Kelsie Costa
CEO, Sherpa Adventure Gear
TBD
Steering Committee Member
The Basics
Company Name: Sherpa Adventure Gear
Location: California
Founded: 2003
Full-Time Employees: 3 (20 pre-coronavirus)
Products: Men’s and Women’s Apparel
Social: Instagram
Claim to Fame: The brand’s roots and strong ties to Nepal
The Culture
The best thing about working at sherpa is:
Tying everything back to our mission of educating kids in Nepal. Actually, the best thing is getting to go visit the kids there. So much smiling our faces hurt.
When we’re not working, we’re:
We used to be pretty big adventure travel enthusiasts, but now we find joy in exploring our own backyards.
What we’re reading:
Dare to Lead, White Fragility, Untamed
What we’re listening to/Watching on Netflix:
We had Spotify Top 50 on yesterday and felt a little old that we didn’t know most of the songs…
If they made a movie about our workplace, it would be called:
A Small Brand Can Change the World
Inclusion in the outdoors matters because:
One of our past Sherpa athletes told me when she started climbing, it wasn’t approved of in her community. She was told to get married and have kids like she’s supposed to. Now little girls see her Instagram posts jetting all over the world doing and badass things. Many of these girls have told her she’s an inspiration – not just to climb, but to follow their dreams. This is why inclusion is important. It goes beyond our borders all the way to those little girls in remote villages of the Himalayas.
Our brand was founded to honor some of the most heroic and skilled climbers in the world, the Sherpas, who also happen to get an appalling level of appreciation for what they do. By sponsoring these athletes and telling their stories, we hope to change the perception.
We try to educate people that a Sherpa isn’t someone who carries your bags, it’s an ethnic group with a rich history. We are honoring them and the people of Nepal by donating to education. We believe education is a right and that systematic change cannot happen there (or anywhere) without educated children and improved literacy rates.
Five years down the line, it’s our hope that:
We are half way to our goal of providing 10 million days of school to the children of Nepal by 2030. Our team is back up in numbers and increasing in diversity. We are in a financial place to sign on Shepra and other BIPOC athletes to help tell their stories.