Theme: Fresh Tracks

Sun Valley is a place steeped in history and tradition. The world is changing at an ever-increasing pace though. How do we incorporate the best of what we value from our past, while preparing for a rapidly evolving future?

Fresh tracks are the delicious first lines you get to ski on a powder day. The snow and the line you choose is new – the underlying topography centuries old. Join us in finding new ways to navigate, innovate and celebrate the cultural, environmental and social topography of the Wood River Valley.

Sun Valley Opera House
1 Sun Valley Road
Sun Valley, Idaho, 83353
United States

Alex Woodard

Songwriter and Author

Alex Woodard is a critically-acclaimed, award-winning songwriter (his duet Reno, sung with Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, stayed at #1 on CMT's Pure Country Countdown for almost a month) who made his entrance as a published author through the back door, when he invited fans of his music to send him letters that he would turn into songs. The response inspired a highly emotive collection of songs and letters, and as a thank you to the letter-senders, Alex wove his own story through the lyrics and letters to give the senders a book along with an album about their letters. In a serendipitous twist of fate, FOR THE SENDER: Four Letters. Twelve Songs. One Story. fell into the hands of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Wayne Dyer, who shepherded the small self-published work into the first of a three-book, multi-year publishing deal. The FOR THE SENDER series has earned nods from the likes of Ellen Degeneres, Billboard, and Huffington Post as well as best selling author Deepak Chopra.

Brad Cleveland

Former CEO, International Customer Management Institute

Brad is known for his contributions to customer strategy and management. He has worked across 45 states and in 60 countries, authored 8 books, and appeared in media ranging from the NY Times to the Wall Street Journal and NPR’s All Things Considered. His clients have included many service leaders – American Express, Apple, USAA, Google and others; in fact, he’s worked with over 70% of the companies that have the top net promoter score (NPS) in their respective industries. Brad has also worked with governments in the United States, Australia, the UK, and Canada. Brad was one of the founding partners in and former CEO of the International Customer Management Institute, based in Annapolis, Maryland. Today he is a busy consultant, writer and speaker. Brad lives in Sun Valley, ID, with his wife Kirsten and their daughter Grace.

Dave Chase

Founder, Health Rosetta

Dave Chase is co-founder of the Health Rosetta and was named one of the most influential people in Digital Health due to his entrepreneurial success, public speaking & writing that recognizes healthcare’s under-performance but contrasts that with a growing cadre of high-performing organizations that have solved healthcare’s toughest challenges. Chase, widely published, co-authored the healthcare Book of the Year in in 2014. Chase was the CEO & Co-founder of Avado, which was acquired by and integrated into WebMD and the most widely used healthcare professional site – Medscape. Before Avado, Chase spent several years outside of healthcare in startups as founder or consulting roles with LiveRez.com, MarketLeader, & WhatCounts. He also played founding & leadership roles in launching two new $1B+ businesses within Microsoft including their $2 billion healthcare platform business. Chase is a father of two great kids/athletes, husband & oxygen-fueled mountain athlete.

David Hayden

Founder, Archipelago

David Colby Hayden is a visionary leader and entrepreneur who, in the earliest days of the Internet, created several companies that disrupted the prevailing order of technology and business at that time. Among his start-ups, he was co-founder of Magellan, one of the world’s first five search engines, and founder of Critical Path, the world’s first cloud-based hosting system. In addition, Hayden is known for JetEye, one of the first social search platforms, and CloudTalk, the first asynchronous voice communication application. He was named an E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999, was one of Forbes 10 “E” Gang Members of 1999, was named one of the top 100 Internet Entrepreneurs at the 2000 World Economic Forum in Davos, and he delivered the keynote speech at the World Bank Government Borrower’s Forum in Rome in 2000. He has been called visionary, mysterious, mercurial… He loves working with his hands in wood and stone, writing poetry, skiing, and traveling.

David Holmes

Educational Advisor

David Holmes been immersed in education since he diverted from a career path headed for the Foreign Service and took a job as a dean of students at a small college in Illinois. This move followed degrees at Middlebury College and Columbia University and a stint in intelligence work during the Vietnam War. After attaining a PhD at the University of Denver, his career included a tenured faculty position and the founding of a university-wide center for teaching excellence at the University of Vermont; co-founding a national program to help low income youth get on a path to college (CFES, now 25 years old); managing a $25 mil grants program in Washington, DC to foster innovation in higher education; founding a 520 student full-scholarship high school in Rio for disadvantaged youth from all 26 states in Brazil; and leading two independent schools (Suffield Academy and Community School).

Jae Hill

Community Development Director, City of Sun Valley, Idaho

Jae Hill is currently the Community Development Director for the City of Sun Valley and has more than eight years of multidisciplinary planning experience across the Western United States. He has a Masters in Business Administration from University of Nevada, Reno, and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from Cal Poly Pomona; his 2011 environmental planning thesis focused on mountain resort communities under pressure from climate change and a lack affordable housing. Jae has lived in a variety of mountain towns and snowy places, like Alaska, Mammoth, Tahoe, Salt Lake City, and now Ketchum. Jae is also an AICP-certified planner with the American Planning Association (APA) and a certified floodplain manager (CFM) with the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM). He sits on the board of the Ketchum Innovation Center and the board of the Ketchum Urban Renewal Authority (KURA). Jae has published a novel, Plaguelands, that is set in a future ravaged by climate change.

Jeanne Liston

Executive Director

Jeanne moved to Sun Valley from Kansas in 1999 having spent several years working and volunteering overseas in Europe, Africa and Asia. After volunteering with street children and AIDS patients in the slums of Bangkok, Thailand, she returned to the States to join husband, Tom, in a new adventure in the mountains of Idaho. Jeanne has worked in the social profit sector in the Wood River Valley for the last 17 years and is deeply committed to the overall health of the community. In 2007, she was hired as Executive Director of The Hunger Coalition and has grown the organization from a staff of one with a budget of $70,000 to a staff of 12 and a $1.3 million budget. Under her leadership, programs have expanded to serve more than 3,500 individuals each year, reaching 17% of the county’s population. Jeanne is excited about the direction The Hunger Coalition is heading and hopes that other communities can benefit from the innovative approaches the Coalition has undertaken.

Mark Gilbreath

Founder & CEO, Liquid Space

Mark is the founder of LiquidSpace, the first end-to-end digital platform for flexible office procurement, combining powerful, technology-driven solutions with real-time space availability across the industry’s largest, most diverse marketplace for workspace solutions. Mark is an experienced entrepreneur, highly effective leader and powerful voice in the commercial real estate industry. In 2016, Mark fundamentally transformed the fragmented real estate industry by introducing a unified network experience designed to bring each member of the complex commercial real estate supply chain together into a single, cohesive network. Engineered to simplify the discovery and transaction of office space, the advanced LiquidSpace network seamlessly connects more than 60,000 growing teams and professionals looking for space, with over 2,200 verified venue partners, space providers, real estate professionals, and service providers. Mark spent 25+ years in the technology industry.

Matthew (Mattie) Mead

Founder, Hempitecture

Matthew Mead is a life-loving builder and entrepreneur with a passion for cultivating an ecologically conscious relationship between the built environment and the natural world. While studying Architecture and Environmental Studies at Hobart William Smith Colleges, the notion of architecture as not only a functioning art form, but as an important bridge between humans and their impact on the environment, inspired a focus on sustainable building methods. Channeling this focus resulted in the creation of Hempitecture, a startup concerned with developing and implementing energy efficient, green building systems using natural materials. Matthew found his current home in Sun Valley, Idaho working on a collaborative design+build project to construct the first public-use hemp building in the United States. It is here where an appreciation and deepening respect for the natural world continues to grow amidst the mountains and blue skies.

Muffy Davis

Athlete

Paralyzed from a ski racing accident in Sun Valley when she was just 16, Muffy Davis has not let her disability slow her down or keep her from reaching her dreams. A graduate from Stanford University, Muffy travels the globe as a sought after motivational speaker, athlete and adventurer. Drawing on her own story of triumph through adversity, Muffy is passionate about helping others identify their dreams and learn how not to let challenges get in the way of achieving those dreams. She is a four-time Paralympic Medalist in alpine skiing and three-time Paralympic Gold medalist in road cycling. Additionally, Muffy is a World Champion in both ski racing and cycling, has been inducted into 3 Ski Hall of Fames including the US Ski and SnowBoard Hall of Fame, is a Guinness World Record Holder, a wife and mother of 7-year- old Elle. Excited to have recently relocated back to the Wood River Valley, Muffy is looking forward to reintegrating and raising her daughter here.

Murray Hidary

Composer & Pianist

Composer and pianist Murray Hidary is the creator of Mind Travel. His provocative, improvisational, real-time compositions with the piano and art projections, inspired by theoretical physics and wisdom traditions, take the audience on a transporting and expansive journey. It is an exploration in translating music into our daily thoughts, words and actions. To carry forward the lessons of music into our lives. To live with harmony, clarity and rhythm. Murray has brought Mind Travel to Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Grace Cathedral, The National Arts Club and festivals including Wanderlust, Carlsbad and Burning Man. Mind Travel has been brought to audiences in theaters, beaches and parks including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, London, Montauk, New Jersey, Miami, Aspen, Oxford, Malibu, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Germany. Italy and Croatia. Murray studied at New York University and recently scored the documentary REM about architect Rem Koolhaas.

Rebecca Rusch

Professional Athlete

Rebecca Rusch is the Queen of Pain with a heart of gold. It doesn’t matter if Rebecca is pedaling through the night on an epic adventure across Italy, riding her bike up Africa’s legendary Mt. Kilimanjaro, or teaching clinics and camps at the SRAM Gold Rusch Tour, she brings energy, positivity and inspiration to whatever challenge she meets. As a professional athlete for over three decades, the 7x World Champion has continually tested her own limits, and shattered the glass ceiling in whatever sport she tackles. She redefined the team dynamics of adventure racing, has a first female ascent rock climbing El Capitan in Yosemite, river boarded down the Grand Canyon, and has given the men a run for their money in endurance mountain biking. Rusch’s work extends beyond the start line as the best selling author of Rusch to Glory, event producer for Rebecca’s Private Idaho, motivational speaker, firefighter, and cycling advocate.

Thia Konig

Photographer

Thia Konig was given her first camera in the third grade, and from that moment on, she considered it a license to throw herself at life. When she stood up to take a picture at her elementary school parade, the teachers told her to sit down, to which she replied, “No, it’s ok,I have a camera!” In 1991 she graduated with honors from the Brooks Institute of Photography, and made her way to Ketchum, Idaho to pursue her career. In 2000, Thia opened her gallery/studio, Photos Do Not Bend, in Ketchum, ID. The versatile space has allowed her to hold court for many avenues of her photography including gallery walks, workshops, photo shoots and more. Thia has collected many national and international awards for her photography over the last 30 years, and is recognized for her unique perspective on the world. Thia believes that if we consider someone our friend, or understand them, we are more likely to think globally and include them in our thoughts and vote accordingly.

Vanessa Fry

Assistant Director, Idaho Policy Institute, Boise State University

Vanessa Crossgrove Fry is Assistant Director of the Idaho Policy Institute at Boise State University where she is also an asst research professor and PhD candidate in Public Policy and Administration. At BSU Vanessa has also served as the Asst Director for the Public Policy Research Center and Policy Innovation Fellow for the City of Boise where she conducted a feasibility assessment on using Pay for Success financing to address issues associated with chronic homelessness. Originally from Ohio, Vanessa has served in non-profit leadership roles and educational pursuits all over the country. In New York Vanessa worked with Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology and Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. In Idaho she’s worked with the Snake River Alliance, the Environmental Resource Center, Citizens for Smart Growth, and the Community Transportation of Idaho. She co-founded Sustain Blaine (now Sun Valley Economic Dev). She has a BA from Wittenberg University and MBA from Presidio School.