As the ski industry’s leaders reach retirement age, preparing their successors for the next step is paramount. While succession planning sounds intimidating, it simply means putting a plan in place for choosing the new leaders in your organization and giving them the tools they need to excel.

In this issue, Kris Blomback, GM of Pats Peak, N.H., speaks out about the overall issue of an underprepared next generation of leaders (p. 10) and what he and his team are doing to give future leaders the tools to succeed.

The search for future leaders can be part of your annual meeting and planning cycle. Laura Moriarty’s plan for managers to collect, plan and put into action the best ideas for the upcoming season (p. 42) incorporates the search for up-and-coming talent into this year-round process.

There is so much talent in our industry already; some folks just need to be given a chance to shine. This has been a big part of SAM’s efforts over the years. Our SAMMY Leadership Award is celebrating its 20th anniversary this spring. The 50+ recipients since we started the award comprise a group of folks who are making a big impact. In this issue, one of them, Jay Peak GM Steve Wright, sounds off as our SAMMY guest editor. Steve provides some honest and insightful opinion on several of the articles in this issue. We urge all readers to nominate candidates for this year’s awards, and soon.

Also with your help, SAM identifies a lot of strong potential leaders in our annual “10 Under 30,” so we urge you to nominate your under-30 stars, too.

Our 15 years of hosting Cutter’s Camp has exposed us to some strong leaders, as well. Case in point: Logan Stewart, mountain ops manager at Timberline (where Cutter’s Camp is hosted every May). He has worked his way up through the ranks at Timberline with the guidance of a strong mentor (Steve Kruse). Logan wrote an excellent article in this issue, “Smart Cats”).
Stay tuned as SAM rolls out more insights on the entire subject of succession in future issues.



Olivia Rowan
Publisher