Camber Outdoors executive director Deanne Buck has announced that she will step downeffective immediately.The resignation came after backlash Camber received over its .
At Outdoor Retailer last month, Camber launched its new initiative for increased diversity, equity, and inclusion in the outdoor industry, calling on brand executives and CEOs to make concerted efforts to support people of diverse backgrounds inleadership roles. The only problem: in wording on its website, and in Buck’s oral remarks at the trade-show announcement, Camber calledthe program the first of its kind.As , that’s not true.
Camber, formerly known as the Outdoor IndustryWomen’s Coalition, was the first organization to ask brands to make increased gender diversity a priority with its 2015 CEO pledge, an initiative that called on executives to get more women working at all levels of their companies. But this past summer, at the 2018 Summer Outdoor Retailer,founder Teresa Bakerstarted an Outdoor CEO Diversity Pledgefocused specifically on calling for increased racial equity in the outdoor industry. Camber’s update last month of its original 2015 CEO pledge,with its new focus on racial diversity and bearing the “first of its kind”language, came roughly seven months after Baker’s.
More frustrating to Baker and her colleagues was the fact that Camber had turned down requests to join their initiative, as had several brands that ultimately signed Camber’s pledge in January. “With great fanfare, they created the optic of a large group of white-led outdoor brands signaling a preference to follow a white-led organization on diversity instead of an alliance of organizations of color organized by a black woman,” Glenn Nelson, a founding member of Baker’s pledge committee, wrote in an op-ed for ϳԹ. The outcry led Camber to amend the language on its website and issue a . The Camber board of directors also issued its .
But that didn’t stem the , which came from all corners of the internet. “It’s clear that I’ve become a lightning rod, and the work is too important for me to become a distraction,” Buck said in on Friday. “The change in leadership at Camber Outdoors is a significant milestone inin the workplace in the outdoor industry.” Buck says her resignation had been in progress since Junebut that the controversy over the equity pledge fast-trackedit.
The announcement of Buck’s resignation comes one week afterJerry Stritzkeannounced that he was stepping down from his position as CEO of REI after an investigation into a “personal and consensual relationship between the REI CEO and the leader of another organization in the outdoor industry,” according to a sent out by REI on Tuesday.As , REI has been one of Camber’s top supporters, over the past five years, and the close timing of the two executives’departures was not lost on readers, who reportedly brought up the topic with SNews.This led the publication’s reporter to ask whether Buck was the“leader of another organization”mentioned in REI’s press release. Buck steered clear of an answer. “I think any question about REI and Jerry’s personal relationship or personal life should be directed to REI,” she told SNews.“This conversation is about Camber Outdoors. So, I’d prefer that we stay on that topic.” Camber did not respond to ܳٲ’srequests for further comment on the topic.
Camber board member Diana Seungwill take Buck’splace as executive director effective immediately. Seunghas a retail backgroundand most recently was the executive vice president of merchandising at Backcountry. As SNewsreported, Seung, who is Korean American,is already taking action to increase in-house diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.