INCLUSIVITY AT THE FOREFRONT: THE TIME IS NOW FOR BRANDS TO CHANGE

Moderator: Lindsay Peoples Wagner; Editor-in-Chief, Teen Vogue

Description: Learn how the fashion industry is taking meaningful action to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion principles and how the outdoor industry can find ways to truly allow everyone to use their voice.

Customers, employees and other stakeholders are demanding more than just words – they are expecting real action and accountability on diversity and inclusion. In response, Lindsay Peoples Wagner, who has shaped the Teen Vogue brand to be a model for inclusivity, social values and community, co-founded the Black in Fashion Council. The council has enlisted the support of the Human Rights Campaign to provide benchmarking around corporate policies and practices pertinent to the inclusivity of Black employees and to establish an Equality Index Score.

In her keynote presentation, Peoples Wagner will walk through the components of this index, flag harmful practices and provide actionable steps to increase inclusivity and make employees of color feel seen and heard. You’ll learn what brands should do (and not do) to authentically reflect and connect with customers, employees, stakeholders and their communities.

An Interior Secretary the American People Deserve

Outdoor recreation is a cornerstone of American life that relies on the health and wellbeing of the environment. Widespread access to public lands and waters is critical to maintaining and expanding the many benefits of outdoor recreation. As more and more Americans find refuge outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic, recreation can be a big piece of the economic recovery puzzle.

Americans of all ages and the outdoor industry keenly understand this – as does President Biden’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior, Debra Haaland. With her stellar track record on public lands and waters, climate change, and environmental justice, the Senate would do well to swiftly confirm her nomination.

Secretary-designate Haaland will marry outdoor policy with this potential for economic growth. Throughout her career and during her time in Congress, she has demonstrated a sharp understanding of the impact of the $788 billion outdoor recreation economy and the benefit it has to communities. She led the charge on the Simplifying Outdoor Access for Recreation (SOAR) Act, a bill to cut bureaucratic red tape that prevents Americans from accessing outdoor spaces. She also supported the historic and broadly bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) last session, which provided much-needed funding for public lands and waters. In talking about this bill, she highlighted the close connection between environmental policy and economic recovery, saying “spending time outdoors…creates jobs in the outdoor recreation and restoration economies, but without proper federal funding, the parks, rodeo grounds, and National Parks…are vulnerable, as are the jobs that go along with them.”

In addition to increasing access to public spaces, the conservation and protection of the outdoors is of critical importance. 30×30 – the goal of conserving 30 percent of our lands and oceans by 2030 – is a top policy priority for the outdoor industry and for Haaland, too. As an industry that works closely with the Department of the Interior, it’s encouraging to see that she understands the massive opportunity to fight climate change and protect access, all while conserving public lands and waters. The outdoor industry will gladly work with her agency to develop a cohesive public and private sector action plan.

Addressing climate change is also a top priority for the entire outdoor industry. Businesses that operate in outdoor recreation have been feeling the impact of climate change for years and intimately understand the need for an aggressive, coordinated effort to address the crisis. With Deb Haaland at the helm of Interior, we believe progress can be made while leveraging the outdoor recreation economy as one part of the solution to support the traditional energy communities that will be affected by these changes. In her time in the House of Representatives, she cosponsored the Ocean Based Climate Solutions Act and introduced the Climate Stewardship Act, both of which worked to mitigate climate change by promoting natural climate solutions to keep the planet healthy. She also promised to “continue to push for natural climate solutions” going forward.

To effectively address the growing threat from climate change and protect the environment, we need everyone from Democrats and Republicans in Congress to Fortune 500 companies to park rangers to work together. Secretary-designate Haaland has a history of working across the aisle – she’s gotten more Republicans to sign on to her bills than any other Democrat in the House of Representatives. Her proven willingness to work in a bipartisan manner will be a boon for the outdoors, which after all are enjoyed by Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life.

The American people deserve an Interior Secretary that will fight for all of us. From conservation to economic recovery to climate change, Deb Haaland understands the broad impacts of decisions made by the Department of the Interior. For the good of the environment, the economy, and the people, the Senate should quickly vote to confirm her so she can get to work.

Thrive Outside Profile Series: Courtney Baltiyskyy

Q&A: Courtney Baltiyskyy, Policy Analyst for the YMCA of San Diego County

Courtney Baltiyskyy, a policy analyst for the YMCA of San Diego County, knows first-hand how the outdoors can immediately change a child’s mood and provide a way forward. Thanks to the Thrive Outside initiative, the YMCA and quite a few other local organizations are working together to make outdoor experiences not a “nice to have” thing in San Diego, but an essential part of every family’s experience. We asked her how the programming is going and what she hopes it achieves.

Tell us a bit about the Thrive Outside initiative in San Diego.

When the Outdoor Foundation put out the RFP for Thrive Outside grants, that brought all of us to the table to figure out how we can speak the same language and work in the same direction to leverage our collective impact. Along with The San Diego Foundation, which is the backbone organization for our Thrive Outside initiative, we’re also working with U.S Fish & Wildlife Service, the County of San Diego Parks & Recreation Department, the Nonprofit Institute at USD, Parks California, and Outdoor Outreach. We want to increase volunteers, advocacy, the number of individuals who have repeat, meaningful experiences in the outdoors, and programming around trauma response and solutions to adverse childhood experiences.

What does your community need most?

There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty here around water. We see a lot of parents who don’t know how to swim, so they’re afraid for their children to be near the water. But with increased resources and system changes, we can help mitigate that fear, provide access to swim lessons through scholarships at the YMCA so that teachers and parents are more comfortable taking their kids to the beach, and just generally offer water safety awareness so that families know when it’s safe to go to the ocean.

We’ve also been able to address justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in access to the outdoors. Outdoor Outreach, for example, one of the organizations that has benefited from Thrive Outside funding has been working with youth ages 15 to 24 who are leading these conversations. They’re discussing their experiences and helping in the decision-making process as we explore new programming and outdoor outreach, and they’re compensated for their time or given access to scholarships. One of the things they’re asking for is more resources around mental and emotional health. They’ve seen their friends and peers take their lives far too often and far more frequently than we’ve ever seen. They’re also asking to help make systematic change to keep our environment as pristine as when their grandparents saw it years ago.

How have you seen outdoor experiences influence kids you work with?

I’ve seen such a transformation in kids. I’ve worked with kids who had ADHD and were on the autism spectrum, and getting into the outdoors, even if it was just on their school campus, opened them up to such a different sensory experience and really set them up for success. My drive for the Thrive Outside initiative and the partnerships we have is really to make sure that all youth have an opportunity to do that. In the current landscape, there are just too many who disproportionately don’t have the opportunity to experience the outdoors. I spent a few years in the Peace Corps, teaching in Ukraine, and I would also use the outdoors there as a tool to take a break from the classroom during the warmer months. Ukrainian school days are extremely long and rigorous—7 or 8 hours of instruction, plus tutoring—and taking a break outdoors was a great way to unlock learning.

How have the outdoors influenced you personally?

I spent a lot of time in the outdoors through Girl Scouts more than any other agency. My mom was our leader, and I had the same group of friends in Girl Scouts from Daisies all the way until we were seniors in high school. We went on regular camping trips or ski and snowboard trips, and even as adults, with our own families, we’re all still very close. I went to Girl Scout resident camp in the summers and that helped me get out of my comfort zone and try new things. It has inspired me to make sure that my own kids have those experiences and have really mindful moments in the outdoors, as well as to think about how we can be stewards of the environment in a really intentional way.

What’s your vision for the ultimate outdoor access for kids growing up today?

When we consider the broad spectrum of where youth and families are already engaging, I would hope that the outdoors is a component of each of those touch points. So if a family is going through counseling services, the outdoors is a touch point. If you’re going to school, the outdoors is a regular touch point. When people are going to community-based organizations for out-of-school programming, the outdoors should be a huge touch point. I would want to see outdoor experiences intentionally being a part of each experience that a youth or a family has, so that it’s seamlessly integrated into their identity development.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Outdoor Retailer: Education Recap

Miss an education session from Outdoor Retailer Online? Don’t worry, you can catch them all on-demand.

INCLUSIVITY AT THE FOREFRONT: THE TIME IS NOW FOR BRANDS TO CHANGE

On January 6th, we kicked off Outdoor Retailer Winter Online with a keynote presentation led by Lindsay Peoples Wagner, who is editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue and co-founder of Black in Fashion Council. She shared how the fashion industry is taking meaningful action to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion principles and how the outdoor industry can avoid performative allyship, increase inclusivity and make employees of color feel seen and heard.

Key takeaways from the discussion included:

  • Giving employees of color real agency within an organization by moving past performative allyship and into active allyship. “It’s more than just having that seat at the table — it’s being put in a position of success to be able to make change.”
  • Prioritizing authentic representation to make all communities feel welcome. “When you talk about inclusivity, at the root is representation — to make people feel seen and heard and say, ‘They may not understand my whole entire life and everything that I’m going through, but they see me, they hear my problems, they understand who I am and what I’m looking for.’”
  • Fighting explicit and implicit bias starts with systematic change. “Systematic changes are the things that fundamentally make you ask, ‘Would a person of color want to stay at this company or not?’”
  • Reflecting your values through budgeting for diversity and inclusion initiatives. “I understand the pandemic has caused budgets to change, I understand that people have had to lay people off — I understand all of these things. But I will say inherently, if anything is important to you it is part of your budget.”

Looking for outdoor-industry specific DEI resources? We’ve rounded up a few great places to start:

  • In Solidarity Network: a resource for job seekers of marginalized identities looking for employment in the outdoor industry.
  • Outdoor CEO Diversity Pledge: a program that compels outdoor executives to create, promote, and enforce policies that expand the diversity, equity, and inclusion of their employees, board members, and customers.
  • Camber Outdoors: a community of corporations, nonprofits and small businesses who are committed to accelerating workplace change by creating inclusive cultures, implementing equitable systems and attracting a diversity of talent to their workplaces.
  • REI Product Impact Standards: a set of standards that engage REI’s more than 1,000 brand partners to advance more sustainable and inclusive business practices. See the specific section on Diversity and Inclusion on pg. 13.

WATCH NOW

THRIVING PEOPLE AND THRIVING BUSINESS: OUTDOOR COMPANIES LEADING WITH INCLUSIVE AND REPRESENTATIVE MARKETING

Outdoor brands, advocates, athletes and marketing leaders from Merrell, The North Face, Ruffwear and more joined together to discuss the work they are doing to rethink their marketing strategies, build authentic relationships and incorporate strong representation in their advertising. This candid and transparent conversation dug into the pivotal moments from each participant’s journey and the lessons learned and best practices they’ve developed along the way. Key insights included:

  • Change starts within. There can be no external change at a brand or company without internal change – marketing and advertising must reflect an authentic shift in company culture.
  • Take the time for a “transformational pause.” The work ahead takes time. Ensure your team takes the time to reset and shift priorities to truly do it.
  • Acknowledge and represent all marginalized populations. What does true representation look like for your brand? Partnerships can only advance and accelerate your work.

WATCH NOW

Join Pocket Outdoor Media and Outdoor Industry Association for an uncomfortable conversation about the N word. Register now for the February 16th webinar.

Outdoor Retailer Winter Online Summit Day Education Session Recap

2021 Summit Days education featured in-depth discussions on inclusive marketing, the outdoor recreation economy, climate action, trade and expanding outdoor participation, as well as the catalyst that moves all these issues forward: our shared commitment to advocacy.

In case you missed a session, or want to dive deeper, we rounded up the key insights and takeaways from each Summit Day. Read more below and if you haven’t already, watch the sessions on-demand. They’ll be available in the Outdoor Retailer platform until March 19.

THRIVING PEOPLE AND PLANET: HOW PUBLIC POLICY CAN BUILD AN OUTDOORS FOR ALL

Leaders from all sectors of the outdoor community, including Secretary-Designate of Interior Deb Haaland, discussed how public policy can increase outdoor participation in diverse communities and how increasing participation, in turn, supports outdoor policy and benefits such as youth development, environmental stewardship, overall health and wellness and more.  Key topic areas that surfaced:

  • As highlighted by Haaland, the outdoor industry has many opportunities to expand equitable access to the outdoors, particularly with BIPOC communities, through advocating for legislation, administrative action and other public sector measures.
  • The Thrive Outside programs in San Diego and Oklahoma City have very different approaches to youth outdoor engagement, but both have been successful in advancing their advocacy and policy efforts.
  • State offices of outdoor recreation play a critical role in the work to increase outdoor participation and pass policies to ensure and grow thriving outdoor communities.

WATCH NOW

THRIVING PEOPLE AND THRIVING PLANET: THE 30 BY 30 INITIATIVE IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE A SHARED OUTDOOR FUTURE

Outdoor recreation advocates, sportsmen and sportswomen, tribal leaders and equity experts convened to explore how we can work together to support public and private land conservation traditions in the U.S., address climate change, honor the sovereignty of tribal nations and ensure equitable access for current and future generations. Takeaways included:

  • Our economy, our businesses, and our communities are dependent on the health and well-being of public lands and waters and natural spaces across America.
  • As outdoor industry businesses, intact and conserved outdoor spaces are fundamental to our existence. Investing in America’s natural infrastructure — can help the U.S. economy recover from the current economic crisis.
  • Our success will depend on our honoring tribal nations who have stewarded lands and waters since time immemorial, on supporting private landowners committed to conservation on their property, on collaborating with outdoor recreation interests and historically underserved communities, and on heeding scientists

WATCH NOW

THRIVING PEOPLE, THRIVING PLANET AND THRIVING BUSINESSES: BIDEN, CONGRESS AND THE OUTDOOR RECREATION ECONOMY

Representatives of the outdoor industry and Congress came together to highlight the exciting opportunities we have to advance priorities for the outdoor recreation economy under a new Congress and administration. From combating climate change to promoting diversity and equity in the outdoors to preserving our public lands and waters and supporting a stable and predictable federal trade policy, the outdoor industry is in a unique position to work with friends and allies in support of our policy agenda. Highlights included:

  • Outdoor companies will help the U.S. be a leader on climate. With this Congress and administration, every bill will be a climate bill. Every agency will be a climate agency.
  • Investment in green infrastructure is critical to preserving our public lands and spurring economic recovery. Green infrastructure is critical infrastructure.
  • In the face of uncertainty due to trade wars and a global pandemic, outdoor companies have been resilient and, with a balanced trade agenda, are set up for growth and success.

WATCH NOW

THRIVING PEOPLE AND THRIVING BUSINESS: OUTDOOR COMPANIES LEADING WITH INCLUSIVE AND REPRESENTATIVE MARKETING

Outdoor brands, advocates, athletes and marketing leaders joined together to discuss the work they are doing to rethink their marketing strategies, build authentic relationships and incorporate strong representation in their advertising. This candid and transparent conversation dug into the pivotal moments from each participant’s journey and the lessons learned and best practices they’ve developed along the way. Key insights included:

  • Change starts within. There can be no external change at a brand or company without internal change – marketing and advertising must reflect an authentic shift in company culture.
  • Take the time for a “transformational pause.” The work ahead takes time. Ensure your team takes the time to reset and shift priorities to truly do it.
  • Acknowledge and represent all marginalized populations. What does true representation look like for your brand? Partnerships can only advance and accelerate your work.

WATCH NOW