Episodes Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday. I'm your host Ting Ting from sunny Las Vegas. Today I'm presenting you another episode of the Guides' Beta series with our guest Mary Brown.

Mary Brown has worked as a guide manager at Alpine Ascents for almost 10 years. A guide manager is often the interface between guide services and their guides, and serves as a bridge between clients and guides. As a guide, I certainly appreciate how a competent and caring guide manager makes my life easier.

However what exactly does a guide manager do? In today's episode we dive deep into Mary's role in Alpine Ascents to learn about her job description and duties. Since she has been in the industry for almost a decade, I was curious about what major trends Mary had observed. She pointed to climate change and a more diverse clientele as two areas that have impacted the way guide services operate. She described how guide services, for example, Alpine Ascents, had responded to the changes.

We also spent quite some time talking about the awesome initiative, BIPOC Guide Development program, Alpine Ascents piloted in summer 2023. According to Mary the motivation of the program was to provide climbers of color an onramp to professional guiding and help the aspirant guides build their professional network. Mary provided strong reasons to justify the cost to Alpine Ascents. Hopefully other guide services will follow suit.

I hope this episode help unveil the road map to becoming a guide. Now, give it a listen!

What We Talked About:

Intro

• What do you do?
• How did you start and how long have you been in this position?
• Almost 10 years - what did you learn from the industry? How have you improved? Other than daily operation what's your big picture? Things you wish you've done better? Things that you're proud of?

Relationships with guides

• Recruit? How's the turn over rate? How many new guides does Alpine Ascents recruit each year
• Onboarding
• Scheduling
  • Criteria?
  • Seniority?
  • Guide and clients match?
  • Instructor team dynamics
  • Lyra's story (female guide team) but work with majority male clients (atypical?)
• What kind of impacts do you think a guide manager can impact guides
• Compared to traditional sense of Human Resources dept
• You mentioned that Alpine Ascents guides have low turnover rate; however they do transition from full time to more diversified job ( you mentioned about longevity) what other jobs do you see guides transition to? How come full time guide is hard in what aspect?
• Do guides need to be proactive in order to get work? Do you have a feedback system? Are guides generally satisfied with what they are assigned? Or do they fight over work?
• How do you see your relationship with guides? Pure professional? Some personal?
• What's fair? And do you think you have blind spots or biases?

DEI initiatives

• How did you all start?
• Describe the program the selection process and are graduates required to work? Will they be staffed working with non-bipoc clients
• Why? Is it a good thing? Business also needs to look at growth and profit, how does Alpine Ascents justify the initial cost and investment?
• Leadership as a big guide service?
• How did it go for the first year?
• Any direction change for the second year?