Tom Adams departs Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation to become COO at Petzl
Adams will be the new COO of Petzl North America
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Tom Adams, who has held the post of director of the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation (UOOR) since 2016, is moving onto to the private sector. Adams will become Petzl North America’s COO.
It will be familiar turf for him: He served as Petzl’s North American sales director for two and a half years prior to taking the job with Governor Herbert.
Utah was the first state in the country to open a dedicated outdoor recreation office. During his time as UOOR director, Adams oversaw Utah’s outdoor recreation industry vision and worked with leaders in both the public and private sectors to create policies and programs. Most notably, he managed to get the state to increase funding of the Utah Outdoor Recreation Grant from $100,000 to $5 million a year.
Adams has been integral to the development of the Confluence of States, a group of directors from various state offices to share resources and ideas. which was created earlier this year. So far, thirteen states have signed the Confluence Accords.
We caught up with Adams and asked him to reflect on his time in office for the state of Utah: “All too often we spend 10+ hours a day at work and are completely disconnected from the processes and the people making laws that directly impact our businesses, recreation areas, and quality of life,” he said. “I’m honored to have spent four years working for the state of Utah partnering with Federal, Tribal, State, and local officials on all things that impact the outdoor economy. This experience helped to get me out of the day-to-day grind and opened my eyes to so many ways we can all be actively engaged in our future. The outdoor economy may be an $887B industry, but that consists of hundreds of sub industries and by no means are we all perfectly aligned. It’s my hope the examples our office has made and the expansion of these offices around the country, will help to align our industry finding commonalities that support, protect, and conserve the places we love most, the great outdoors!”
Adams’ last day with the state of Utah will be January 10, 2020 and he will start up with Petzl in February.
Anyone interested in applying for the director of the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation can go here. Utah hopes to fill the position quickly, within the next few months.
