Our Team

Carolyn Stempler, Executive Director

  • Carolyn started skiing in her 20’s with the National Brotherhood of Snowsports in Breckenridge. She fell in love with the sport and became a regular attendee of the annual NBS events. Eventually, she switched to snowboarding for 10 years before returning to skiing.

    Carolyn was part of our inaugural Women of Winter <> PSIA-AASI Alpine Level I certification scholarship in 2021 and earlier this month completed her Children’s Specialist I certification through a new Women of Winter x @thesnowpros scholarship program. Carolyn brings over 25 years of Executive experience and 15+ years of nonprofit leadership experience that will bring Women of Winter’s impact to the next level. Additionally, Carolyn has extensive experience in DEIB and multi-cultural settings and communities. As we look back on our 3rd season of scholarship events, we are so excited by how much our community and impact has grown year over year.

Brit Schulte, Social Media Manager

  • Brit learned to ski at the age of 23 on a weekend trip with friends in Lake Tahoe, where she took her first ski lesson and became hooked. For the next two years, she spent as many winter weekends driving up to the mountains from San Francisco as she could. She eventually left SF city life and became a ski instructor in the tiny mountain town of Crested Butte, Colorado. Since then, she spent a winter in Verbier, Switzerland where she earned her Level 2 ski instructor certification. She is now based in Breckenridge, Colorado, and is a member of the marketing team at Halfdays, a women-owned ski & outdoor apparel brand, a ski & outdoors content creator (@mtn.brit on TikTok and Instagram), and ski instructor/coach. Brit is passionate about making skiing more accessible and diverse, and especially hopes to encourage adults that it’s never too late to learn this winter sport!

Liz Craig, Director of Operations

  • Liz grew up in Pittsburgh, PA skiing a handful of times on the icy east coast slopes of Seven Springs Mountain Resort. Only after moving west to Oregon in 2016 and having Mount Hood in her backyard did she fully realize her passion for the mountains and skiing! She’s an engineer by degree but has mostly left that behind to tap into the creative side of her brain doing marketing & social media for local ski shops. Liz lives in Anchorage, AK where she’ll be chasing powder and daylight all winter long!

Francesca Pavillard-Cain, Ambassador

  • Francesca was born and raised in Crested Butte Colorado. She is the daughter of world-renowned swiss mountain guide and fellow Yellowstone Club ski instructor, Jean Pavillard, and Professor Mary Cain. She made her competition debut while attending the Crested Butte Academy and went on to take several junior titles, including: 3 time winner of the Crested Butte Extremes, Open Class USASA Skier Cross Champion and the Junior World Telemark Champion. Western State Colorado University, gave her the opportunity to spend my college years studying and competing. During her time at Western she was able to prove herself in the Freeride Scene. Her most notable achievement was winning the overall Subaru Freeride Series. This qualified her in the top spot for the Swatch Freeride World Tour, leading to three amazing years traveling and competing around the world. Skiing has led her to so many great challenges and experiences. It will always be a part of her and is her true passion. Francesca is a Level III PSIA ski instructor and currently resides in Bozeman, Montana and ski coaches at the Yellowstone Club. She is the star of Warren Miller’s Face of Winter.

Alyssa Gonzalez, Community Development Director

  • Alyssa is an athlete, advocate and designer living on Cheyenne, Ute and Arapaho ancestral lands colonized as Boulder, CO. Her experience in the outdoors started in 2016 when she moved to Colorado and started biking, skiing and climbing. As a queer, woman of color Alyssa is extremely passionate about creating a more diverse and inclusive outdoors for ALL people. Her work focuses on breaking down barriers for BIPOC women in the outdoors and and redefining what it means to be an athlete in the outdoors.

Board of Trustees

Chris Walch, Founder & Board Chair

  • Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Chris still grew up with the mountains in her blood. Her dad hails from Tirol, Austria, where she first learned to ski and started teaching skiing at a small family resort. Since then she’s taught in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Killington, VT and now Big Sky, Montana at the Yellowstone Club. Chris is also the COO and co-founder of LifeScore, an adaptive music technology company, with co-founders Tom Gruber, inventor of Siri, and Philip Sheppard, world renowned cellist and film and video game composer. You will often find her across the pond in London recording at Abbey Road Studios. She’s recently given the closing keynote at Oxford Business School’s Annual Entrepreneurship conference in 2019 and at the By:Larm Music Festival in Oslo, Norway in 2020. Chris received her BA in Economics and Computer Science from New York University, her MS in Science and Technology Commercialization from The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, and her JD from St. John’s University School of Law.

Katie White, Past PSIA-AASI National Women of Winter Scholarship Director

  • Katie White is a skier chasing winter around the planet. Her passion being outside and sliding around on various forms of H2O has never stopped – from waterskiing, wakeboarding to skiing and snowboarding. After completing her degree in Exercise and Sport Science at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, she spent a year working and traveling in Australia and found her love of traveling and experiencing the natural beauty of our world. In the winters you’ll find her as a ski school supervisor at the Yellowstone Club in Montana, in the off season, she is teaching wakeboarding at the Mission Bay Aquatic Center in San Diego and in the summer she adds Portillo, Chile to the rotation – creating her life of the ‘Endless Winter.’ The more she got into traveling, and spending the majority of her time outdoors, the more she made the connection that nature and time spent in nature is precious. It is now a lifelong pursuit to continue seeing this incredible world, enjoying each day, pushing the limits of her skiing, and most importantly, sharing these experiences with those around her. Katie is joining Women of Winter to help empower young women, and to expose them to the opportunities and possibilities of our world. As a person who has been on the receiving end of many beautiful experiences throughout her life, she feels like it is time to give back. She believes in women lifting other women up to grab ahold of the opportunities in our world.

Shelby Rogola, Interim PSIA-AASI National Women of Winter Scholarship Director

Join the team today.

Do you love snow sports? Do you want to help support and elevate a grassroots organization working to change the outdoor industry? Sign up to become a volunteer with Women of Winter and join a community of people passionate about change.