STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
The 7,500-square foot Ketchum Innovation Center exudes masculinity, thanks to its rugged industrial-like siding and bare bones work stations.
Its earliest tenants all boasted Y chromosomes.
But the center, founded in 2014, is getting a little softer around the edges, thanks to its new chief executive officer Kathryn Kemp Guylay.
Guylay has been cultivating a female presence at the Ketchum-based KIC. And on Tuesday, she’s inviting all the women in the community—business people or not—to a short presentation about goal setting followed by a holiday cookie exchange.
The free presentation will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 12, at KIC, 311 1st Avenue N., in Ketchum’s former post office.
Guylay will offer a half-hour presentation on six mantras she described in her book “Mountain Mantras: Wellness and Life Lessons from the Slopes.”
They include: Change your lens on life by applying positive psychology to maximize your happiness factor. Get good boots on by building a foundation of education and experience. See the forest from the trees, constructing a vision. Plant your poles, setting incremental goals that are measurable and achievable. Embrace the yard sale, learning from mistakes. And commit!
Those who attend will receive a copy of the book, which Guylay wrote utilizing interviews with renowned athletes, including four-time Olympian Kikkan Randall and Muffy Ritz, who founded the local VAMPS Nordic program for women 20 years ago.
“It’s overwhelming to think of going out and skiing 30 kilometers. But, if you take it one kilometer at a time, it becomes a series of manageable steps,” said Guylay.
Tuesday’s program is the offspring of the new KIC Women’s Entrepreneur Group, a woman-focused group providing free programming and mentorship for local women entrepreneurs. It’s among the first in a series of monthly meetings.
Guylay has already lined up Ritz and national mountain bike champion Rebecca Rusch, as well as some speakers from out of the community to make presentations.
“They’ll be talking not just about their successes but about their doubts and fears,” she said.
Guylay said she was inspired to put together some special programming for women while attending a conference for incubation centers with her predecessor Jon Duval in Telluride, Colo.
The Mountain Ventures Summit, the first of its kind, attracted representatives of incubation centers from Telluride, Jackson, Tahoe, Mammoth and other mountain resort communities.
“I told Jon, ‘Look at all these awesome women. How about if we start a women’s group? He didn’t think it would work but I wanted to try,” Guylay recalled.
Guylay held a pilot meeting in April 2017.
“As I looked out over the room, I realized they wanted to socialize as much as they wanted to learn. So, I ditched the intended presentation and had them introduce one another, share their struggles. This fall, we did a program called ‘Overcoming/Underearning,’ acknowledging that women still make 70 cents on a dollar.”
Guylay said part of her reason for focusing on women is to show her teenage daughter Elena that women can be breadwinners, just like dads.
“A lot of our issues with money go back to when we were kids when we were told such things as ‘Money is the root of all evil’ and ‘It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven,’ ” she said. “And I know when I was little and wanted money I asked my dad, rather than my money.”
The women’s group is designed not just to support startups but existing retail businesses, as well, with business development strategies and education.
“I’d like to see women elevated, to celebrate women running retail stores. We have such amazing women in our community and to tap into that, to celebrate that would be amazing,” she said.
The ranks of women receiving mentorship from KIC has been growing. KIC, for instance, has been working with Wendy Pabich, who has developed a line of Buddha leg yoga pants; Narda Pitkethly, who has developed a reading program for those who have difficulty reading, and Tatyana Gray, who has developed specific apparel for female shooters.
The Wood River Women’s Foundation will open an office in KIC in January.
“What we’re doing here is not just about how to get a patent or create a balance sheet, although we will do that. But we want to offer an examination of the softer things, too,” Guylay said. “We know from Ariana Huffington, who spoke in Sun Valley last spring, that success is not just about money and power but things like wellness, giving…even wonder.”
IF YOU GO…
Women attending Tuesday night’s presentation are asked to bring a plate of two dozen cookies, plus an extra plate. Following Kathryn Kemp Guylay’s presentation, each woman will get the chance to fill her plate with an assortment of holiday cookies brought by others.
DID YOU KNOW?
Idaho has 51,600 women-owned businesses, according to the 2017 State of Women-Owned Business Report. Those businesses employ 39,600 people and contribute $4.99 billion to the economy.
The number of women-owned businesses in Idaho has doubled in the past 20 years as the population’s grown from 1.2 million to 1.7 million, according to Leigh Barer, associate director of KIC.