Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sunny Stroeer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Sunny, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you have any thoughts about how to create a more inclusive workplace?
My company AWExpeditions (AWE) is unusual in the mountaineering space in that we are an expedition company for women, by women. Mountaineering is still a very male-dominated activity, particularly when it comes to multi-week expeditions in the big mountains. Yet AWE is staffed exclusively by women, and we take great pride in assembling all-women teams for big backcountry adventures. Mountaineering is an incredibly empowering and often transformative pursuit, and women belong in the big mountains just like men do – yet with a dearth of women role models and women-centric guiding companies and expeditions, it can be difficult for women to get started on their path into the mountains. The old adage holds true: you can’t be what you can’t see.
I believe that AWE is making a real difference in the mountaineering world by making it a more welcoming place for women. That said, we have also had to reckon with our own limitations: AWE is very much meant to be an expedition company for all women – yet it is (currently) run by a team of white women, and I know that I and we have at times failed to make our expeditions a truly inclusive and supportive space for women of color. That’s something we are keenly aware of, and actively working on with the help of lots of introspection and professional training from a DEI consultant.
Having been on both sides of the equation – as a marginalized identity, and as member of a majority identity inadvertently marginalizing others, I know that creating inclusivity is both hard and incredibly important. What matters is that we don’t shy away from the topic because it’s hard, but instead push up our sleeves and do the work.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Sunny Stroeer. Amongst several other things, I am the founder of AWExpeditions, a big mountain expedition company for women, by women. I also run a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation that supplements the work of AWExpeditions, and on top of that I co-own a regional guide service in Southern Utah called Dreamland Safari Tours. On the personal side, I am a professional mountain athlete for brands like LOWA Boots, and an apprentice mountain guide. That said, I did not start out my career as a guide service owner – far from it. After two degrees from Harvard, a BA and an MBA, I spent my twenties working the typical Ivy League fast-track career of finance and strategy consulting. I soon realized that the trappings of a successful corporate journey did not bring me joy; mountains and pursuing transformative experiences in the outdoors did. That’s why I quit my strategy consulting job shortly after I had turned thirty (and precisely two weeks after I had paid off the last of my student loans). I leaned hard into outdoor adventure, which led to recognition as an adventure athlete – my specialty are speed records in the high altitude endurance realm – and I finally decided that I wanted to play a part in opening up the still very male-dominated world of big mountain adventure to more women. That’s how AWExpeditions was born. Today, AWE runs all-women expeditions on five continents and covers the spectrum from short introductory backpacking adventures and mountaineering skills clinics to multi-week extreme high altitude expeditions that take our climbers to some of the world’s big peaks – Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, and the Himalayas. AWE (pronounced /ô/ — just like in awesome) is the manifestation of a lot of things that I am passionate about: the mountains, altitude, pushing hard, building relationships and increasing women’s participation in the world of outdoor adventure. I knew that I wanted to find a way to help bring more women into outdoor adventure in general, and the big mountain realm in specific, the moment that I returned from my first solo ascent of 22,838ft Aconcagua in 2014. I had a great climb, but kept having to answer the same silly questions over and over again: “You’re here by yourself?” — “Where’s your boyfriend?” — “Do you not have a guide?” There were several male solo climbers on the mountain at the same time; none of them received those questions. That didn’t sit right with me, and I decided then and there that I didn’t want to just lament these gender dynamics, but do something to change them. That’s how AWE was born.
Mountain adventures can be profoundly transformative – I have experienced that first hand. Yet mountaineering is still largely a playground of affluent white men, and women are often greeted with skepticism or even outright condescension. AWExpeditions seeks to change that.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
AWE started as a true passion project. It was never meant to be a profit-focused endeavor since, thanks to Utah-based Dreamland Safari Tours, I have a “day job” that pays the bills. I never drew a salary from AWE, be it for the administrative work or for leading expeditions. In the past that enabled incredibly affordable pricing.
Yet once AWE started growing, every unpaid hour that I spent on AWE took away from my responsibilities at Dreamland; at the same time there was more and more work to be done to develop our programs and achieve what we want to do — which is to get more women into the big mountain realm. Because of that, I had to accept that fact that AWE’s scrappy ‘no margin’ volunteer approach had to change. Truth be told, it was a real mental struggle for me to emotionally accept what I had rationally known for years; making the pivot from one-woman passion project to sustainable organization with paid administrative staff and expedition leaders was (and still is) hard.
Several moments stand out as major milestones in AWE’s trajectory: hiring the first in-house part-time employee. Deploying a booking platform. Interviewing and hiring the first cohort of expedition leaders – up until a little over a year ago, I personally led every single expedition. Turning AWE’s social impact program the Summit Scholarship into a standalone 501(c)(3) non-profit. Hosting our first organizational DEI training with an outside DEI consultant.
But milestones aside… in the end, it’s all about spending time with AWE climbers on the trail and on the mountain. Seeing unlikely friendships and deep emotional bonds develop forged by an extreme environment… that’s magical. I regularly find myself going back to look at what AWE climbers wrote after coming back down from a mountain, like this post from Andrea Lane Jacobs after three weeks on Aconcagua with AWE.
‘Something happened up there, a change, a shift. An unshakeable confidence in my identity and capabilities was born. A weight was lifted. I let loose of my grasp on doubt, anxiety of what is to come, fear of breaking down and not being able to come through for myself. A stripping down and paring away is happening. There is less unnecessary noise. Peace is drowning out the words of doubt that I would have told myself before.’
Witnessing these profound experiences amongst AWE climbers reminds me that spending time up there in the mountains isn’t just luxury – it profoundly impacts the lives of those who are lucky enough to have the opportunity to put themselves into such environments. That’s exactly why AWE exists.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
AWExpeditions is a women’s expedition company. Our very foundation is equity, empowerment and inclusivity – yet there were moments when I had to face the hard truth that the organization I built, and as such I as a leader, was not as inclusive or empowering as I wanted it to be. With generally supermajority white women’s expedition teams, there were instances where I received feedback from women of color that their expedition experience was about as inclusive as it would have been to be the sole woman on an otherwise all-men’s team. That feedback was incredibly hard to hear, and also incredibly important. AWE is not a white women’s organization – it is a women’s organization (and, hopefully, at some point in the future a women’s+ organization!). Realizing that I was failing at the very core of what I was trying to build was a hard moment for me personally, and one that spurred action. While I am deeply sorry for failing the expectations of some of the women of color who have climbed with AWE in the past, I am proud of the thought, effort, time and financial investment that has gone into building the foundation for creating a better experience for future non-white AWE expedition team members. I believe that owning our own shortcomings, and addressing them strategically, is key to charting a positive path forward. I know that AWE, just like myself, will never get everything right – but I also know that when we care and work hard on getting better every time, magic happens.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.awexpeditions.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/awexpeditions/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AWEClimbing/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAxD25pC4yQPpeLv-kUlWWg
- Other: AWE’s nonprofit sister organization: www.summitscholarship.org
Image Credits
Sunny Stroeer