Brand Strategy
Protect Our Winters: A case study in making caring about climate change cool.
In 2014, Protect Our Winters (POW) was a small, relatively unknown NGO with big ambitions but highly limited resources. I joined as the third full-time hire, operating alongside two executive-level leaders. Because of our lean footprint, I wore every imaginable hat—acting as a scrappy, creative, and highly resourceful operator who built our community and brand infrastructure from the ground up. In the early days, our "headquarters" was literally two of us working from a windowless basement in Los Angeles, yet we executed at such a high level that the public and industry peers assumed we were a 50-person powerhouse.
My journey with POW actually began on the snow, volunteering at a grassroots tabling activation at the Burton US Open. That experience shaped my entire strategic philosophy: to mobilize a notoriously anti-authority, counter-culture audience, we couldn't rely on traditional, top-down corporate marketing. We had to meet our community exactly where they were—sometimes, quite literally, at the icy base of a halfpipe. Over the next four years, I designed and executed a relentless omnichannel brand and community strategy that transformed a fragmented subculture into an organized, highly aware political force. Through this work, I was largely responsible for scaling POW from an obscure nonprofit into one of the most respected, culturally dominant, and influential organizations in the outdoor industry. I often joked that my job was to make caring about climate change cool. And I like to think I succeeded in that.
Below is how.
Strategic Partnerships
Role:
Partners: Patagonia, Burton, New Belgium Brewing, Google, Dynafit, The North Face, Clif Bar, Giro, Smartwool, and many more
Key metric: Brought in ~$500k annually through strategic partnerships
Challenge
Scaling brand awareness rapidly to mainstream audiences without diluting POW’s core endemic credibility or compromising our strict organizational values.
Strategy
I can’t take full credit for the partnerships that were forged during my time at POW, as multiple board members made the introductions that led to extended engagements. That said, I was highly selective with our brand alignments, vetting prospective partners to ensure synergy with our values and ethos, and honestly, aesthetic. Once aligned, I actively cultivated and nurtured deep, long-term corporate relationships. I personally spearheaded end-to-end collaborations—working directly with partner brands on product design, retail distribution strategy, and cross-channel marketing campaigns. Most notably, I secured a historic partnership with Patagonia, the global gold standard of environmental business. Despite supporting hundreds of nonprofits globally, Patagonia selected POW as the only nonprofit they co-developed a collaborative product with. I nurtured this relationship into a three-year flagship campaign sold directly on Patagonia’s e-commerce platform, culminating in a full co-branded capsule collection in year three. To maximize the partnership, I stacked multiple monetization and activation channels, positioning POW as the beneficiary of Patagonia's Worn Wear tour and securing high-profile Giving Tuesday donation matching campaigns.
Impact
Through our partnerships, we unlocked massive, pre-existing customer bases and exponentially amplified our message. The annual Patagonia collabs alone generated an additional $40,000 in direct revenue YoY, on top of the thousands raised through our joint tour activations and matching campaigns. By leveraging our partners' institutional reach, high-volume social channels, and premium on-site event activations, we cross-pollinated audiences on a global scale. This strategic ecosystem gave POW instant mainstream legitimacy while simultaneously driving funding directly into our operational budget.
Trusted Messengers
Role:
Key metric: Grew the Athletes Alliance from 25 to 100+ with a social reach of 10 million; spearheaded the creation of the Creatives Alliance with an additional social reach of 3 million
Challenge
Action sports culture is fiercely protective and naturally skeptical of top-down corporate messaging or political lecturing. To break through, the message had to come from trusted peers, but the existing athlete network needed a strategic, scalable framework to maximize its impact and protect its credibility against public scrutiny.
Strategy
I took over the management of the existing Athlete Alliance, which at the time had a couple dozen members, and fundamentally evolved its activation strategy—shifting it from a passive roster to a highly active distribution channel with 100+ athletes. To empower these messengers, I launched, planned, and executed POW's Athlete Summits, strategically in destinations that naturally mixed learning with play. I designed and ran our first three summits at Snowbird (Utah) and Palisades Tahoe (formerly Squaw Valley), before scaling to our largest and most ambitious summit yet at Yosemite National Park. For the Yosemite summit, I strategically integrated high-ticket donors—offering them an invaluable "cool factor" experiences alongside professional athletes—as well as key corporate partners who were deeply committed to educating themselves and their companies on climate change. Concurrently, I expanded our recruitment matrix into adjacent outdoor disciplines and personally embedded myself in the film festival circuit to architect POW’s Creative Alliance from the ground up, onboarding filmmakers, photographers, and visual storytellers.
Impact
I transformed merchandise from a passive side-project into a massive community badge of honor and an important funding mechanism. Under my leadership, we quadrupled merchandise profits. By the time I transitioned out of the role, the program was contributing over $250,000 in annual recurring revenue directly to POW’s advocacy programs.
Merchandise
Role:
Key metric: Quadrupled revenue, bringing in $250k in profits by year 4
Challenge
Transitioning a fragmented collection of a few branded pieces into a full-scale, cohesive merchandise program that could generate reliable funding, while adhering to the hyper-strict environmental and ethical standards of our community.
Strategy
I built and launched POW’s comprehensive merchandise program from the ground up. I personally took charge of the entire supply chain: managing budget, sourcing ethical vendors, negotiating a contract with a third-party logistics (3PL) platform for order fulfillment, and printing production locally to minimize our carbon footprint. I prioritized sustainability by ensuring we used organic materials and US-made garments whenever possible to safeguard the brand against criticism. To drive the creative vision, I collaborated with values-aligned artists to curate custom pieces, and even stepped in as a designer myself—hand-drawing a concept that became a successful production piece.
Impact
I transformed merchandise from a passive side-project into a massive community badge of honor and an important funding mechanism. Under my leadership, we quadrupled merchandise profits. By the time I transitioned out of the role, the program was contributing over $250,000 in annual recurring revenue directly to POW’s advocacy programs.
Events
The Challenge: In 2014, climate change as a virtually untouchable, heavy topic in the commercial snowsports industry, and POW had zero budget to compete with massive corporate event budgets at major industry trade shows.
My Strategy: I designed a dual-track experiential strategy targeting both B2B industry stakeholders and B2C consumers, executing hundreds of events end-to-end over four years. Most notably, I engineered a self-sustaining financial model for our experiential track by integrating targeted fundraising components into every single activation—ensuring that nearly 100% of our events fully paid for themselves or turned a direct profit.
B2B Industry Disruption: To bring climate change into the industry conversation, I launched "Bloodies & Burritos" at the SIA trade show. Operating on a shoestring budget, I negotiated free vodka from sponsor Finlandia and paired it with the most affordable catering menu option (breakfast burritos) to create a high-draw, "work hard, play hard" culture fit. I booked renowned climate speakers and global thought leaders—ranging from Harvard historian Dr. Naomi Oreskes to Tesla Motors VP Diarmuid O'Connell—and routinely packed the room before 8:00 AM, running it as a staple annual event. At the Outdoor Retailer (OR) show, I scaled this to managing dozens of concurrent happy hours on the show floor with various corporate partners. This culminated in 2017 when I conceptualized, pitched, and executed a massive independent panel event featuring U.S. Senator Mark Udall, Burton CEO Donna Carpenter, and POW Founder Jeremy Jones. I managed the entire lifecycle: venue sourcing, budget management, marketing collateral, sponsor table curation, a charity raffle, and staffing.
B2C Grassroots Mobilization: Simultaneously, I maintained a relentless on-the-ground presence where our consumers lived, directing experiential booths, voter registration drives, and advocacy activations at premier snowboarding competitions and major ski/snowboard film premieres globally.
The Impact: We established POW as a cultural powerhouse and the defining voice of the outdoor industry. The 2017 OR panel drew over 400+ industry leaders and constituents, successfully out-competing well-funded corporate parties on a fraction of the budget. By meeting the community at the base of the halfpipe and the center of the convention floor, these events converted industry executives into donors and everyday riders into lifetime advocacy constituents—all built on a zero-risk, self-funding event ecosystem.
Advocacy
The Challenge: Historically, climate advocacy felt overwhelming, highly academic, or bogged down in depressing political jargon. For a young, action-oriented crowd that preferred riding to reading policy papers, traditional advocacy models felt like homework. Furthermore, high-impact actions like calling lawmakers are inherently intimidating—consumers often default to saying, "Sure, I'll do that when I get home," and then never follow through.
My Strategy: I designed a "low-barrier, high-reward" engagement funnel that gamified the advocacy pipeline and physically engineered the friction out of civic action. During the Obama administration, our primary focus was rallying constituent support for the Clean Power Plan. Knowing that direct phone calls were the most effective way to pressure lawmakers, I set out to remove the psychological barrier of making those calls. Operating on a shoestring budget, I hired someone off Craigslist to custom-build a mobile phone booth for our footprint at the Burton US Open. Inside the booth, I weaponized a complete behavioral toolkit: League of Conservation Voters scorecards to show real-time representative data, pre-programmed flip phones mapped directly to individual lawmakers, and clear, plug-and-play scripts hanging on the wall. I will never forget a skeptical 20-something rider stepping in with full ski gear, calling his representative, and stepping out with his face lit up, exclaiming he couldn't believe someone actually answered and how easy it was. This proof-of-concept was so successful that I eventually sourced a massive, authentic vintage phone booth off Craigslist, wrapped it in custom POW branding, and toured it across Colorado events as a highly memorable, statement-making experiential fixture.
The Impact: We unlocked unprecedented conversion rates, transforming POW into the definitive, go-to advocacy resource by proving that civic engagement isn't scary—it's incredibly rewarding. By removing the physical and mental friction of political action and injecting it with a sense of play, community, and immediate social proof, we registered thousands of voters and drove direct legislative pressure straight from the base of the mountain.
Channel Strategy & Alliance Expansion:
The Challenge: Action sports culture is fiercely protective and naturally skeptical of top-down corporate messaging or political lecturing. To break through, the message had to come from trusted peers, but the existing athlete network needed a strategic, scalable framework to maximize its impact and protect its credibility against intense public scrutiny.
My Strategy: I took over the management of the existing Athlete Alliance, which at the time had a couple dozen members, and fundamentally evolved its activation strategy—shifting it from a passive roster to a highly active distribution channel with 100+ athletes. To empower these messengers, I launched, planned, and executed POW's Athlete Summits. Understanding the psychology of the talent, I hosted these immersive summits in destinations that naturally mixed rigorous learning with play. I designed and ran our first three summits at Snowbird (Utah) and Palisades Tahoe (formerly Squaw Valley), before scaling to our largest and most ambitious summit yet at Yosemite National Park. For the Yosemite summit, I strategically integrated high-ticket donors—offering them an invaluable "cool factor" experiences alongside professional athletes—as well as key corporate partners who were deeply committed to educating themselves and their companies on climate change. Concurrently, I expanded our recruitment matrix into adjacent outdoor disciplines and personally embedded myself in the film festival circuit to architect POW’s Creative Alliance from the ground up, onboarding filmmakers, photographers, and visual storytellers.
The Impact: We built an elite, highly educated, and self-sustaining ecosystem of trusted advocates. By providing athletes and creatives with both scientific grounding and strategic activation toolkits, we turned their personal social channels, photo essays, and film tours into bulletproof, peer-to-peer distribution networks. Furthermore, by using these summits as high-value experiential touchpoints for donors and corporate partners, we deeply fortified our funding pipeline and institutional relationships while scaling our reach globally without traditional media spend.
The Blueprint
The exponential scaling of Protect Our Winters from a lean, three-person operation in a windowless basement into a globally recognized industry vanguard was rooted in a distinct, repeatable marketing methodology: relentless audience immersion over top-down messaging. This is not always the best approach, but in this case, it was. To authentically mobilize a highly protective, cynical, and anti-authority audience, I built our entire strategy around four core operational principles that define my approach to brand growth:
Know your audience: Truly understanding who your audience is requires uncovering what they collectively care about, what their systemic pain points are, and identifying exactly where they spend their time. For POW, that meant knowing they valued deep snow over corporate jargon, and that their primary pain point was a threat to their lifestyle.
Meet them where they are: Reaching a niche demographic means showing up exactly where they are already gathered—literally meeting them at the base of a halfpipe, the film festival lobby, or the trade show floor—rather than forcing them into traditional digital marketing funnels.
Figure out the right messengers: Corporate skepticism is at an all-time high. To break through the noise, sometimes a brand must route its message through peer-to-peer networks—like athletes and creatives—who hold pre-existing cultural capital and credibility within the community.
Uncompromising authenticity: Every commercial engine, from merchandise supply chains to event catering, must align perfectly with your brand’s core ethos. By ensuring our merchandise was ethically sourced and our events were self-funded, we insulated the organization from criticism and built bulletproof trust. By applying this methodology, we didn't just build a brand footprint; we engineered a self-sustaining cultural movement that successfully bridged the gap between B2B executives and B2C consumers under a unified, mission-driven umbrella.
