We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dana Stricevic . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dana below.

Dana , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

My background is in Social Work; when I moved from Chicago to San Diego in 2016, I didn’t really have plans for my career, but was open to figuring it out when I arrived in California. I moved in with my friend at the time, Luke. Luke is a Marine Corps veteran. One day Luke asked me if I would be interested going rock climbing and I suppose that was the defining moment.

Exploring California from the mountain tops was an entirely different experience from my life in Chicago and climbing with Luke was both challenging and exhilarating. For me, climbing was fun and scary. It was new and I loved the places it took me. For Luke, it became a lifestyle. Luke took to climbing with enthusiasm, professionalism, heart, grit, and dedication. Rock climbing for Luke as he would explain was like a new patch on a quilt of his life. He no longer felt defined by his career in the military, but found different purpose in rock climbing. I was lucky enough to be his partner and grow in this experience with him.

From basic days of climbing in Southern California then beyond, Luke learned that he was able apply a portion of his GI bill to obtain his Wilderness First Responser and Single Pitch Instructor certifications. We packed up our things and temporarily moved to Washington for him to pursue this career. When Luke finished his certification, we discussed options of interests. With my background in Social Work and Lukes’ ability to guide now, we thought about what this process of climbing has been like for us.

Rock climbing allowed us to focus our attentions outdoors. It gave us a point of interest; something to work on, a place to persevere and fight through challenging experiences. It was fun and it was scary. Although I didn’t look at climbing as a clear path in my future; being a part of Lukes’ journey as a more sustainable treatment for himself; I was hooked. Luke and I decided to start Crux Wilderness Therapy as a recreational treatment for other veterans and active military members and their families. Our mission is “to provide veterans and their families with sustainable long term strategies for physical and mental health by engaging in outdoor activities.”

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Dana Stricevic. I am 32 years old; a daughter, sister, friend, wife, and mother. I have a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Social Work and through my education experiences and my relations to veterans and their families, along with my husband who is a veteran, I found passion in working with this community. I am the CEO and Founder of Crux Wilderness Therapy. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit who educates and instructs veterans, active military, and their families in rock climbing outdoors.

I believe Crux Wilderness provides a sustainable opportunity to the veteran and military community in the sense that we currently offer two free rock climbing clinics a month. Our clinics focus on education and instruction so that veterans can learn the ropes in a safer environment with a certified rock climbing guide. There is no cap on how many times a veteran can come out with us and no requirements to keep coming out either. We know everyone has their own thing going on at home and work; Crux is just an opportunity to engage with other veteran and military members and learn and practice a skill so that they can continue to engage with our group or get outdoors independently and with their friends and family.

I have a great deal of pride and love for our program and mission. Seeing first hand the affects this sport and lifestyle had on my own partner and husband, I’m grateful to be in a position to provide this opportunity to other veterans and their families. I hope to continue to grow our community and take our clinics from two free clinics to four free clinics per month. That is a difference of serving 12 veterans to serving 24 veterans every month which would be huge!

Can you talk to us about how your funded your firm or practice?

We started Crux Wilderness Therapy in 2019. We started taking veterans outdoors rock climbing in November of 2019 and shortly there after, had to stop operations in March due to the pandemic. Growing a nonprofit in general has its challenges with funding, but growing this nonprofit in the mists of a global pandemic was definitely an experience. Thus far, our program has mainly survived on private donations with the support of a few grants. Now that we are moving forward and seem to have made it through the eye of storm, we hope to grow our capital in a large way to continue to support our mission. We don’t want to just get by on private donations, we want to thrive here for our veterans, military members, and their families. It wasn’t the easiest start up, there was a lot of my money and family members supporting the mission for a while, but I am happy to see people catching onto our mission now looking to support our efforts!

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Growing our community has been interesting during pandemic times. In the beginning, we were using mostly marketing boards at local climbing gyms in San Diego. When things slowed down almost to a halt because of covid precautions and CDC guidelines our clinics were paused for about 3 months or so. Getting back into the swing of things, we are now filling majority of our clinics solely based off of word of mouth. We’re grateful to have people behind us spreading the stoke and good word, in addition we also hope to up our marketing strategies to reach more veterans.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cruxwilderness.org

Image Credits
I have the rights of the photos