Initially posted on Snowboard Journal. Click on right here to see the unique article.
If you discuss with Jess Tennyson about snowboarding, or about artwork, or about fostering bonds and group by means of snowboarding, or actually about something she finds compelling, there’s an unmistakable vitality in her eyes. She intently pays consideration to what you’re saying, although you may see the gears alight in her thoughts, spinning, brainstorming, creating. She smiles simply and laughs typically, readily connecting with these round her. And she or he is continually considering a number of steps forward, whether or not tackling a brand new trick within the park, designing advertising and marketing supplies for an occasion, or writing code for an internet site, tapping into each the free-flowing inventive aspect of her mind and the logical, mathematical aspect with equal fervor. Jess is a painter, a graphic designer, an online developer, a park rat, a brand new devotee of the backcountry, and as of final spring, the advertising and marketing supervisor and girls’s staff supervisor at By no means Summer season. In her comparatively new place, her first full-time gig within the trade, the Wyoming native brings contemporary perspective to the model, fueled by her creative, passionate method.
For Jess, each snowboarding and artwork have been centerpieces of her life since she was younger. One informs the opposite and vice versa, inventive forces propelling her ahead from Wyoming to South Dakota to Arizona to California and now to Colorado, the place she’s going to reside within the Rockies for her in-house position with By no means Summer season. “I used to be all the time into artwork once I was rising up, however snowboarding performed an enormous position in that, too—I feel even earlier than you discover that it does—with graphics and outerwear and stickers and every little thing. After I was entering into snowboarding, I used to be all the time being attentive to the artwork by means of what I used to be doodling and drawing. I had a youngsters’ Burton board with rainbows and clouds on it and I bear in mind drawing these issues as a result of it was so cool to me.”
It was in Jackson the place Jess began snowboarding. Her mom labored as a ski patroller at Snow King, a small resort proper on the town. Jess was on skis as quickly as she might stroll, after which when she was about eight, her older brother switched to snowboarding and she or he did too. “Snow King had evening snowboarding, so I’d go nearly day-after-day after faculty,” says Jess. In junior excessive she joined the snowboard staff and began driving Jackson Gap extra and competing in USASA occasions.
In was additionally in Jackson that Jess fell in love with artwork. From a really younger age, creativity and creative exploration have been inspired in her household. “I used to be all the time making artwork,” she says. “My mother was additionally a giant affect on that. She had me in any 4-H that I might do—cake adorning to paper making to portray—till I discovered what I appreciated.” In highschool, after her household had moved to a small city in South Dakota, artwork lessons fueled this expression.
Jess headed to Flagstaff, Arizona to attend school, choosing a faculty that had stable teachers and was solely twenty minutes away from a resort. She majored in graphic design, with aspirations to merge snowboarding and artwork professionally down the road. “Working with By no means Summer season simply speaks to this coming to fruition,” she explains. Whereas her place isn’t particular to design, she has been in a position to flex her creative muscular tissues in tasks already and can proceed to take action. However much more so, her inventive POV is invaluable to her position in shaping the model inside the advertising and marketing schema. The angle that Jess has dropped at By no means Summer season is constructed on a basis of ardour, connection, and dedication to driving and the group it will probably foster.
Jess first turned concerned with By no means Summer season as a staff rider when she and her boyfriend, Matt Williams, who additionally rides and works for the model, have been residing in Mammoth. Being part of NS was instantly a novel expertise. “Truthfully, it’s simply been cool feeling heard,” she says in regards to the model’s proclivity for listening to its riders. “With By no means Summer season, in case you get a board and also you’re like, ‘oh, that is too mushy’ or ‘one thing must be modified about this,’ even when it was a graphic, for example, they’ll hearken to you. They actually take your suggestions.”
As the latest member of the in-house staff, Jess is most enthusiastic about constructing on this collaborative setting and contributing to snowboarding as a complete. “By no means Summer season has made enormous strides—shouts to Mary Lefensky, as a result of a lot of this was her brainchild— in constructing group in girls’s snowboarding,” says Jess. Two years in the past, Mary launched a girls’s-specific digital dialogue sequence known as Ladies Empowering Ladies that strove to deliver collectively feminine snowboarders to study and join about particular month-to-month matters. Because it started, the Zoom occasions have ballooned in attendance. “This was simply enormous the previous two years and I’m excited to maintain the momentum going and hopefully develop it much more. I’m tremendous excited to have the ability to now have in-person occasions, too, and create superior alternatives that get extra girls concerned in snowboarding.”
At By no means Summer season, along with model and staff advertising and marketing, Jess is concerned in cultivating relationships and communication with shoppers, with whom the corporate has a famously loyal following. Jess’ objective is to assist much more individuals get pleasure from making turns and to this finish, she is fast to credit score the present groundswell of collaboration amongst girls within the trade as a complete, in addition to the By no means Summer season crew, for making this attainable. “I’m additionally so impressed by all these different girls in snowboarding; everybody’s so open to collaboration and bouncing concepts off one another. I’m form of fortunate as a result of I feel even twenty years in the past getting into this place, I’d’ve felt extra intimidated possibly, or that I wasn’t going to have the ability to change something as a result of my voice wouldn’t be heard. However I’m in a position deliver issues to life or make issues larger or simply make an affect as a result of everybody on the firm is so supportive.” And it’s help like this that she intends to radiate into snowboarding, creating alternatives for the constructing of relationships with the intention to welcome extra people in and deepen their involvement.
“Neighborhood occasions, I feel, are among the finest methods for extra ladies to both get into park or to get into snowboarding, generally,” provides Jess. She mentions experiences at Snowboy Productions’ IT’S TITS! and Past the Boundaries Ladies’s Snowboard Camp as examples of non-competitive gatherings that construct confidence, foster help, and create long-lasting friendships. She believes deeply in these experiences, including, “And never simply on the ladies’s aspect—for everybody. I’m actually enthusiastic about creating alternatives for constructing group, for individuals to fulfill one another, go trip with associates, and progress will stem from that.”
This winter might be her first in Colorado. The previous few seasons she began to get into the backcountry, each on snowmobile and by way of splitboard, whereas residing in Tahoe. It is a new space of exploration for Jess and when she talks about studying extra about driving out of bounds, her pleasure is critical. And that’s Jess. Always pushing herself, whether or not on her snowboard, in her design, or by means of becoming a member of the ranks of the snowboard trade and affecting the group she loves a lot.
