SOS Outreach introduces kids in mentor program to mountain careers
Industry Day is part of SOS' 'progressive curriculum,' creating community and opportunity through connection that builds over time
SOS Outreach/Courtesy photo
SOS Outreach has two goals for its older participants: Build community and create opportunity.
Every year, the Eagle County-based nonprofit holds Industry Day for kids in the fourth year of its mentor program to introduce them to career opportunities across multiple fields.
“Industry Day is a day where we partner with mountain resorts for our kids who are in the later years of the mentor program to receive and participate in behind-the-scenes introduction into multiple different roles that make it possible for the mountain to run,” said Seth Ehrlich, the CEO of SOS Outreach.
How SOS Outreach’s mentor program works
SOS Outreach provides “a progressive curriculum that starts in fourth grade and takes kids through high school graduation, with increasing service to the community, lifestyle development and career development,” Ehrlich said.
On a normal day in the mentor program, up to five students and the adult mentor they are paired with ski or ride together at Beaver Creek. These students have likely already spent up to a season in the SOS introductory program, where they have the chance to learn the basics of skiing or snowboarding.
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“Well into the thousands” of kids have participated in the five-year-long mentor program over the years, Ehrlich said.
This year alone, there are 249 kids in the mentor program in Eagle County, and another 270 in the introductory program.
SOS Outreach has mentor programs throughout Colorado, as well as in Utah, California, Michigan and Illinois.
Industry Day looks a little different than a typical mentor ski day.
On Feb. 8, the Eagle County fourth-year mentees formed one big group of 20 to receive a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to run Beaver Creek Resort from some of the insiders who know the mountain best.
Mentees heard from Beaver Creek’s COO Bobby Murphy, along with ski patrollers, leaders from Beaver Creek Sports, a snowcat operator and members of the mountain’s communications team.
“We have kids exposed and introduced to multiple different careers and leaders within different departments so that they’re learning about the personal trajectory that people have and how they got to the roles that they are in right now, and also how they bring their passion to life,” Ehrlich said.
One of the presenters, Miranda Aguirre, supervisor at Beaver Creek Sports, went through SOS Outreach’s career development program in 2022 and is a current mentor.
“That’s the full circle moments that happen. Miranda was talking to the current participants in the Industry Day about how she got to where she is as a manager, and that transition that she had and … leading in this community,” Ehrlich said.
SOS Outreach’s focus on connection extends to career connections
“The most significant (thing) about SOS is that we are using the power of skiing and snowboarding to build strong connections and to build a strong community for kids across the Vail Valley and then using that connection to connect incredibly talented kids to opportunity,” Ehrlich said.
Vail and Beaver Creek, and mountain recreation in general, are “core” to Eagle County, Ehrlich said. Industry Day builds on the connection to mountain recreation mentees receive as participants and allows them to also see “themselves potentially working in and leading in this outdoor recreation,” he said.
Industry Day is also an opportunity for the mentees to make connections with mountain industry leaders.
“It’s connecting kids to leaders, connecting kids to people who will write letters of reference, connecting kids to people who hire,” Ehrlich said. “That connection opportunity is the biggest differentiator to support our kids in bringing out the talent that they have innately, but they just don’t have the connection that other people have.”
Ehrlich said there is a common misconception that SOS Outreach is a program exclusively focused on teaching kids to ski and snowboard.
“We really are supporting kids throughout their growth and development, from fourth grade through high school graduation and beyond, and it’s a program that is all about the strength of community to make that change happen,” he said.
In different forms, Industry Day has long been part of SOS Outreach’s curriculum.
“We’ve been doing something like this for over a decade,” Ehrlich said. “This has been part of the SOS mentor curriculum, of having kids connect with their community, and with professionals in their community, for well over a decade that we’ve been doing this.”
Career development program offers seven paid weeks of training
SOS Outreach’s curriculum has a “progressive nature,” Ehrlich said. “Every year builds on the previous.”
The next step beyond Industry Day is SOS Outreach’s career development program, which started in 2020 in Denver.
The seven-week paid program provides participants with two weeks of classroom briefings and five weeks of hands-on internship experience.
In the classroom, kids learn “how to interview, what to wear on the first day, how to present yourself on social media, and then also being connected, so they go right into these first-level positions so that they can get started and take the first step,” Ehrlich said.
The career development program came to Eagle County in 2022 and has since seen 18 participants.
Ehrlich said many students have gone on to work in the career fields they got a taste of during Industry Day and the career development program. Nearly half the kids that have participated in the career development program continued to work with the company where they were placed.
“When you are connecting kids to opportunity, that’s where change happens,” Ehrlich said. “It’s just a little bit of intentionality that’s needed, and you can create massive ripples of change. That’s what we get to do here at SOS.”
