--- title: "Christine Sperber: Transitioning From Professional Snowboarding To Midlife Leadership Required Relentless Problem-Solving" url: "https://authoritymag.co/articles/christine-sperber-transitioning-from-professional-snowboarding-to-midlife-leadership-required-re" publisher: "Authority Magazine" author: "Pirie Jones Grossman" authorUrl: "https://authoritymag.co/authors/pirie-jones-grossman" interviewee: "Christine Sperber" company: "Modern Elder Academy" category: "Business" datePublished: "2022-06-22T17:24:24.759Z" dateModified: "2026-11-12T17:07:52.807Z" tags: "Business" --- # Christine Sperber: Transitioning From Professional Snowboarding To Midlife Leadership Required Relentless Problem-Solving *The co-founder and chief experience officer of Modern Elder Academy shares how she leveraged resilience, major life transitions, and second chapters to build a purpose-driven midlife wisdom school.* > When beginning my work in Baja California Sur, Mexico, and learning everything there was to know about a new culture, new language, new laws, new industry, etc., I was in a state of continuous problem-solving. Tenacity was key during this time, especially as my co-founders and I set out to create Modern Elder Academy. --- M*any successful people reinvented themselves in a later period in their lives. Jeff Bezos worked in Wall Street before he reinvented himself and started Amazon. Sara Blakely sold office supplies before she started Spanx. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a WWE wrestler before he became a successful actor and filmmaker. Arnold Schwarzenegger went from a bodybuilder, to an actor to a Governor. McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc was a milkshake-device salesman before starting the McDonalds franchise in his 50's.* *How does one reinvent themselves? What hurdles have to be overcome to take life in a new direction? How do you overcome those challenges? How do you ignore the naysayers? How do you push through the paralyzing fear?* *In this series called “*[Second Chapters; How I Reinvented Myself In The Second Chapter Of My Life](https://medium.com/authority-magazine/search?q=The%20Power%20of%20Flexibility)*“ we are interviewing successful people who reinvented themselves in a second chapter in life, to share their story and help empower others.* *As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Christine Sperber.* *Christine Sperber is the Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer at Modern Elder Academy — the world’s first ‘midlife wisdom school’ dedicated to guiding and supporting participants through periods and transitions in life. Sperber began her adult life as a professional snowboarder and stayed in the snowboard industry for several years and subsequently went on to manage other pro athletes, launch and operate numerous boutique hotels, and wear many entrepreneurial hats. In the second chapter of her life, Sperber is cultivating her passion for creating experiences that change people’s lives — be it in the MEA classroom, local community, or workplace–and has found her calling at MEA in helping others invest in their sense of purpose, wellness, and community.* --- **Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?** I was born in New Jersey and the oldest of four sisters, with many cousins and extended family close by. I truly hit the jackpot in the family department–my parents prioritized having family dinners every night and encouraged me to follow my passions. I played many sports and lifeguarded, but I just couldn’t wait to spread my wings. As a high school graduation gift, I was given an Outward Bound course. As I de-planed in Seattle to start this Pacific Northwest climbing adventure, I noticed a woman my grandmother’s age wearing hiking boots. I had only ever seen my grandmother looking elegantly done up in a dress and heels! I immediately knew I was meant for life in the West. **Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?** I’m a longtime prodigal yogi, currently on an away phase. However, I’ve taken my practice off the mat and try to live by freedom from fluctuations of the mind. Yoga also can teach us the idea that non-violence starts with ourselves, we can learn to discern the difference between pain and discomfort, and we can learn to get curious about how to sit with and reframe discomfort. And, the regeneration principles are a pretty good guidepost for many life decisions: 1. Does the action create more life or reduce it? 2. Does it heal the future or steal the future? 3. Does it enhance human well-being or diminish it? 4. Does it prevent disease or profit from it? 5. Does it create livelihoods or eliminate them? 6. Does it restore land or degrade it? 7. Does it increase global warming or decrease it? 8. Does it serve human needs or manufacture human wants? 9. Does it reduce poverty or expand it? 10. Does it promote human rights or deny them? 11. Does it provide workers with dignity or demean them? 12. In short, is the activity extractive or regenerative? **You have been blessed with much success. In your opinion, what are the top three qualities that you possess that have helped you accomplish so much? If you can, please share a story or example for each.** I’m tenacious. When beginning my work in Baja California Sur, Mexico, and learning everything there was to know about a new culture, new language, new laws, new industry, etc., I was in a state of continuous problem-solving. Tenacity was key during this time, especially as my co-founders and I set out to create Modern Elder Academy. I have some really strong opinions about justice, and it’s exhausting I imagine especially for the people around me. Of course, I don’t always get it right and I’m continuously learning. But when I’m in an environment like MEA where I can channel that into a purpose-driven machine that serves first the people who work here, who then can serve the guests, and our community–it’s a powerful catalyst. We have a beautiful dune here on campus, a very valuable piece of real estate, that we’ve put into conservation. It’s our Parque De Alma- dedicated to our introverts, and open to all. My bleeding heart and Chip’s willingness to collaborate created that. I believe in “jump and the net will appear,” but I also work extremely hard to be sure that I’m ready to land well in that net. **Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about ‘Second Chapters’. Can you tell our readers about your career experience before your Second Chapter?** After seeing snowboarders at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine during Winter Break in 1988, I knew I needed to be a snowboarder. I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado in September 1998, since it was the epicenter of snowboarding. I learned to ride and eventually turned snowboarding into a career, ultimately becoming a World Cup Halfpipe competitor. These were the early days of the sport, but after a few years, the writing was on the wall. One summer day at Mt. Hood, I saw a fresh batch of female Scandinavian professional snowboarders riding and thought, “Dang, I better get a job fast!” I ended up running the High Cascade Snowboard Camp and held various other roles throughout the snowboard industry. **And how did you “reinvent yourself” in your Second Chapter?** After about 15 years in various roles in action sports, I was ready for a less youth-centric world. Truthfully, I didn’t feel valued as a 30-something female snowboarder. Concurrently, a dear friend, mentor, and amazing skater/snowboarder/entrepreneur was diagnosed with and eventually died from breast cancer. Her death rocked me and I decided not to waste another moment. I’m still not sure why, but Baja California Sur, Mexico had long been calling me, and so my then-boyfriend (now-husband) and I took a 5-month sabbatical to Baja that changed everything. We met a woman who was building a resort and asked us to help her launch it. It was clear that I didn’t have a hospitality background, and it turned out that she didn’t either. So we figured it out and ended up making the *Conde Nast Traveler* hot list. We used the golden rule (imperfect as it may be) to guide us in those early years. How did we want to be treated as travelers? We did many things “wrong” according to industry experts, but our guests didn’t seem to mind. [The New Gold Standard](https://josephmichelli.com/yournewgoldstandard.com/)was a guiding document for us! **Can you tell us about the specific trigger that made you decide that you were going to “take the plunge” and make your huge transition?** The death of my dear friend, Krista Moroge, was a huge motivator. The Great Recession of 2008 was also a nudge and aging out of snowboarding was on my mind. I still love to snowboard and powder days remain my soul food, but at the time (and maybe still today), snowboarding was so focused on creating for and marketing to young men. It got boring. **What did you do to discover that you had a new skillset inside of you that you haven’t been maximizing? How did you find that and how did you ultimately overcome the barriers to help manifest those powers?** One of the big discoveries along the way was learning that I love to craft experiences. In hospitality, we have this opportunity and it takes empathy to understand what a guest will experience. Leaning into that allows me to feel what a guest might feel, and from there, I can begin to create. There is so much vulnerability when we travel. I try to think about how can we use that as a tool for delight. I’ve actually repurposed a lot of my existing skill sets — as it turns out, operating a snowboard camp on a glacier had a surprising carryover to operating a luxury beach resort in a remote, rustic, and lightly resourced country. I had to be willing to learn a new culture because without understanding people’s motivations, you can’t possibly build a healthy work environment. Here in Mexico, there is no day more important than today and nothing more important than family. This is key operating information. I overcame barriers by being tenacious. I was willing to put in the hours and stay open-minded to each new challenge. I’m also a pretty powerful team builder. Alondra, whose mother ran the kitchen in the first hotel I opened in Baja, has graduated from university studying tourism, did her mandatory internship here at MEA, and is now tucked under the wing of our current GM Gail, and is currently training to be a GM. That’s the impact of MEA we experience day-to-day, and it’s real. **How are things going with this new initiative? We would love to hear some specific examples or stories.** From that first hotel, I opened a second, and then a third as a consultant, and along the way, I met my co-founder Chip Conley. It was during a moment when I’d lost faith in business and business people. Chip’s commitment to humans restored my belief in business as a possible engine for good. We worked together on a few projects before we landed on this current one — The Modern Elder Academy. Jeff Hamoui is our other co-founder and was part of our very first beta cohort. We quickly recognized that he was a key player we needed on our team. We’ve been operating for over four years now, have graduated 68 cohorts who have passed through our weeklong workshops, created Sabbatical Sessions — our light programming, more DIY, long-stay option — as a reaction to the challenges of hospitality in a Covid world, created a regenerative farm and residential community that sold out before we could make a website, launched an online arm delivering MEA content digitally, and have purchased a ranch and a retreat center in Santa Fe, New Mexico to bring our message of reframing aging to the US. Covid kicked us into creative overdrive. Our most recent MEA reunion in San Francisco attracted over 400 alumni from all over the world. **Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?** Both of my co-founders, Chip and Jeff, are huge players in my life. We’ve been so immersed in MEA for the last 4+ years that it’s easy to have a myopic view of who has helped me along the way. Patricia Larsen is a dear friend and mentor who taught me to balance rocks, which I integrated into our MEA curriculum. I’ve had so many teachers and so many people who have taken a chance on me — from John Ingersoll and John Calkins at High Cascade Snowboard Camp who let me step into the GM role, to David Barry and Jim Kercher at Copper Mountain during the Intrawest years, to Johnny Damiano who brought me into Burton Snowboards. There are also people I am grateful to for showing me exactly who I do and do not want to be in the world. And those lessons are just as powerful and valuable. When we purchased Saddleback Ranch in New Mexico and decided that we would use regenerative ranching principles to restore the grasslands and repair the soil, a calf and cow operation seemed like the default enterprise model. It has been proved to work as a regenerative operation, and the financial model is proven as well. As a long-time vegetarian, being a cattle rancher was not on my radar, not something that I thought I would have to embrace as a partner in this business, and not something I was willing to be a part of. The mission of MEA — both the dedication to reframing aging and the regenerative principles we’ve committed to — is too important and dear to me to stand in the way. I thought I would have to step down from the company. But Jeff Hamoui pushed back. He pushed us as an organization to dig deeper, ask more questions, be curious, and investigate. Ultimately, we found people who had successfully regenerated grasslands with horses after the idea was flatly dismissed as impossible by numerous consultants. Now we have a model that repurposes retired horses into engines for grassland and soil repair. It’s the modern elder model for horses. Because of Jeff’s willingness to support my principles, we found a model that is not only in alignment with my values, but is resonant with our community — people who are often looking at how to repurpose a lifetime of skills. **Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started in this new direction?** I can’t share the most interesting one, it’s too dangerous :) However, at one point early in my time in Mexico, I agreed to manage the Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment of a high-profile office and showroom. I am not a designer, which led to me making numerous sketchy decisions, one of which involved arriving in downtown Puebla, Mexico at midnight to stay in the home of a third-generation antique dealer I’d never met before. While I was there, I met a Shaman, who also lived in this 17th-century mansion, and who to this day is a dear friend. He moved to Baja 7 years ago and is a critical part of the MEA team to this day. You never know what is around the corner! **Did you ever struggle with believing in yourself? If so, how did you overcome that limiting belief about yourself? Can you share a story or example?** Jeff has offered us the Explorer’s Syndrome reframe, which I will live by until the day I die — the idea that new work leads to places we haven’t been before, and that requires new skills and a willingness to learn. I work with brilliant people every day. We are now in the fortunate position of inviting the world’s brightest teachers down to Baja to teach. Who am I to teach alongside some of these thought leaders? I guess I’m the one who moved to Baja and made it happen! **In my own work I usually encourage my clients to ask for support before they embark on something new. How did you create your support system before you moved to your new chapter?** My husband Josh is my number one support, always. He’s a clear-eyed and dedicated partner. He is everything from thought partner to provocateur and instigator to powder buddy. On our many road trips between Colorado and Baja, I am generally the navigator and Josh is the driver. That’s sort of us in a nutshell. I can drive and he can navigate of course, but we play these roles so efficiently for each other. Without his steady presence, none of these last 15 years would have been possible. We purchased a desiccated chili field here in Baja ten years ago, and he’s created our secret garden hideaway — he designed and built it from dust to magic. It’s where I recharge and where I am writing from right now. Hidden behind the bougainvillea draped gate and under the palms… **Starting a new chapter usually means getting out of your comfort zone, how did you do that? Can you share a story or example of that?** My comfort zone is in the unknown and new. For me, growing with MEA as we move from a start-up — with the constant challenges and problem-solving — into an organization with processes and standard operating procedures, pushes me into new territory. I am learning how to exist in stability without getting bored. Also, it can be a little uncomfortable to manage people that are clearly more talented, experienced, and or better trained than I am. I am (or was, as a younger person, at least) an indefatigable scrapper, a jack of all and master of none type. Everyone says “hire great people and get out of their way.” I hope for the wisdom to be a good leader for this amazing team. So the bigger challenge for me wasn’t moving to Mexico and learning a new language, culture, and industry. It has been in maturing with my current team and project. This is my real second chapter — right now. **What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started leading my organization” and why? Please share a story or example for each.** Recognize the difference between the sprint and the marathon. And avoid the marathon of sprints if possible. Add capacity before you burn out your star players. I love a lean and nimble organization, but react before it’s critical. Invest in your partners and partnership. Find time to be human together. Both your business and personal partners. Constantly revisit alignment. Allow space for people to grow and evolve and expect that your alignment may shift as a result. But don’t let it get away from you. It’s in the details. Definitions of words. Minutia. When you find people with particular brilliance, do what you need to do to enable that. Don’t force an entertainer to fill out spreadsheets. **You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?** I hope that our work with regeneration and putting life at the center of every decision — from individuals to the soil to the community and purpose and ultimately to justice — will have some impact on the world. It’s an ancient concept with some fresh oxygen. It can be scary to dream in the business world as utopian concepts can be cast as foolish and idealistic. I hope we do things well enough that we inspire others to be a little “foolish.” **We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them. :-)** [Miyoko](https://miyokos.com/pages/story-creamery-of-tomorrow) Schinner, what a powerhouse. I’m so inspired by how she simply made a better product. I can often want the world to bend to my will because I get caught up in the idea of what’s right- and Miyoko simply offers a better product. That’s a real change-maker, one who can create a flywheel for making the “right” decision the easiest one to make. Have you tried that butter? **How can our readers further follow your work online?** Learn more about our work at modernelderacademy.comand follow us on Instagram at @modernelder for fun content from Baja! **Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!** Thank you! Come visit me in Baja! --- Source: https://authoritymag.co/articles/christine-sperber-transitioning-from-professional-snowboarding-to-midlife-leadership-required-re (Authority Magazine, Business). Interviewee answers are first-person statements of the guest. Index of all pages: https://authoritymag.co/llms.txt