Outdoor Retailer - January 2021 - 41

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in 2009 after recovering from a spinal cord
injury while training to be a professional
freeskier. He sought to pay forward all the
help he received from friends and family
throughout his journey. " The idea was to help
folks who sustain these life-changing injuries
return to the sport they love, " he says. " Eleven
years later, we've done that with 357 individual investments from 40 states and Canada. We
continue to return people back to what they
love most-getting outdoors. "
Under the High Fives Foundation, his team
provides safety education through a platform
called Basics. A healing center in Truckee,
California, gives people with spinal cord injuries a free place to work out and heal. And a
new veterans program gives critically wounded veterans nine weeks of personal training,
capped off with an opportunity to ski and
snowboard. " We try to use the outdoors as a
way for healing in a way where we don't always
have to be talking about healing, " Tuscany says.

Quannah
Chasinghorse

ISABEL RODRIGUEZ

QUANNAH CHASINGHORSE

@thecycleeffect
RELEVANT ISSUES: Serving immigrants and the
Spanish-speaking community in Colorado's
Summit County
NEEDS: Sponsorships and gear donations for
girls' cycling programs

RELEVANT ISSUES: Fighting for climate justice

WHERE TO FIND HER: thecycleeffect.org,

From top: Quannah Chasinghorse, courtesy The Cycle Effect

and inclusivity advocacy-a space in which he
is already well-versed. Sojitra, a first-generation Indian-American living with a physical disability, recently co-founded Inclusive
Outdoors Project (@inclusiveoutdoorsproject). Alongside Sophia Bielsky of Queer
Climbers Coalition, he plans to build more
affinity spaces in mountain sports programming-ice climbing, backcountry skiing,
mountaineering, and alpinism-for underrepresented communities. " We are constantly
seeing forced separation and exclusion of a lot
of these communities, and the idea is to bring
people of all these various backgrounds together to be able to connect through sport and
activity, " he says.
Sojitra is an advisory board member for the
Outdoor Equity Fund and an athlete for The
North Face, where he also pushes anti-racism
and anti-biased work. He lives by the motto
" #ninjasticking through the woods to bring intersectionality to the outdoors. "

A dancer at heart, Isabel Rodriguez is now
bringing her skills and her love for building community to the outdoor industry as
a program manager for The Cycle Effect, a
new nonprofit in Summit County, Colorado.
Rodriguez learned how to mountain bike this
summer and just celebrated her year anniversary at the organization, which helps young
girls get into the sport. Biking wasn't on her
radar until someone at The Cycle Effect approached her for the role.
As a Mexican-American, bilingual, biliterate, and bilingual woman, she spent about
nine years in Summit County connecting with
immigrant and Spanish-speaking students
and families. Through a dance program for
adults and young children, she shared their
culture with the community. Even though her
activity looks a little bit different now, she continues to empower young people. " Part of the
activism is to change the narrative and help
the outdoor field of sports in the U.S. realize
we can do this too-it's just that our systems

WHERE TO FIND HER: @quannah.rose

and protecting the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge
NEEDS: Companies to give back to the Han
Gwich'in and Oglala Lakota people

Isabel Rodriguez

are not created to serve everyone, " she says.
" But as a leader, I can change that. "

VASU SOJITRA

WHERE TO FIND HIM: vasusojitra.com,

@vasu_sojitra
RELEVANT ISSUES: Disability justice and coaching
brands on diversity, equity, and inclusion
NEEDS: Donations to get Inclusive Outdoors
Project off the ground

While some folks found themselves with
excessive time to slow down in 2020, Vasu
Sojitra picked up his pace on diversity, equity,

At 18 years old, Quannah Chasinghorse is
helping lead the fight to protect the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The Han
Gwich'in and Oglala Lakota climate justice activist has lobbied in Washington, D.C., spoken
at numerous events, and, late last year, signed
as a model with international agency IMG
Models to further represent her people in the
fashion industry. " We still don't have much visibility, " she says. " Through this work, I'll be able
to educate more people about what's going on
in Indian country. "
Chasinghorse was a youth explorer on an
ANWR expedition with The North Face in
June 2019. She lobbied with the brand and also
spoke on a panel alongside her mother, Jody
Potts, who is Han Gwich'in and a tribal member of the Native Village of Eagle, at the January
2020 Outdoor Retailer show. The motherdaughter duo is working on a documentary
film about their advocacy and their way of life
in Alaska. " I'm just going to keep advocating as
much as I can, " Chasinghorse says. " I'm not going to let people silence me. " O.R.

January 2021 / OUTDOOR RETAILER 41

http://www.thecycleeffect.org http://www.vasusojitra.com

Outdoor Retailer - January 2021

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