Brigid White can’t imagine life without sport: running, mountain biking, kiteboarding, and surfing. The master’s student in design reserves a special place, though, for skiing. She describes the feeling of the wind on her face as she flies through the air, but for the crystalline structure below her, as “almost poetic.” In 2024, she began freeriding, which involves staking out a “line” of a trail and stylistically navigating down it, sometimes through ungroomed terrain, forests, and even over cliffs.
During a freeride event at Sugar Bowl Resort near Lake Tahoe that year, White noticed she was one of only nine female skiers to compete, alongside 50 men, even though organizers had urged women to join. “Sometimes women can have a higher bar that they feel like they need to meet” to participate, White says. What if there were a space that welcomed women into freeride but felt potentially less daunting? she wondered.
So White pitched a one-day freeride clinic to Sugar Bowl Resort CEO Bridget Legnavasky. How about two days? Legnavasky countered. Thus was born the Empowder Festival, held for the first time in March 2025 and scheduled for the second in February 2026. Creating a welcoming environment for women and nonbinary attendees, says Sugar Bowl director of marketing Jon Slaughter, inspires a “culture of inclusivity, mentorship, and empowerment on the mountain, which ultimately strengthens the entire ski community.”
What if there were a space that welcomed women into freeride but felt potentially less daunting?
Empowder 2025 enlisted Tahoe instructors to coach 45 attendees—on the slopes and in the classroom—on judging criteria such as line choice, control, fluidity, and style. “I don’t think I would have ever pushed myself to learn some of those skills if I hadn’t felt like I was in an environment where I had the right support,” says Miriam Khan, an Empowder 2025 attendee who learned how to jump and navigate through chutes and off rock formations. She recalls a moment when the women in her group stood together atop a run, skis aligned, before each descended the mountain with a chorus of cheers behind them. The sense of community, she says, helped her “try new and hard and scary things.”
In the evening as they bedazzled one another with sparkles and friendship bracelets, one skier approached White. “This girl came up, and she was crying. She said, ‘I did things today that I never thought were ever possible for me in skiing. I’m just so overwhelmed with pride for myself right now.’ ”
Georgia Allen, ’28, is an editorial intern at Stanford. Email her at stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
