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On day 21 of an instructor course in the Wind River Range, Jeannette’s rope dislodged a 250-pound boulder. It landed on her legs — 15 miles from the nearest trailhead, in a designated wilderness where no helicopter was coming fast.
Since then, Jeannette has identified the ingredients that make a fantastic outdoor leader. Resilience is a top-of-mind skill — and as she defines it, resilience isn’t toughing anything out. It’s going through the uncomfortable. It’s a muscle she’s built through an entire career of setbacks that became pivots: Olympic dreams ended by back surgery, multiple NOLS rejections, and that day under the boulder. If you’re ready to build that muscle on your own bucket-list adventure, we’re hosting a full Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim hike on October 10th, 2026, for women 50 and over!
Jeannette Stawski is the author of The Outdoor Leader and owner of the leadership development company Leading Valiantly. She currently serves as the Senior Assistant Director of Adventure Leadership and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, spent eleven years as director of Outdoor Adventures there, and served fourteen years as executive director of the Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education. She has worked as a professional outdoor guide, wilderness medicine instructor, and NOLS instructor, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and their two children.
Jeannette and Angie talked about:
- Pivoting from pre-Olympic rowing camps to raft guiding in Glacier National Park after back surgery ended her Olympic dreams
- Getting rejected by NOLS multiple times — and how their coachable rejections shaped her career
- The 2000 rappelling accident in the Wind River Range and the rescue that followed
- Balancing expedition leadership with parenthood, including leading a five-week New Zealand expedition when her daughter was 16 months old
- The gift she’s giving her kids: a cross-country road trip to climb the Grand Teton together — without their parents
- How the outdoor industry has shifted: entry points, public lands advocacy, and articulating the value of the profession
- The self-deprecation pattern in women outdoor leaders — and the green room moment where Jeannette called Angie in
- Why resilience means going through the uncomfortable, not toughing it out
Listen: Follow on Spotify | Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Amazon | Pocket Casts | iHeartRadio | other platforms
Check out these resources:
- 📖 The Outdoor Leader by Jeannette Stawski
- 🌐 Leading Valiantly
- 📱 Jeannette on Instagram
- ✨ Jeannette on LinkedIn
- 🏜️ Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim, October 10, 2026 — women 50+
- ➡️ The Cairn Project on IG
- ✨ The Cairn Project’s newsletter
- 🥾 Become a Trailblazer
- 📅 Summit Scholarship Foundation
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You can help us close the gender gap outdoors and beyond:
- Become a Trailblazer. Your Adventure Fundraiser makes wilderness experiences possible for girls and women.
- Check out the Summit Scholarship Foundation.
- Send this episode to a friend who leads others outdoors.
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Follow on Spotify | Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Amazon | Pocket Casts | iHeartRadio | other platforms
What makes a fantastic outdoor leader? In this episode of the See Her Outside Podcast, Jeannette Stawski — author of The Outdoor Leader and owner of Leading Valiantly — defines resilience as going through the uncomfortable, not toughing it out. She has built that muscle across decades in outdoor leadership: as a professional guide, wilderness medicine and NOLS instructor, director of Outdoor Adventures at the University of Michigan, and fourteen years as executive director of the Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education.
Her resilience was tested early. Back surgery ended her Olympic rowing aspirations while she was attending pre-elite training camps, pivoting her toward summers as a whitewater raft guide in Glacier National Park. NOLS rejected her instructor applications multiple times — and each rejection told her exactly what to improve. Then, in 2000, on day 21 of an instructor course fifteen miles into the Wind River Range wilderness, her rappel rope dislodged a boulder weighing an estimated 250 to 300 pounds that landed on her legs, leading to a high-angle rescue and a lifelong commitment to wilderness medicine, judgment, and decision-making.
This conversation also digs into women in outdoor leadership: the self-deprecation pattern Jeannette refuses to let slide, imposter syndrome in outdoor careers, and why no list of certifications will ever make you feel like enough. She and host Angie Lake trade stories about career experimentation — raft guiding, trail building, teaching, fire ecology — and why finding your outdoor career often means discovering what you don’t want to do.
Whether you’re a raft guide, a college outdoor program director, a parent raising adventurous kids, or a hiker who wants to lead friends more confidently, this episode offers hard-won wisdom on resilience in the outdoors. If you’re in the rain, the sun is going to come — but it might take a little bit of time. Listen to See Her Outside, stories from women who adventure, wherever you get your podcasts.
