now it falls to us because we don't have government leadership. So I think we're ready and willing and able to have those difficult conversations within our industry of why have we stayed so white? Why have we, you know, not made more of an effort? Yeah. And it is really, it is powerful and it's time that, you know,

to see so many companies on the business side, looking at this and saying, okay, this isn't, you know, traditionally, I think a lot of them would say, well, what are the economics of taking a stand or not? And I think a lot of people, a lot of leaders within organizations now are saying, you know what, there are the economics and there's also just what's right. Like what is right action? And, and, you know, if we say we're about a particular thing, then we need to, to do something or say something or both just because it's the appropriate thing to do. It's really interesting to see individuals and organizations grapple with that these days as we are as a tiny, tiny organization. It's a huge paradigm shift. It came to light really starkly for me with the protests in

Minneapolis. We were one of the businesses who had damage done to our store. And every single company they interviewed, including Nordstrom's and the Gap and us, every single one said, it doesn't matter. This is bigger. This is more important. Don't talk to us about the damage done. Talk to us about our support of what's happening here. That is such a paradigm shift that I think sometimes we need to take a step back and say, wow, you know, we are going to change the arc of history a little bit here. Yeah. One of the other things that's been a long-term commitment on that something bigger is sustainability. Going way back more recently under the Protect Our Winters movement, which was, you know, Jeremy Tones is also, I guess, Jeremy is a localer in Vermont too, wasn't he? Yeah, from Snow, Vermont. Snow, Vermont boy.

And that, I mean, it's interesting because as a leader in the industry, but also as a manufacturing company where you've got manufacturing, you know, it's almost like two sides, right? You've got the manufacturing process and then you've got the human impact of this. I'm curious how you think through beyond a, you know, a monetary commitment to making change beyond, you know, making very strong statements about it, navigating those two sides of it, or maybe there's more that I'm not even aware of. No, that's exactly how we look at sustainability, the toxic chemical side, and then the human rights side. And on the toxic chemical side, you know, Jonathan, when I was dating Jake, I would come up from Barnard College and I would put on a hazmat suit with him and we would take these

plywood boards and dip them into polyurethane and hang them to dry. And if the wind was blowing the wrong way, all of our neighbors started calling. And I always say Vermont had these cottage industry laws, which allowed you to do light manufacturing or something. I'm sure we were violating everything. So we had this real sense of, hey, we can't be talking out of both sides of our mouth. We are a manufacturer. We do make a petroleum-based products. We are using chemicals. At the same time, you know, we started to realize, hey, maybe it's not about being sustainable or not. It's about doing the best you can. Burton fashion, because we're a private company and could invest in it, we went from really being behind the curve to being a leader. You know, we were never making a sweatshop product, right? So I used to say, oh, we're in the same factories as North Face and Patagonia, so we must be okay.

No, I wasn't taking total responsibility for it because it is very expensive to have to do all of your own human rights audits, all of your own chemical audits. But there was again, another oh shit moment where we said, hey, if we don't, our commitment to the long-term health of this sport is going to be meaningless. Yeah. So you have to kind of go all in. All in. Yeah. Over the last decade or so, I know there's been huge growth in the company. You have continued to shift roles. Others have risen up into leadership. Jake stepped back to a certain extent.

You were, he was chairman, you were CEO. And then over the last chunk of years also, Jake had a series of health challenges. He had, you know, from a knee replacement to heart condition to cancer originally. And then Miller Fisher, which is this like rare, but I actually know somebody else that had this, but horrifying condition that literally in a matter of hours paralyzes you.

And I heard Jake talking to Guy Raz a couple years back. I think it was 2017 for an episode of How I Built This. And he was describing his experience in Miller Fisher and how you were there literally next to him, which was a blessing in that you could be there and also in that you had created a company that was really able, that had such a family feel and powerful leadership. It was able to take care of itself. And he said to Guy something which stayed with me, which he said, after leaving it, he thought to himself very clearly. He said, now I'm prepared to die.

I could get hit by a bus walking out of your studio and I would be the luckiest guy in the world. And a couple of years later at the end of last year, November of last year, the cancer recurs. And in fact, you lose Jake, Burton loses Jake, the snowboarding community loses Jake, the world loses Jake. Are you open to, are you okay sort of sharing what happened in November and how?

Because it's, I mean, it's difficult enough for one person to lose someone who has been such a deeply important part of their life for so long. At the same time, it's a loss for you. It's a loss for a company which is essentially family and then a broader community. And I'm just wondering how all of this swarms around you and how you experience that moment, that window. Yeah, a couple of different ways. I mean, obviously, it's devastating, was devastating, is devastating. On the other hand, how many people get to say, I have no regrets? That's literally the last thing he said to me was he held my hand and he said, Donna, I don't have any regrets. He lived life to the fullest. And it just was so unfair.

You know, he just had, he'd been beaten down and fought back and fought back. And I think he just knew he couldn't do it again. And then I think about the current crisis we're in where people are losing people and they're not even able to have services or whatever. And I feel very fortunate that as a family and as a company, we did have the opportunity to mourn him. The last U.S. Open was just, you know, a four-day tribute to him as a man and as a mentor and as somebody who, you know, like you said, some people who had never met him were breaking down, crying and telling me their stories of how snowboarding changed their lives. So in some ways I feel very blessed to have that connection with the world and to hear people's stories and to have had that opportunity to grieve him and and mourn him it happened relatively quickly i think which was a blessing you know he found out his cancer was back and, you know, two weeks later,

it was technically an infection, but in some ways I really think that he willed himself. He had already, we're lucky here in Vermont, they have a right to die with dignity law. He had already triggered that law. As soon as he found out he had a recurrence of cancer, we kept saying to him, Hey buddy, we haven't even started treatment. And he said, no, I want to know, you know, I want control over this. I don't want my body to waste away. And he had worked so hard to come back from these other things. He just didn't have it in him. But, you know, I think he saw his kids in a good place. I think he saw his company in a good place and said, I can help you from above.

And he's our guiding spirit. I mean, how lucky is that where we really have a consensus among us of what he would, what would Jake do? We all know he'd do the right thing. I know, you know, as you're moving through that process, within a matter of months, the pandemic comes to our country. I should go back and say what's interesting was that we had decided to spend the year in Switzerland. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't know. But we had moved to Switzerland in January and we were going to be staying to about right now, year and a half. And I really wanted to immerse myself back into the European market.

And we got an opportunity to meet with people we hadn't seen in 30 and 40 years and to remember all these old stories and to connect with all these, you know, pioneers of snowboarding in the early days back then. so it was actually a really meaningful year for us yeah it sounds like it's um it happened in a way where there's never a good way for anything like to happen but at least there were um like you said to be able to, you know, to look at the person that you have known and loved since, you know, like for the entirety of your adult life.

I have no regrets. What a blessing. Shortly after we slide as a country and then a world in the pandemic. And you also make an incredible gesture. It sounds like in part because, again, once again, on the one hand, it's the right thing to do. But also, on the other hand, there was a need for healthcare workers, especially in Vermont, who had been so good,

who had taken such good care of Jake over many times over many years. And you felt compelled to help out. I don't know how many people have spent two months in an ICU. When you're coming in day after day, and you're seeing other people come and go after a few days, and you're there for seven and a half weeks, those people are angels from heaven. I mean, they kept him alive. Not only did they keep him alive, but they would go out of their way. It would take something like six people to get him outside. And they would know that that would, and he's fully paralyzed, but they say, Jake's going to do better if he can see the mountains. And they would literally, you know, get six people to carry him outside, prop him up so he could see the mountains. And he literally wrote one time, okay, I want to live now. You know, I can see the mountains. I

can imagine my life. They were so caring. The thought of them being overwhelmed, the thought of them not having protective equipment was just heartbreaking. And when I had the opportunity to do something, I jumped at it. Yeah, you basically funded out of your own pocket, something like a million and 95. Half a million. Half a million, which is interesting also because it's interesting that you made the choice to do it yourself as well, because at the same time, you've got a company that is getting hit

just like every other company is right now. So rather than, you know, so at the company, there are people that have to be furloughed because, you know, you do what you need to do. The senior leadership all take salary cuts, you know, because we're a family, we're in this together. And rather than doing anything that says, well, part of our mission is to support healthcare workers, you're saying to yourself, you know what, the company has made its sacrifice. This needs to come from me personally, which is a really powerful, not just gesture. One of the things I'm most proud of is that Jake and I set it up so that we were no longer financially dependent on the company. And there are a lot of founders who depend on maintaining their lifestyle by taking

a certain amount of money outside of the company. So we took money out of the company and then invested it very conservatively. We used to say our risk is already burdened. Our biggest equity risk is burdened. So we were able, the first time it happened was during the global economic crisis, where Jake and I were able to say, you know what? We don't need a salary. We don't need a bonus. We don't need a dividend. We don't need a penny until everybody is rehired.

Everybody's back, full employment. And it was close to three, two and a half years or something. And so I knew that mattered to Jake. I didn't want to say to someone, hey, I'm making this big donation, but you're not going to get full salary for another six months. So that was important. And, you know, the money, the personal money I had comes because of Burton. So to be able to do something kind of on their behalf. And I could never have done it without Burton's manufacturing skills. And that 40 years of learned manufacturing management.

Yeah. You had over, you were co-CEO with John Lacey, who's risen over two decades now and been groomed from the earliest days, I think, answering phones, if I recall correctly, when he first started there. You very recently stepped aside as co-CEO and into this position as chairperson. I know in the early days, you and Jake always said you wanted to retire, or at least you said you wanted to retire to Northern Italy. As you look out, I know it's kind of hard in this particular moment for a number of reasons to

potentially even maybe think long-term, but as you look out even over the short-term future, what are you looking out over? Well, I guess I'm looking out over the people and making sure my people are okay. Actually, I feel like right now I've never been more connected internationally because I call up the leaders in every region. How are you doing? What can we do for you? What can we be there for? We are radically having to change our business. The retail landscape is not going to look the same. We are really having to accelerate our digital transformation and making sure that we are really a digital leader in the retail space. There is, you know, the racial equity. Luckily, you know, my three children have stepped up in the last year

to find roles that they really feel that they can contribute. So I feel like we will stay a family-held, private company, period. That's very reassuring for me. I can focus on the future in terms of China. China is going to be an important market for us. We have an exciting partnership there that we're really just starting to leverage. What else? Survival. Survival. You personally, I'm curious about. Yeah.

You know, one of our board members has instilled this mantra into us lately where we say, you know, never waste a great crisis, never waste a good crisis. So we're really kind of studying what other companies did to come out of crises better, stronger, more agile. And I think we will. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of the Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? being honest with your company, decency. You know, that's what Jake embodied. I think that sense of fairness, doing what's right. No regrets, Jonathan.

I guess that's it, right? Like, if I don't lie and I do the right thing, I'm not going to have any regrets at the end of the day. I'm going to be proud of what I contributed. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have

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If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges.

From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch,

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