Are You Our Next Board Member?

The Climbing Wall Association, as the name implies, is a non-profit organization. Our staff keeps some very large programs and initiatives running with limited resources. This is largely possible, thanks to the hard work of our amazing Board of Directors.

The BOD of the CWA are volunteers who help direct the future of the association and the indoor climbing industry at large. It’s a huge role, one with immense responsibility and opportunity to shape, mold, direct, and re-direct the thousands of us who work in all roles throughout indoor climbing.

Have you ever wondered whether you would want to serve? The CWA is actively recruiting for the BOD, as three long-time members are stepping down.

Apply Here

We caught up with Kenneth Cronin, of Crag X in Victoria, Canada, and Wesley Shih, of SenderOne in California, to tell us about their legacies and what future members of the CWA’s BOD should expect.

Jake Byk, Content Manager, CWA:

Tell me about your first year serving on the Board of Directors for the CWA?

Wesley Shih, co-founder, SenderOne:

When I joined the Board, it was filled with some real pioneers of indoor climbing, such as Chris Warner, the founder of Earth Treks, who was the chair, and my current colleague, Jason Noble. 

To be completely frank, when I sat down for my first Board meeting, across the table from them, I was nervous and intimidated, like I didn't belong.  I spent a lot of that first year figuring out that all of that was in my head, and that they would not have selected me to serve if I didn't have something to contribute.  On top of that, I saw around the table people who had different flavors of many of the same struggles I had--as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as people who cared deeply about where our industry was and where it was going.

Kenneth Cronin, owner, Crag X:

I remember joining the Board because there were some things that I wanted to do, and the question before I got to the Board was, ‘how cooperative was the rest of the Board going to be with the idea of making stuff happen?'

I arrived to find people absolutely encouraging about making transformations at the CWA, who shared a lot of the same ideas about how the future of the industry should look. They let me do as much work as I wanted! (LAUGHS)

The initial project was the Work at Height standards and the beginning of professionalization for climbing gym employees. The idea was that this is something that should happen. Owners needed larger support setting up standards and ways to support and professionalize their employees.

Jake:

Tell me about a character trait, personal attribute, or skill you have that served you the most on the CWA Board. Why was it helpful?

Wes:

I think what has made our current Board operate so well as a team is a willingness to be vulnerable, to not be afraid to share our thoughts and experiences and ideas; a sense of humility, by which I mean a willingness to learn and to be wrong; a commitment to wanting to get good work done, even if it isn't perfect; and lastly, tied to humility, is the ability to see things from others perspectives, especially zooming out and zooming into the future. 

Everyone who applies to serve on the Board has had success but has also been able to see where luck had a large part to play, as well as help from others. 

As a 100% volunteer Board, our goal is for the group to help guide the CWA as best as we can, which means sometimes, the Board will make decisions that some of its individual members may have decided differently if they had decided on their own. 

The qualities listed above make the Board's work possible.

Kenneth:

I think being a single-location owner who had a really definite idea about what a climbing gym should be and how a climbing gym should operate. I joined the CWA Board because I didn’t want to have the industry move in a direction that homogenized climbing or to avoid having a set of standards show up that really control what I do with my business or how I operate it.

When I joined the CWA, I found people who were actually very happy to be part of an industry association that provided a framework that gave us certain amounts of legal protection, without at all desiring to change the fundamental spirit of what my business was going to be .

When you’re a small organization, you get to be at the top and the bottom, and that perspective made me useful to other Board members.

Jake:

Can you share a memory from your time serving on the BOD?

Wes:

The biggest memory I have is the Board that served during COVID.  When the pandemic hit, we had shrunk, just prior, to a Board of only five people.  We had no idea that we would be basically crisis managing our own gyms and companies alongside doing the same for CWA and our industry. 

It was a trial by fire.  I am so proud of what we were able to do; and the bonds I forged with the Board members that I went through that ordeal with.

Kenneth:

Well, we are still a climbing-based organization. So, one of my fond memories is meeting the rest of the Board at 7:30 a.m. on our way to start our day for a Board Retreat, knowing that the Executive Director and I had just come back from a 5:00 a.m. sunrise multipitch before the day had started.

The rest of the Board didn’t know that we were arriving back at the hotel. Garnet and I had already climbed a multipitch out in the valley. We didn’t tell anyone.

Jake:

What do you hope the incoming BOD member(s) will do within their first year?

Wes:

I'd like new Board members to get an understanding of what the CWA does for climbing and climbing gyms and all the people our sport and our organizations employ and provide climbing to. 

CWA still isn't the best at communicating what we do and our accomplishments.  I would also want them to realize that there is so much yet to do, and that a reason we chose them is that they are the right person to do that.

Kenneth:

I hope they arrive with a problem in the industry they want solved and they start solving it. I know from experience that you can’t solve anything in one year but you can definitely start the process.

CWA is an organization that does get to the end of processes and solves things. We do get there, so at the end of the first year I hope they arrive with that problem they want solved and the feeling that it’s going to get solved.

Jake:

Why should someone apply to serve on the BOD?

Wes:

Maybe this is a bit of a surprise, someone should apply to the Board because there is something they want to get done for our industry; and something they want to get out of serving, whether that's more industry perspectives, experience working with peers or even having peers you talk to regularly (finding other entrepreneurs, especially climbing entrepreneurs), or Board experience. 

Volunteer service is a commitment that competes for our time and attention alongside our other commitments--family, friends, climbing, ourselves, and our own businesses and organizations, among many other things. 

To keep engaged, I think it is almost a necessity that there is a reason you are there besides just service.  In other words, to be the best at serving, you need to be a little selfish.

Kenneth:

They should serve because they think there is some problem that needs fixing and they have an idea of what to do to fix it. The world is run by people who show up.