Amy Parsons: Hi, I am Amy Parsons, President of Colorado State University and host of The Next 150 podcast. We have so many remarkable people in our community, and this is where we’re going to hear their stories. We’re going to get their perspectives on CSU’s next 150 years and gather their very best advice for today’s CSU students. Let’s get started, Rams.

All right. Hello Rams, and welcome back to another episode of The Next 150. I’m so excited for today’s guest, my friend Luis Benitez. Thank you for being here on campus today.

Luis Benitez: It’s really exciting to be here.

Amy Parsons: So, Luis is on campus today for a special event that we’ll talk about, but in the studio with me, as well. I have known Luis for some time. I’ve admired his accomplishments, his career trajectory for a very long time. He is an internationally known mountaineer and adventurer, having led dozens of expeditions to the highest peaks around the world on every continent, has summited Mount Everest more times than I can count on one hand. He’s a leader in so many areas, from advocating for outdoor recreation and natural spaces to public policy and education. I won’t go through the whole bio right now, but I’ll just name off a couple things to set context, Luis. He’s served as director of Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office under Governor Hickenlooper, vice president of governmental affairs and global impact for VF Corp, chief impact officer for the Trust for Public Lands.

He served on CSU’S own Salazar Center, our external advisory board, and he recently published an outstanding book that we’ll discuss today, and recently he was named as vice president of global government affairs for Lululemon. Super cool title and job. Can’t wait to talk about that. So again, thank you so much for being here. You’re on campus for our Outfitting Tomorrow Summit, which is a day-long event, bringing together more than 25 outdoor industry partners together with our faculty, our students, really focusing on workforce needs for the future, which is awesome. I mean, CSU is really trying to position ourselves as a leader in this space, bringing together all these different places, and I personally can’t think of anybody better than you to headline this event and to share your wisdom for all of us. So congratulations on your new role with Lululemon, and if it’s okay with you, let’s just start there. Tell us what you’re doing today in this new role.

Luis Benitez: Well, first of all, Madam President, thank you for having me on campus. This is a place that’s near and dear to my heart over the years watching the curriculum evolve within the outdoor industry and within this space. And, I think I can speak on behalf of everyone, we so appreciate your focus on this economy and on this space, and recognizing the state that you’re in and the backyard that you have, that this is really something special. And the people that I’ve met in the program today and the things that I’ve seen, the design and development pieces within apparel and footwear, it’s safe to say that you’re not emerging in this space, you are deeply rooted in this space. So congratulations to you.

Amy Parsons: Thank you. Thanks so much. I mean, it really comes down to our talented faculty in so many different areas across campus, right? There’s design and merchandising, and then as a land grant institution and Extension, we have a footprint everywhere in Colorado, and then we’ve got our business school, we’ve got natural resources. So for us, it feels very organic to be leading in this space.

Luis Benitez: But I think that, I’ll say one more thing about this and then we can talk about Lulu, but I’ve met more PhDs this morning than I think I’ve known my entire life. I definitely had a point where I was questioning my life choices academically if I should have gotten one or if I was supposed to get one. So it’s just exceptional the amount of talent you’ve pulled in from around the world. And I think when you look at companies like the 13 brands that are under VF, like North Face and Timberland and Smartwool and Icebreaker and JanSport, and on and on, or a global brand like Lululemon. I think one of the unique things about the outdoor industry, whether it’s equipment, apparel, footwear or natural resource management or the NGO space, is that it’s all connected to purpose-driven ideology. When you think of an economy in an industry in the United States, or frankly globally, there are very few places and spaces where that connectivity to purpose with a deeper understanding of what it means to have a mission that’s rooted both in history and in natural resources, it’s pretty special.

Amy Parsons: You talk about purpose and mission, it seems to me and a lot of your work, it’s also a purpose and mission that spans parties and ideologies. It’s a place where you can get some agreement across parties and especially in an area, in a time that’s so polarized right now. Why do you think that this really cuts across so many boundaries?

Luis Benitez: It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I tell people all the time that republicans and democrats wear Lululemon. Independents wear Lululemon.

Amy Parsons: And they enjoy the outdoors.

Luis Benitez: And they enjoy the outdoors. So there’s no real definitive place or space. I think the outdoor industry is one of the few remaining bipartisan economies in the United States that does bridge that divide. And with respect to Colorado, I really deeply feel that this is the place and also the ideology around some of those things with respect to the industry that the United States really hasn’t heard from yet. I think this story is really just beginning.

Amy Parsons: A bipartisan economy. I’m not sure I’ve heard that term before. We’ll explore that a little bit more. Talk to us about Lululemon and why you took on this role and the impact that you hope you can make with this company.

Luis Benitez: Yeah, it’s funny. I sort of connect my trajectory — I think anybody in the outdoor industry, if you look at their LinkedIn or you look at their resume, it’s going to be this really convoluted swooping journey of all these different pieces that may make sense, may not make sense, but there’s usually a little bit of connective tissue somewhere, and I’m definitely no different. I think the one thing that I joke about is working for brands early on that were really purpose-driven, like the North Face. Those are some of my original sponsors when I was an athlete, when I was a full-time professional mountaineer. And now, a little bit older, a little bit wiser, now I get to work with brands that focus on yoga that help me stay not falling apart and keep me in one piece. But I think the overarching theme for all of it is that these are brands and pieces of the industry and the economy that really try to help people understand how deeply important that movement is to physical and mental wellbeing. I think the other thing that’s unique about who we are and what we do is oftentimes there’s limited, other than sort of anecdotally, there’s limited connectivity to that real understanding that time outside’s good for you.

Regardless of what you wear. Now, granted, I would hope that people would wear brands that I believe in and that I love, but time outside’s good for you, physically and mentally. I think now, and any millennial in the room, forgive me, there’s even a hashtag now to go touch grass. And when you think about that and when you see that and when you, first of all, I jump for joy when that started trending because what that is is an affirmation that these pieces matter. Whatever field you’re in professionally, personally, touching grass, spending time outside, understanding how that connects to your inspiration, how it helps drive that purpose in any profession is a real unique thing to who we are and what we do. And Lululemon’s no different.

Amy Parsons: Yeah. So you mentioned looking for brands that align with your values, and that’s where you put your dollars, that’s how you vote in a lot of ways, right? Is you vote with your dollars. How do our young people today figure that out? Figure out who are the brands that align with their values, how to really make those choices, especially in a time when there’s so much misinformation. It’s hard to find the truth. It’s hard to find those brands that align with your values. How are people supposed to go about doing that? You’ve obviously done that, embedded that with Lulu.

Luis Benitez: Yeah, that’s a great question, and I think we’re seeing it real time play out right now with some of the decisions of brands to support political leaders with respect to public lands or public waterways and how that juxtaposition of brands jumping into the political arena, what that looks and feels like. I think for young people, how they make their decisions, they can smell a phony a mile away, and not only can they smell a phony a mile away, but research now and access to materials and a much higher level of sophistication, especially with AI, to really understand what brands do both in the marketplace, but also if you claim to do a certain thing with sustainability or if you claim to do a certain thing philanthropically and you only do it for two years, as opposed to a lifetime of effort or a body of effort, and you’re not transparent in the explanation of your journey, people can find that and they can find it really, really quickly. And I think understanding how you position as a brand does attach to that consumer base. For Lulu, we’re about movement. We’re ultimately about movement, whether it’s trail running or whether it’s hiking or whether it’s yoga or whether it’s climbing. I hear this joke all the time at our headquarters in Vancouver with respect to our yoga leggings, but you see yoga leggings running to the store, hiking on a trail, trail running. You don’t see them just for yoga. And so I think this cross-functionality leads to this brand identity, which leads to a little bit more of an affinity of if it can become a part of your lifestyle and by wearing that brand, it sort of enhances your lifestyle because it is purpose-driven and aligned with your own values.

That’s really the magic of a consumer that shows up time and time again.

Amy Parsons: Yeah. You mentioned a minute ago a convoluted swooping journey, I think you said. And when I think about you and I learned about you in your book, Higher Ground, and some of your early years, and thinking about where you are now and your advocacy work through Lulu, you’ve had a pretty interesting journey. So if you don’t mind, because I really enjoyed learning more about you in your early years in your book, talk about how you first came into being an outdoor enthusiast from your childhood, because it’s an interesting place that people might not expect from you. And then, how did you decide to go from being a recreational outdoor enthusiast to being the guy who’s climbing Mount Everest?

Luis Benitez: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I think it also leads, especially for students that are here and folks that are trying to explore this career, that when I was coming up, there was no path. There was no program like you have at CSU. It was really, you had to hack your education and you had to figure it out. But for me, to your question about how all this began, it really started because I was born with debilitating asthma and allergies. It really started from a place of physical health and anybody with asthma and allergies now, it’s pretty widely accepted that even with a course of medication, you also need to exercise to strengthen your lungs. That’s the only way you’re going to get through it. Well, back when I was a kid, the general accepted premise was it was medicine only. Don’t exercise, it’s going to make it worse. It’s going to give you an asthma attack. So my parents were told from a very early age, this kid’s going to be a boy in the bubble. He’s never going to go outside, get him comfortable with that. So when a neighbor would mow the lawn in the summertime, I was allergic to grass. I mean, what kid do you know?

Amy Parsons: You weren’t #TouchingGrass.

Luis Benitez: I was not touching grass. If it would’ve been #TouchingGrass, the next hashtag would’ve been #AsthmaAttack. It was not a fun way to grow up. But I do remember, and I give my parents a lot of credit for this, for thinking differently about what health could mean to me. They found a really, at the time, a progressive doctor, Dr. Bowles, I’ll never forget him, who said, there’s something to getting your son’s lungs stronger. I know everybody says, watch the exercise, don’t overexert. But we need to find a way to get him outside and to get him exercising. And the best time to do that with respect to somebody that has a high level of allergies and a high propensity for asthma attacks is in the heart of winter. So the colder it is, the less allergen, the less pollutants there are that are airborne.

So when all the other kids were being called inside because it was too cold, and fingers and toes were getting really, really, really chilly, that was the time that my parents would send me out the most. And the American side of my family, my grandfather owned a sporting goods store, so having the best gloves, the best jacket, the best ski stuff to wear outside, I really understood what it meant to have a warm pair of gloves versus a really bad pair of gloves and how that translated. So between that, and then this was a really unique thing, they also said start swimming at an indoor pool. So the chlorine in an indoor pool makes the air denser, and so it makes the allergen content less. So my parents put me in this club called the Little Debbie Swim team. That was actually, it’s not the cookie, the Little Debbie Swim team. So I joined the Little Debbie Swim team, and I started basically playing outside every day in the winter because the colder it was, the more snowy it was, the better it was. And bit by bit my lungs got stronger. So for me, it was this unique journey of attaching time outside to actually being healthy, and that health attached directly to being happy. So for me, time outside wasn’t just a nice thing to have or a fun thing to do. I really credit time outdoors was saving my life.

Amy Parsons: And at some point, I mean obviously, that parlayed into this professional career as a mountaineer, summiting the largest, highest peaks in the world and all of that. That’s taking it to a bit of an extreme, right?

Luis Benitez: There’s a good story with that, too.

Amy Parsons: Tell me that.

Luis Benitez: Well, so obviously being a sick little kid, I got really good with Legos and I became a voracious reader. Those were the two things that I loved doing the most. My parents actually converted one of our spare bedrooms into Legoland for me. So I think I had more Legos than any kid probably should have been allowed to have. And my parents were convinced I was going to become an architect. But the thing that happened when I was eight years old, my dad had a collection of National Geographic magazines in his office, just a sea of yellow bindings. Every night I would just pull a stack down and I would take ’em to my bedroom and just flip through the pages and read what I could. This was about the time I was about nine years old. And one night I came across an edition from 1963 that talked about the first American expedition to Everest.

And it turns out that Lou Whittaker, the first American—Jim Whittaker, I’m sorry, his twin brother, Jim Whittaker, the first American to climb Everest, actually had asthma and allergies. And the article talked about Jim, his parents, they lived up around Mount Rainier in Washington state, and it talks about how Jim’s parents made him swim in high alpine lakes to get his lungs stronger. So I have a clear memory when I was nine years old of dragging this magazine into my parents’ bedroom, laying it down on the bed and pointing to the picture, and I said, this guy has what I have, and this guy climbed Mount Everest. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to be a mountaineer. I’m going to climb Mount Everest. And it was this declarative thing in my life whenever anybody would ask me. And we all get that question, right, little boy, little girl, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And for me as a wheezy, asthmatic kid from the Midwest, I would look people straight in the eye and I would say, I want to be a mountaineer. I want to climb Mount Everest. And then I’d take a hit off my inhaler and I’d go wheezing down the road. So I think it starts to lead to this belief that you have to really understand there are those magical moments in time when you can translate what you wanted to be when you were a kid to what you end up doing. So what did you want to be when you were little?

Amy Parsons: That’s amazing.

Luis Benitez: Can you remember?

Amy Parsons: Yeah, I think I wanted be a flight attendant.

Luis Benitez: There you go. And president of a university. I’m sure there’s a little bit of emergency exit in there somewhere, but there you go. That’s it.

Amy Parsons: That’s an amazing journey. And you did it obviously to extreme success and have had this just incredible career as an adventurer and mountaineer. At some point along the way, you started turning your sights on public policy, and government and advocacy. How did that start to grow in you as something that you wanted to pursue?

Luis Benitez: I think it was two things. And I say a lot to people that I have this conversation with, and I think you and I have talked about points of this in the past. There’s a little bit of hard luck. There’s a little bit of fate and there’s a little bit of curiosity that sort of get blended into every piece of how these things evolve. And I was happily living in Eagle, Colorado, which at the time was a 7,500 person community, really a bedroom community for the ski industry because Beaver Creek and Vail were right up the road, and was sort of splitting my time between guiding, working for Vail Resorts, helping them with their talent management and organizational development, and also doing a little bit of consulting. So just like every other person that lives in the mountains, cobbling it together. And as a member of that community, I had strong opinions of how town was being managed, where we were spending our public dollars, what we were really investing in.

I was watching other towns around us like, Salida, Buena Vista, really focus on the outdoor recreation opportunities within their infrastructure that would help drive main street development, tax revenue. And I just, I’ve always been really opinionated—surprise, surprise—and I never kept those opinions to myself. So literally after a bike ride one afternoon with some friends, we all ended up in my front lawn just sort of resting and refilling tires and having a beverage or two, and I describe it as a political intervention. They sat me down and they said, there’s an election coming up for town council. There’s a seat open and you’re going to run because we actually believe in the things that you’re saying. And we believe that the things that you’re talking about would be beneficial for our town. No formal education in policy, no formal education in politics. And so I told them that they were nuts. That’s not a part of my wheelhouse. It’s not who I am. That’s not what I do. And I like to share, they really didn’t give me much of a choice. I mean, I had signs printed with my name on ’em before I really knew what was happening. But they set up town hall meetings. They got me out in front of people talking about my ideas, listening to what other people thought, and I ran and I got the seat.

Amy Parsons: I didn’t even know this about you.

Luis Benitez: I was the youngest on town council by a country mile. Two other people got elected that were sort of in my generation, and with a supportive mayor, we went about asking some really difficult questions for town, and this was new to me, the procedures, the rules, how government worked. And I just found that I really, really enjoyed how that process worked. And slowly but surely, we started asking some big fundamental questions. The first one was expanding our mountain bike trail system.

At the time, town needed a new septic system, basically, for the sewage wastewater treatment facility. And there was this moment in time where we had a certain amount of tax revenue, it had to get paid for. We had a span of how much longer we could use our existing infrastructure, where it was going to start getting a little difficult depending on the growth of town. And we voted to expand our mountain bike trail system as opposed to do this very simple infrastructure decision. If I had a nickel for how many times I got stopped in the milk aisle at the grocery store, people telling me, you’re making the wrong decision. You’re going to bring dirty mountain bikers to town. They don’t do anything for us. This is ridiculous. It’s a bad decision. Well, turns out, that move started getting high school mountain biking championships to come to town.

And when people were driving away from the front range as ski season would end and going to Utah, we started to capture some of that market for mountain biking, which drove main street development and led to a mountain bike shop opening. So people started to see that this momentum began to build. The next decision we tackled was the whitewater park in our river corridor, which faces I-70, faces the highway that runs in front of town. CDOT used it as a truck parking lot, because as you know, trucks needed to have parking lots at a certain distance, so truck drivers could pull over and stop. The next one was right up the road in Edwards, Colorado. And so our argument was that if one is right up the road, you didn’t need the one right in our front yard, that we were going to build a whitewater park and that it was going to be an amazing public amenity and people could pull over with their paddle boards and have a really great time.

Well, that means we would have to go down to the capitol and actually start fighting and talking to CDOT to try to make that change. So it was kind of like Mr. Smith goes to Washington. I had to put on my jacket, find a tie in the closet and go down and actually start talking about how this process would work. And that put me on the radar of then Governor Hickenlooper, unbeknownst to me. So through that work, I was happily serving on town council, still doing all the other jobs that I described, when the governor came up with the idea for the outdoor recreation industry office and called. I thought he was calling to put together a committee to explore who the director should be, we’ll start talking to people around the state. That’s honestly what I thought the meeting was going to be about. I walked out of the capitol building with an offer to be the first director, and I, to this day, credit him with changing the trajectory of my life with that decision.

Amy Parsons: Jobs come to you in unusual ways. That’s what I’m learning about you.

Luis Benitez: Boy, oh boy.

Amy Parsons: From all over the place.

Luis Benitez: Yes, yes, indeed. I’ve been very, very lucky in that regard.

Amy Parsons: So, couple questions from that. I mean, one thing that I think is so unique about you and your journey, now, you’ve seen, you take the outdoor recreation industry, you’ve seen changes, how you go about strategizing and changing, from local government, from state government, from nonprofits, like Trust for Public Lands, from the corporate angle, like VF Corp and Lululemon. So you see all these different ways to advocate for the industry and outdoor recreation. What do you think is most effective? Where have you seen the most success coming from? Because you’ve worn all these different hats around the industry now, and as a professional athlete within it, as well.

Luis Benitez: Yeah, it might seem a little frenetic, and I’d like to think that most of it’s been intentional, but I think at the end of the day, it’s, what I’ve tried to do is find the connective tissue by being lucky in the middle of all of those things. And I think the journey for me with all of those spaces has really been understanding that this industry has never really given itself enough credit. I think for the longest time we’ve been seen as the fun kids. Oh, you make fun stuff. You do fun stuff. It’s nice to have. And you usually live in the nonprofit space, because it’s mostly connected to natural resources that drive the utilization of a lot of these things. But you can’t be really worth much. You don’t have a lot of political gravity. And so I think the journey really has been to understand that we’re talking about an economy.

Well, here’s an example I’ll give you. When we started this journey with the outdoor industry office, there were two offices, one in Utah and one in Colorado. We slowly convinced other governors to create the role, and then it turned into eight states. Those eight states formed the first coalition of saying, this is actually a bigger deal than we give it credit for. So we started going to the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C., and saying, we think we should be counted towards the country’s GDP. They looked at us like we were nuts. What, do you want us to count like skis and raincoats? You’re not a thing.

This isn’t a thing that we would count. So we kept trying to justify the process, kept asking for this to happen, and lo and behold, they did the count. They did our first count a handful of years ago. All the cynics out there said, well, that’s great. It’s wonderful. We’ll know, but you’re not going to be worth a whole lot. $867 billion in economic output, over 4 million American jobs. Every jaw in Washington, D.C., hit the floor. But then the follow-up question was, well, who do we talk to with respect to policy, with respect to the ethos of what this industry means? There were only eight states with a director. There really wasn’t a gravity of momentum for that conversation. So the process kept going. More states started creating the office bit by bit. We had 10 states, then we had 15 states with the office. And then the Department of Commerce did their second count a few years ago. $1.2 trillion in economic output, over 5 million American jobs. And in 2025, there will be 25 states with an office of outdoor recreation industry. So when you talk about a trillion dollar economy in the United States, it’s not just the fun kids doing fun things. We’re an economy bigger than the auto industry, bigger than the pharmaceutical industry and on par with agriculture. So to your original question, I think the time has come to really start asking and exploring what our political voice should look and sound like in the United States.

Amy Parsons: What are some of the biggest things you think it should look like in the United States on a national level? What would you want to see Congress and Department of Commerce taking on on a national scale when it comes to this, now that they’re armed with the data? Right?

Luis Benitez: Yeah. Well, this is this unique political moment in time where I think this is a relevant conversation nationally. And I think one of the things that we’ve been looking at and exploring is should there be a federal office of outdoor recreation in the Department of Commerce? There’s a Division for Global Tourism in the Department of Commerce. Tourism sells what we do, so why wouldn’t there be a federal office? So that’s one thing. But the other thing that we’ve worked really hard to create collectively is what we call the confluence accords. So every state that creates an office of outdoor recreation industry, we agreed a long time ago, and this accord was drafted and basically created in Colorado under then Governor Hickenlooper, and it focused on four primary areas of work for the outdoor industry: economic development, conservation and stewardship, education and workforce planning, and public health. So every state that would create an o-rec office had to agree if they became a signatory that these were the four areas that they were going to focus on for their office, for their state. And I got to tell you, every month, state directors, red states, blue states, all get on the phone and share best practices. Name another industry that has state directors that serve a governor, get together and share trade secrets from their state.

Amy Parsons: There should be more.

Luis Benitez: So when I talk about a bipartisan, truly a bipartisan industry and a bipartisan office, that’s the magic of a function like that.

Amy Parsons: Well, if they create a national office someday, I know a guy who I might call to lead that. I’m just saying,

Luis Benitez: It’s so funny. I had just had this conversation with someone. I had this vision a long time ago, because people talk about, well, would you take it? Would you do it? What would you do? Two things with that. One, I think Colorado’s ethos around all of this, I don’t think the rest of the country has heard from Colorado politically enough yet. I don’t think they’ve heard about our pragmatic approach to this and how much it’s ingrained into the country’s DNA and how much we celebrate that fact within our state’s borders. So I think that’s one thing. The second thing, to your point about a director, I just have this idea in my head that this person is going to come from Hawaii or Guam, or one of our territories or the islands that truly understands what ʻOhana means, the Hawaiians’ family, and truly understand not only what the connectivity is to the land, but how that land feeds and serves the people. Because we talk about all those same things. I would just love to find a political outsider that has nothing to do with this that would come in with a pure heart and really help all of us understand just how important it is to take a fresh perspective on all of these things. Maybe it’ll happen. Who knows?

Amy Parsons: Maybe it’ll happen. I think if you put it out there in the universe, there’s a pretty good chance of it happening. I’ve seen that happening with you.

Luis Benitez: If anybody’s listening out there.

Amy Parsons: Let me ask you this. As you talk about the magic of Colorado and what we all have here, the special sauce that we have in Colorado, put yourself in my shoes. Managing our big, public land grant university here in Colorado, who wants to be great at growing the outdoor recreation industry, creating future leaders in it, leveraging our resources, our talent, our amazing PhDs who you met today. How do I help foster this sort of ecosystem of authentic partnerships with industry, with government, to help be leaders in this space?

Luis Benitez: I think the unique moment in time that we have right now, we’ve talked a little bit about counting our economy so people know that we actually are of size, scale, and scope, that our voice matters. So that’s great. So now people are showing up to ask, what do you think and feel, as an industry, what’s most important to you? The programs that you’ve created here within CSU are extraordinary because they’re creating the next generation of leadership for our industry and for our economy. That is one of the things that kept me up at night the most. And you’re serving that purpose and that need, which is an extraordinary thing. But I think what comes next is politicians have to come ask for our vote. I think anybody that’s going to say that they love the outdoors, that it’s deeply important, how and why needs to be the follow-up question.

So I think for a student body, which I think already is sort of inherently asking a lot of these larger questions about their community. I think for the longest time, our industry was seen as something that was apart from policy and apart from politics. But I think the aha moment in the last few years is because of all the things that we protect, promote, conserve, and defend, no longer can those two things sit apart. They have to be together. So I think as we enter into this policy arena, I think it’s sort of the responsibility of who we are and what we do that will help shape that moment and help shape what comes next.

Amy Parsons: Yeah, that’s very on brand for CSU and where we want our students to go and what we want them to do. And I always end with a question about advice from you to our student population. And at CSU, we claim to be we are democracy’s university. That’s what I like to say, that we are a land-grant institution. We’re making good citizens out of our students so that they can fully participate in democracy when they graduate, no matter what their discipline is, no matter what they want to do. What advice would you give to our students, especially our young students who are just coming into their own, how to develop and to be those good advocates and citizens?

Luis Benitez: Yeah, that’s a great question. Two things, getting back to touching grass and spending time outside. I would say that if you take a walk around your block, if you sit in a local park, if you have a favorite tree, or if you do something that’s beyond that with an outdoor endeavor, these things factor into your life and they have to matter, and you have to have an opinion, and you have to share that opinion. And the second thing is, especially for people that are just starting their journey, what I would share, I know we’ve talked a lot about my path being a little convoluted, and I actually take a little bit of pride in that. And I think if you would ask anybody within the industry, they also like and enjoy figuring it out because it’s sort of the magic of the journey. So what I would end with is never be afraid to confound someone’s expectations of you or what you are, because that journey is all of the magic.

Amy Parsons: That’s great advice. That’s a perfect place to end. Thank you for being here today. Now, I am going to veer from the script and ask you one more question because we’re friends, and I always ask you this when we get together, which is, what was your latest adventure and what’s your next one? Because your answer always blows my mind.

Luis Benitez: So I try to keep my hands in the guiding community. I try to stay active. I was in Antarctica about a year ago, guiding an expedition on the highest mountain in Antarctica, Mount Vinson. So that was the last biggie. And the next one, I’m not sure yet. There’s a couple of things out there on the horizon that I’ve got my eyes on.

Amy Parsons: Well, let me know and we’ll come back in here and talk about it.

Luis Benitez: Fair enough.

Amy Parsons: So Luis, thank you so much for being here with CSU today. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom, and I’m just thrilled that our students are able to learn from you.

Luis Benitez: Thanks for having me.

Amy Parsons: Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Go Rams. Thank you for listening. I’m Amy Parsons, President of Colorado State University, and you’re listening to CSU’s The Next 150, where we explore what comes next for CSU by chatting with change makers who are already leading the charge and shaping our next 150 years. I’m gathering their very best advice for today’s CSU students. Stay tuned to wherever you get podcasts for our next outstanding conversation. Go Rams.