Amongst the myriad positive outcomes from the Women in Boardsports gatherings was the opportunity for Justine and Alba to meet. Justine’s journey into action sports began through her passion for the outdoors and snowboarding, which then took her to work as a freelancer for events such as X Games in Aspen, Tignes and Barcelona, The Nine Knights & Queens, the B&E Invitational, and numerous other events. After spending seven years of her life working for events in action sports, she took a step back to reflect and decided that her role within action sports should focus on empowering others instead.

“I am a certified professional co-active coach and I work specifically with freelancers, creatives and entrepreneurs in the outdoors sports industry,” Justine explains. “I work with people to make sure they don’t make the same exact mistakes that I did”, she laughs.

Now based in the US, Justine spent half a decade in the French Alps and Innsbruck, after which she realised it was time for a change. She packed her bags and took a job in San Francisco which, in the end, made no sense to her, “I realised I was making decisions for other people,I was in a situation where I didn’t know what the hell was going on with my life, and that’s what lead me to coaching.”

“Whatever you’re going through, sharing it with someone else, being able to talk to someone else about it who is in a similar situation, experience, it all of a sudden feels a bit easier because you’re not alone”

Explaining her current job, Justine continues: “Therapy or counseling is quite past oriented, asking questions like ‘why do I keep on making the same mistakes, why am I this way, what happened to me that has turned me into who I am today’ but coaching is about what is happening now. It’s about focusing on who you are today: do you like who you are, do you like the choices that you’re making. Who do you want to be, what do you want to have, how do you want to build your business? It’s based on the neuroscience of habit formation and change and about finding the perspective that gives you the most options, along with the accountability of having someone who helps you overcome your fears and build momentum for yourself.”

Based on their own experiences and the stories they’ve come across in the industry, there is one that Alba keeps on hearing on repeat, “Everybody’s story starts with being the only girl that snowboarded, skateboarded, mountain biked, or whatever, and they grew up surrounded by boys. And these girls loved shredding with the boys, but there seemed to be a missing space for women to collectively come together that many of them were looking for.”

“Who do you have to become to feel like you belong, without sacrificing parts of yourself?”

It’s not something Alba’s only heard once or twice. “There’s a lot of stories of when a new girl shows up to a group, and the girl who has always been the only girl in that group doesn’t like it, saying that the new girl stole her spotlight,” she tells us. “We take it as a competition, and funnily enough, your biggest ally becomes your biggest competition. But it’s all self-imposed and it’s unreasonable, and at some point, there is a change, a pivotal moment, and suddenly you become friends. So why do we keep doing this as women, why do we keep on fighting each other, why don’t we just come together and do something cool? This is what we are trying to do.”

Justine expands on the point: “What happens when you’re the only woman in a community of guys? Maybe the standards that you have for yourself change, maybe you feel inherent loneliness because no one can understand completely what it is that you’re going through, maybe you’re having imposter syndrome, maybe you feel like your voice can’t be heard or maybe you compensate and bang on the table to be heard. It’s what happens when you’re in an environment where you feel alone and how that shapes you: Does that person you become represent the person that you want to be?”

She continues to share her own experiences on the matter, “I was one of the only women on many of my teams and because I felt so alone and unheard, I almost became a caricature of myself, like ‘oh yeah, I’m one of the guys’ with this tough, masculine energy, when actually there is a lot of softness in me that I forgot about. Who do you have to become to feel like you belong, without sacrificing parts of yourself?”

Thinking back 20 years, there is a lot more female representation in action sports now, but there is still much to work on in different areas of the sports, which is why the Women in Action Sports network isn’t just a platform for athletes.

“We want to show that there is so much more in an industry than the actual sport, how the industry is built from the ground up including athletes, shapers, event organisers, designers, marketers…”

“We want to show that there is so much more in an industry than the actual sport, how the industry is built from the ground up including athletes, shapers, event organisers, designers, marketers…” Alba explains. “There are so many opportunities within the industry, and every aspect — except maybe PR — is male-dominated. How are you going to showcase something that represents the female community if everyone behind it is a male?”

Sharing her experience when attending an event in France, Justine recalls being stunned by the lack of women at the event- apart from the ladies who were hired to cheerlead half-naked on the snow. “There were no female riders and no women around. I remember seeing all these young girls watching this go down who were there to see their favourite skiers in this all-male event and no female athletes have been invited and I’m just sitting there thinking ‘this is fucked’.”

Thinking back about her time working on events, Justine recalls the number of times she was assumed to be an assistant, asked to make coffee, while in fact, she was the one running the event, “We deserve an industry where the decision-makers are women too.”

In the end, we need to put ourselves out there, be curious and ask questions, as Justine says, “Have the humility to ask, have the humility to be curious. If you have this narrow focus on your life right now, what happens when you open it, what happens when you get curious about someone else’s experiences, what happens when you listen instead of waiting for your time to speak. Your personal experience is not all that is true.”

“Not everyone does everything right and we can’t hang people on their mistakes, men, or women, as long as everyone’s willing to learn and try”

“I also think that there has to be room for improvement,” Alba continues. “Not everyone does everything right and we can’t hang people on their mistakes — men or women — as long as everyone’s willing to learn and try. We all make mistakes; everyone does their best and we as a community should remember that. Someone might do something wrong, but let’s move forward.”

“I guess in terms of women in action sports network, for me it’s about extending an invitation to women in this community who want to co-create something that suits their needs,” Justine concludes our conversation. “Come and tell us how we can serve you.  The goal is for [Women in Action Sports] to serve a purpose.