Outdoor Retailer - July 2017 - 69

2010s

Sally Jewell

Outdoor Retailer 35th Anniversary

YOUNG AT
HEART
At Interior, Jewell
created programs
that encouraged
more children to
fall in love with
public lands.

THE PUBLIC SERVANT
In 2013, when Sally Jewell left REI to spread conservation and
diversity as one of the top figures in the Obama Administration,
she brought the outdoor industry's ethics with her.
Written By Elizabeth Miller

Photo by Tina Shaw, USFWS

ally Jewell's quest has taken her to
some strange places. Even when she
was the Secretary of Interior, Jewell
insisted on riding her bike to volunteer projects. She sank her hands into lionfish
guts alongside Miami YMCA kids participating in the First Lady's Let's Move! program. She
stood on stage with the Black Eyed Peas.
The longtime outdoor industry exec left
her position as CEO of REI in 2013 when
President Barack Obama tapped her to head
the Department of the Interior. Secretaries of
the Interior had been to the Outdoor Retailer
show-G.W. Bush's pick, Dirk Kempthorn,
toured the Salt Palace halls in 2006, and
Jewell's Obama-era predecessor, Ken Salazar,
made the keynote speech at the industry breakfast in 2010-but no show insider had ever been
elevated to the position.
In the executive branch, however, Jewell
found a bigger megaphone for the values she
had already trumpeted at REI, where she welcomed women and minorities and cultivated
a practice of volunteering and philanthropy
among co-op members and employees. And
she brought the outdoor industry, and its focus

on clean, healthy recreation and conservation,
directly to the political table.
Jewell's tenure was a win for government,
too. She focused her business acumen-built by
two decades in the petroleum and banking industries prior to becoming REI's chief executive
officer in 2000-on the Interior Department's
shortcomings, particularly its budget, which
the October 2013 government and ongoing sequestration only served to highlight.
It wasn't long before she was back at Outdoor
Retailer, calling to get more young people outdoors. "I've got a $20-million goal. I'm not going to wait for Congress to act. I want to stand
this up in a hurry," she announced during the
January 2014 Outdoor Industry Association
(OIA) breakfast at Outdoor Retailer.
Donations rolled in from big outdoor
brands-Keen, Camelbak, The North Face,
REI, and Thule among them-as well as lessexpected corporate sources such as American
Eagle, Coca-Cola, and American Express. That
funding helped make it possible for the department to give free national parks passes to more
than two million fourth graders and their families and ramp up volunteer and paid work op-

portunities on public lands to raise the next
generation of biologists and park rangers from
tech-savvy, urban Millennials.
"Most cabinet members are not going to
show up to a rock concert in the mall," says
David Jayo, who Jewell recruited from his position as REI's head of philanthropy to become
her senior advisor. "But there's will.i.am and
Chris Martin from Coldplay ... and then Sally
Jewell talking about how we need to prepare
and invite Millennials to be that next generation to care for and protect the environment,"
The donations Jewell procured have even enabled some programs to continue through the
administration change. They're listed in her
exit memo from the department, as are moves
made to transition the country to more renewable power by pausing coal leases and building
the first solar projects on public lands. Here
was the sustainable ethos that had seen REI,
under her leadership, piloting the Outdoor
Industry Association's Eco Index to monitor,
report, and prioritize environmental and social performance stretching to national scale.
According to Kate Kelly, who served as Jewell's
first communications director at the Interior
Department, she is always thinking much bigger than the bottom line.
"So often, the conversation about conservation is seen as the environment versus jobs, and
I think the Secretary was uniquely positioned
to turn that on its head and show that conservation is good for the economy," Kelly says.
To match numbers to that argument, she
partnered with the Commerce Department
to see the Bureau of Economic Analysis begin
counting the outdoor industry's impact in jobs
and dollars, which the bipartisan REC Act that
Obama signed into law in November 2016 is in
the process of codifying. Jewell also oversaw
much of Obama's record-setting protection of
553 million of acres of land and marine environment as national monuments.
The fire Sally Jewell stoked is seeing the industry increasingly more present in politics.
"One thing she says all the time-and we saw
it and learned it while we were there-was, 'If
you're not at the table, you're on the menu,'" says
Jayo. With Jewell on the cabinet, the outdoor
industry began making more regular appearances at that table. Putting the industry in that
position, perhaps more than anything else she
has achieved, may be her biggest legacy. O.R.

30th Anniversary 2017 / OUTDOOR RETAILER 69

Outdoor Retailer - July 2017

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