Alyssa Gonzalez

BLAZING NEW TRAILS

Story by Matt Van Winkle Image by Norma Ibarra

Alyssa Gonzalez, product designer for the outdoor industry in Boulder, Colorado, is leading efforts to build more inclusive communities for women of color in outdoor sports.

Soon after moving to Colorado, Alyssa Gonzalez became immersed in the cycling and skiing communities. A mixed-race woman of color with both Hispanic and Asian heritage, she quickly realized there were a lot of differences between her own identities and those around her. “There are minority aspects to many of the spaces I’m in and think about,” she says. Gonzalez (‘16 advertising) grew up in the quaint town of New Milford in western Connecticut, and now calls mountainous Boulder, Colorado, home. She works as a product designer in the outdoor sports industry creating active living content, experiences, travel, and services. “I found myself in a place where I wanted to step up and be an advocate for other women of color in marginalized groups in these spaces – to help provide more awareness, representation, and ideas around diversity and inclusivity,” Gonzalez says. She gained valuable experience in creative design during her time at Iowa State through the student-run advertising agency within the Greenlee School of Journalism, Cardinal and Gold. She says working for prominent outdoor companies allows for influence to create meaningful change. Not just trying to make products look good, but also making sure they are benefiting people and communities. “I control the full scope of digital products,” Gonzalez says. “That starts with everything from coming up with the idea, like a solution to a problem, to brainstorming what that looks like. It gives me the ability to have my hand in lots of different buckets on the design process.” While she’s always been athletic – she was a walk-on to the track team at Iowa State and earned a scholarship her senior year – Gonzalez admits she wasn’t involved in outdoor sports until she moved to Boulder. There, she found affinity spaces and groups promoting minority athletes. One of those being Women of Winter, a group dedicated to “inspiring and empowering women and girls to get outside, to be courageous, and to boldly embrace and pursue their dreams by carving their own paths in the mountains and in life.” “Women of Winter had a scholarship for women of color to become certified ski instructors,” Gonzalez says. “That was something that I was really interested in as someone with a background in sports and wanting to be able to help my community learn more. So, I applied to the scholarship and got into it.” Gonzalez now leads the group as its diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant and helps run the scholarship program. “There was a statistic from Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) that showed 98% of people who signed up for a membership through the PSIA identified as white,” Gonzalez says. “Just alone with this scholarship, we now have 36 women who are a part of that and are helping to truly change what the face of this new sports industry looks like.” Gonzalez will continue working with and talking directly to communities – seeking out the existing barriers for women in outdoor sports. “It’s cool because part of my background in user experience is not me putting my biases on products and design – it's looking at users and figuring out what they actually want and how we can help them.”