Big City Mountaineers Welcomes New Board Members

July 10, 2013 (Golden, Colo.) – Big City Mountaineers recently elected three veterans of the outdoor industry to its Board of Directors: Angela Chen from The North Face, Chip Coe from Chaco and Mike Wallenfels from Timbuk2.

“Big City Mountaineers is honored to welcome Angela Chen, Chip Coe and Mike Wallenfels as new board members,” said Paul Andrews, BCM board chair. “These champions bring deep and wide-ranging philanthropic experience to the Big City Mountaineers board and will be instrumental in helping us to achieve our vision of instilling critical life-skills in thousands more students each year. Their leadership will be essential as we expand into new underserved areas across the country, build new partnerships with youth agencies, engage volunteer mentors, grow local leadership councils and expand upon our ambassador program.”

Angela Chen is Chief Financial Officer for The North Face and brings significant financial experience and expertise in international business development and financial scaling of resources to her role as a BCM Trustee.

“I am thrilled and honored to serve as a member of Big City Mountaineer’s board of trustees and look forward to helping BCM achieve its strategic plan of increasing the number of youth it serves ten-fold,” Chen said.

Chip Coe, General Manager of Wolverine World Wide’s Chaco Footwear, brings expertise in strategic planning, team-building and business development to BCM and is excited to take an active role in bringing BCM programming to more students each year. Prior to joining Wolverine World Wide, Coe was president and CEO of Smartwool.

“I have been impressed with the Big City Mountaineers organization since I learned of it well over a decade ago,” said new BCM board member-elect, Chip Coe. “It is my sincere honor to join this outstanding organization and to help further the mission, now shared by so many in our industry, to bring outdoor adventure and life-learning to deserving youth. I look forward to working with this inspired and inspiring team.”

Chief Executive Officer for Timbuk2, Mike Wallenfels, is an outdoor industry icon with a successful career spanning over three decades. Wallenfels is well known for his work as president of Mountain Hardwear, where we grew the brand into more product categories, retail channels, and global markets. Wallenfels also served on the Outdoor Industry Association Board of Directors for 10 years where he was an active chair for several committees including the board chair role for his final two years.

“BCM has a compelling vision to instill critical life-skills in thousands of underserved youth and a sustainable, replicable, strategic plan to grow this vision exponentially,” said Wallenfells. “ I am proud to be coming on board with BCM at this exciting time and to join this mission-driven leadership team.”

About Big City Mountaineers
Big City Mountaineers (BCM) instills critical life-skills in over 2,000 under-served young people each year by getting them outdoors with volunteer mentors for life-changing wilderness experiences. BCM’s unique model of 1 to 1 mentoring is proven to develop integrity, responsibility, improve communication skills and decision making abilities in youth from risk-filled environments through a nationally recognized developmental analysis tool. Given the opportunity to develop these skills alongside caring volunteer mentors creates positive lasting change in these youth who become more likely to stay in school and avoid drugs, gangs and violence.