2026 NSAA Lifetime Achievement Award: Pat Campbell, Paradigm Shifter 
BY Tom Kelly
It was a classic Jackson Hole powder day high atop Rendezvous Bowl. The year was 1985 as the 20-something New Jersey girl buckled in for the ride. Those powder runs at Jackson drew Pat Campbell into a nearly four-decade career. It was the start of an adventure that, over the years, would transform the concept of leadership in the resort industry and help pioneer a generation of women into key roles.
Her ski industry legacy can perhaps be summed up by this superlative: most likely to be first. She was Vail Resorts’ first female COO and Mountain Division president and NSAA’s first female board chair and now its first Lifetime Achievement Award winner.
In navigating all of the discomfort that comes with being one of few, she leveled up every stop of her journey by breaking ground — establishing a new standard for leadership and helping usher in a remarkable class of female executives who added dimension to the business of resort management in America. Campbell pushed back against the norm not only for women, but for the kinds of roles that were able to ascend at Vail Resorts and where those would-be leaders came from.
Career Becomes Clear
The Rocky Mountains were a world away from the days when 7-year-old Campbell would climb into the car for family trips from Jersey up to Vermont or Massachusetts. Her father had learned to ski while stationed in Germany with the military, and he wanted to share that with his family.
“I just loved the outdoors and snow,” said Campbell. “Anytime we got any snow, we were always outside sledding. I actually had a Snurfer when it first came out, and we would surf in our yard. I'd love to ice skate. I was always about being outside.”
About 15 years later, with a liberal arts degree from Middlebury in hand, she and a college friend hatched a plan to move out West. They tried Colorado, but it didn’t suit them. So, they wandered up to Jackson Hole.
“Immediately, both of us said, ‘Yep, this is the place,’” Campbell recalled.
With no teaching experience, Campbell was hired by Pepi Stiegler as an apprentice ski instructor. Before long, she was a supervisor. While her journey into leadership wasn’t apparent in those early years, Stiegler’s mentorship played a big role. An Olympic slalom champion at the 1964 Games held in his home country, Austria, Stiegler had settled in Jackson Hole when the ski area opened in 1965. There, he brought his global fame to the rugged new mountain resort.
“I'm not sure anybody would have ever guessed that this young girl from New Jersey would have the support and mentorship from this Austrian Olympic champion,” said Campbell, who found in Stiegler traits she would take on later in her career. “But he believed in me, and so he supported me. He offered me opportunities to do more, contribute more, learn more. It was sort of unlikely on the surface, but it was really what jump-started my career.”
She thought about staying for a year or two. After three, she decided to stick it out leading the typical ski-bum life — teaching others to learn and love her sport, working at a local pizza joint to pay the rent and organizing whitewater trips in the summer. It took about a decade to understand her career potential.
“I was still pretty young and was considering other options, including going back to school, maybe going to law school,” she recalled. “For me, there was a moment where I said, ‘You know what, I'm making a career out of this.’ This isn't about being in Jackson. This is about me continuing to grow and build a career.”
Leadership Ropes & Rungs
In the fall of 1995, she became director of Grand Targhee’s ski school and took on leadership of other service departments at the resort. After four seasons, the next opportunity came calling.
“I had a very good run at Targhee, but I was ready for something bigger,” she said. A friend and mentor, Jim Kercher, recruited her to run the ski school at Breckenridge in 1999. “I was feeling very optimistic about the opportunity and excited for the growth and something new.”
Colorado was, indeed, a new experience for her. Breck was a lot smaller than it is today. The T-bar topped the mountain, Peaks 6 and 7 had yet to be developed, and Vail Resorts was just two years into going public after its 1997 IPO. And while it wasn’t yet the company it would become, it still had some of the country 's most heavily visited resorts.
“I was leading a very large organization with the Breckenridge ski school when I moved down there,” she said. “What was really beneficial to me was being part of this big company. When you work at a stand-alone, smaller resort, they tend to be a little more geographically isolated. But I had access to all of these people across four really big resorts. There were so many people inside the company with whom I began interacting.”
As she became more aware of her impact and role as a leader, a pivotal moment for Campbell, and for Vail Resorts, came in 2006. At the time, Roger McCarthy was overseeing both Keystone and Breckenridge. That year, Rob Katz was named CEO. In conducting his own assessment, Katz reached two conclusions that would ultimately lead Campbell to the next level of her leadership journey and shape the future direction of Vail Resorts.
First, he determined that separate leadership for each resort, rather than one person overseeing two very large areas, was a better direction for the company. Second, he chose to look within rather than outside. That was counter to the past philosophy of bringing in leaders with external experience at a smaller resort to run a bigger property.
“If we're going to be the best in the world at what we do, we have to have the best people in our own company,” said Campbell of Katz’s vision. “So, let's look inward first, see what talent and potential is there, develop that talent and promote from within, which would be a significant strategy for the company as we began to grow.”
Campbell leaped at the opportunity to leverage the new strategy, applying and being selected to run Keystone. It was her first big step into senior resort leadership, and she spent three years at Keystone. While there, Campbell crossed paths with Blaise Carrig, who preceded her as president of the Mountain Division.
“I’ll never forget the day I met her,” said Carrig, then COO of Heavenly Mountain Resort. “The NSAA winter show was at Squaw Valley, and we got dumped on. A group of us were skiing together. Pat joined us, and I got to spend time with her on a chairlift. She just blew me away! I mean, she is an awesome skier. We skied KT, Headwall — it was a phenomenal day. And I spent time talking to her about her career.”
He was impressed. Campbell made it onto Carrig’s invite list to return to Heavenly for a leadership bonding retreat of sorts, shadowing him while he made the rounds through the resort. In 2009, Carrig and Katz identified Campbell to take the helm at Breckenridge. At the time, the Peak 6 project was stalled with the town, and they felt they needed a new direction in community and U.S. Forest Service relations.
“She just works collaboratively with everyone,” said Carrig. “Her candor, directness, honesty and the rapport she built with the town really turned us around.”
With her new responsibilities, Campbell dug right in — building relationships with community and Forest Service leaders. Knowing that the mayor and council members liked to do early ski-hikes at the top of the mountain, she joined them.
“Pat … skied up with them to make bonds and to show her own personality to them,” said Carrig. “That developed respect and trust for her.”
And with that, the Peak 6 development moved forward, a huge milestone for Breckenridge and Campbell.
“It was a period of rapid growth for me,” she said. “Just the scope of what I was doing and adding, some new areas like health and safety, really prepared me for the next step into the role as president of the Mountain Division. Ultimately, Rob Katz believed way more in me than I believed in myself. He really challenged me, pushed me and stretched me to step into a much bigger role with the company.”
As Carrig neared his retirement, he and Katz spent two years planning a transition with one person on their minds.
“It was a pretty clear pick for us to select Pat for that role,” said Carrig.
In 2014, Campbell moved into the president’s chair when Carrig became a senior advisor. Looking at the big picture, Carrig identified integrity and balance as characteristics of Campbell’s success as a leader.
“In our industry, integrity gets people behind you,” said Carrig, who added that Campbell’s values shone through in all her interactions. “And Pat balances a seriousness to her work. There's no doubt about that. It's a serious business. And she balances that with what is probably the least known thing about Pat: her great sense of humor. She has a lightness when she's working with people that helps you get close to her.
“Pat is one of the most capable and accomplished leaders, period, of any gender in the ski industry,” Carrig continued.
A Weight for All Women
Campbell had earned her first leadership bump at Keystone based on her proven track record over nearly two decades in the ski industry. But that appointment also put her in new territory as a female resort leader — something that was not lost on her.
“That was kind of a big moment,” she said. “I was certainly the first female COO in our company, and I think there were just one or two others in the industry. I was just so focused on my own performance and getting my feet under me in that role. I didn 't realize that until I started hearing from other women how excited they were for me and how important it was for them to see somebody like me in a role like that.”
Little did Campbell or Vail Resorts know that the public image of a female leader would trigger a generation of women finding their place within industry leadership.
“There was this idea that if you've never seen somebody like yourself in a role, it's hard to imagine yourself being in that role,” she explained. “And so it was a very high-profile thing for me, for women in the industry. … It was a real paradigm shift.”
Historically, a typical pathway to the GM’s seat came through mountain operations roles, ultimately leading up to the top. Campbell’s two decades were quite different, both as a ski instructor and as a woman.
“While I wasn't focused on it at the time because I was trying to do the best job I could do and prove myself, I knew the stakes were high because I was a woman,” she recalled. “A lot of other people were noticing and going, ‘Huh, maybe I could do that, too.’”
Apart from running a large resort like Keystone, Campbell had an additional weight on her shoulders to succeed for the other women out there watching.
“I felt it at the time,” she said. “Gosh, I’d been given this shot, I can’t fail!”
Jody Churich, now senior vice president and COO for destination resorts at Vail, was with POWDR when she served on the NSAA Growth Committee together with Campbell.
“I had always known about Pat and admired her from afar,” said Churich. “And we were on this committee together, and we had a chance to sort of see each other's style and got to know each other a little bit there.”
Churich began her resort-leading role as president and GM of Boreal & Soda Springs in 2007, the same time Campbell was at Keystone. Churich watched her fellow trailblazer’s career take shape and appreciated Campbell’s help with her own career.
Vail Resorts’ current president of the Mountain Division, Bill Rock, worked under Campbell during his tenure in Tahoe and the Rocky Mountain region. He identified the Women in Leadership program at Vail Resorts, championed by Campbell and then CMO Kirsten Lynch, as a vital tool to scout for high-potential women in the company to participate in mentorship programs.
“It worked because many of those women have become senior leaders in Vail Resorts,” said Rock. “Those who have left are also leading throughout the industry. That has had an amazing impact on the industry for women.”
A Force: Triggering a Chain Reaction
One of Campbell’s greatest strengths is her ability to find talent and nurture it to bring out the very best in those around her. Over the past decade, several women have ascended to senior leadership roles across Vail Resorts under Campbell’s tutelage.
“Pat was just a very caring, focused, determined leader,” said Beth Howard, a 40-year Vail Resorts employee who has been leading ski areas since 2014. “When you would be around her or learn from her, she was just absolutely committed. She had that drive and ambition to continue to grow herself and those around her.”
Campbell was quick to reciprocate, citing Howard as an example of an internal leader who was given the opportunity to excel.
“Beth was probably the next most senior woman in the company, and there was a reason for that,” said Campbell. “She’s an amazing leader.”
Historically, someone with a mountain dining background like Howard may not have been considered for a broader mountain operations role. The paradigm favored someone on the mountain skiing who understands snowmaking and knows how snowcats work. Campbell saw it differently.
“At that time, we were starting to execute on the strategy of … taking a step back and really thinking differently about how we assess talent for these bigger leadership roles,” Campbell explained. “Beth was certainly interested in doing more and having a bigger role with more impact. And you could argue, food and beverage is the hardest job on the mountain. She’s been very successful, and she continues to grow.”
Campbell mentored Howard on skills and leadership development and, like Carrig, took her on ski-arounds.
“I was able to see what she was looking at through her lens of how the mountain would show up — lift operators, how the restaurants are doing, and the snow surface,” Howard said. “I took all that knowledge and everything I learned from her during that time and applied it. Being able to learn as she was progressing in her career and trying to progress my own career — she saw something in me that maybe I didn't see.”
In 2014, Howard was promoted from VP of mountain dining to GM of Northstar, “and now we were two!” said Campbell.
Howard’s lead role at Northstar had a big impact on Nadia Guerriero, now vice president and COO of Europe and Australia.
“To have a female GM running Northstar, and I was a leader on her team, it was this eye-opening moment of like, ‘Oh, I could do that too! This is possible. I can see someone who looks like me in a position that I could aspire to one day,’” Guerriero said. “And I am a direct beneficiary of that.”
When Howard took on a new role in 2016 at Beaver Creek, Guerriero was quick to throw her hat in the ring at Northstar, chosen as VP and GM to succeed Howard. In her first year leading Northstar, Guerriero met with Campbell for a performance review and casually mentioned her pride in getting out on the mountain 60 days. Campbell calmly nudged her to try for 75 the next season.
“That was the epitome of who Pat was to me, always asking how can we do it better? It’s about continuous improvement,” said Guerriero. “How can you keep pushing? How can you make yourself and those around you better? How can you improve your systems and routines? It all results in making the business and experiences better!
“She pushed me hard,” continued Guerriero, who appreciated every bit of Campbell’s support. “She would share how she approached certain situations, what I should be thinking about and what I should be focused on. And I wasn’t the only one who benefitted from Pat’s leadership and drive. She was the first and when she left the company, there were nine women running resorts. In such a short amount of time, that is a massive accomplishment.”
Deirdra Walsh was another who came up through mountain dining. While Walsh never worked directly under Campbell, she still felt her impact.
“Her influence shaped my perception of women in leadership within the ski industry,” said Walsh. “Pat was known for her commitment to excellence and innovation, which, along with her voracious drive and off-the-charts passion for the sport of skiing, made her a force and a true trailblazer in the industry.”
Walsh cited her blend of clarity, confidence, inquisitiveness and optimism for the inspiration she provided. And she recalls fondly Campbell’s stories of chairlift conversations with guests at Breckenridge who were taken aback when she told them she ran the resort.
“Pat was breaking the ice ceiling, paving the way for many of us to achieve what we do today,” added Walsh.
Campbell also pointed to current Keystone leader Shannon Buhler, whom she’s known since sixth grade, as another female leadership success story for Vail Resorts.
“This incredibly bright young woman was able to start her career knowing that there was more opportunity than I ever could have imagined when I was at that stage,” said Campbell. “Just passion and pursuit of the opportunity to be running this huge resort is incredibly gratifying to see.”
Campbell’s ripple effect continues as this new guard of women in ski industry leadership start to mentor the next generation.
“I fought for myself for a long time,” said Guerriero. “And then there became this moment where it was time for me to bring others up and along.”
Coming full circle, Campbell looks back on her ski industry career fondly from her home in Jackson Hole. A past chair of the National Ski Areas Association board, she is wrapping up her tenure there this spring. In keeping with her love of the mountains, she recently joined the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center Foundation board.
Today, her biggest decisions involve choosing a ski line amid the big open bowls above treeline, and afterwards, relaxing in the sauna or in front of a crackling fire.
PAT CAMPBELL LEADERSHIP FAMILY TREE
In her tenure as president of the Mountain Division, Pat Campbell influenced a generation of female resort leaders in the company.
+ Tracy Bartels, Vice President Maintenance, Projects and Planning (retired)
+ Shannon Buhler, Vice President & General Manager, Keystone Resort
+ Jody Churich, Senior Vice President, COO Destination Resorts
+ Ellen Galbraith, General Manager, Stevens Pass Mountain Resort
+ Nadia Guerriero, Vice President & COO, Europe and Australia
+ Beth Howard, Vice President & COO, Vail Mountain
+ Tara Schoedinger, Vice President & General Manager, Northstar California Resort
+ Belinda Trembath, Vice President & COO, Whistler Blackcomb
+ Deirdra Walsh, Vice President & COO, Park City Mountain