Five Pioneers Who Who Blazed New Paths in the Outdoors
As we celebrate Women’s History Month, Together Outdoors would like you to meet some of the female trailblazers whose exploits and hard work have set examples and opened doors for all people in every aspect of the outdoor experience. Their achievements span the past 100 years and are shaping outdoor inclusivity today and tomorrow.
Bessie Stringfield was born in Jamaica. Or perhaps Massachusetts. That was in 1918. Or 1911. Maybe.
While details of Bessie’s life are vague — thanks to Bessie herself — this much is clear: she was the 20th century’s Queen of Motorcycling. She got her first motorcycle at 16 as a gift from her adoptive mother and never looked back. At a time when motorcycle riding was deemed unladylike, Bessie zipped about her hometown of Miami and bravely crisscrossed the segregated South on her Harley-Davidson. She performed motorcycle stunts at carnivals, served as a civilian dispatch rider for the Army during World War II, and owned a motorcycle shop in Miami. Somewhere along the way, she became the first Black woman to make a solo motorcycle trip across the U.S.
Bessie was posthumously inducted into the American Motorcyclist Association Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. The AMA’s annual Bessie Stringfield Award is presented to someone who has been instrumental in diversifying the world of motorcycling.
Bonnie St. John’s resume weighs a ton. She’s a Harvard grad (with honors), Rhodes Scholar, successful corporate consultant, multi-book author and motivational speaker.
She’s been honored at the White House, quoted on a Starbucks cup, and named one of the five most inspiring women in America by NBC News.
And… She’s also the first Black American to win a medal at a Winter Games event. Bonnie, whose right leg was amputated below the knee at age five, won a bronze medal in the slalom, a bronze medal in the giant slalom, and was awarded a silver medal for overall performance in the 1984 Winter Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria. As her Wikipedia page notes, Bonnie “thereby earned the distinction of being the second fastest woman in the world on one leg in that year.”
Oh, and her quote that appeared on one million Starbucks cups? Check this: “I was ahead in the slalom. But in the second run, everyone fell on a dangerous spot. I was beaten by a woman that got up faster than I did. I learned that people fall down, winners get up, and gold medal winners just get up faster."
President Biden’s Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary.
In that role, Deb oversees the department’s management of public lands and minerals, national parks and wildlife refuges. She is also responsible for upholding the federal government’s responsibilities to Native American tribes and Native Alaskans.
Deb, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, has been a pioneer throughout her career. She started a small business and served as the first woman elected to the Laguna Development Corporation Board of Directors, which oversees the second largest tribal gaming enterprise in New Mexico. Her political career includes serving as the first Native American woman elected to lead a state party and one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, where her focus included environmental justice and climate change.
In 2016, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado became the first Peruvian woman to summit Mt. Everest. Two years later, she became the first openly gay woman to climb all Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent.
These achievements were remarkable for reasons beyond mountaineering. They represented Sylvia’s reclamation of herself and her destiny in the wake of childhood sexual abuse and the resulting addictions. She is using the lessons she learned while climbing about courage, strength and resilience to help others who carry similar burdens.
A former silicon valley tech executive, Silvia is now a sought-after speaker, memoirist and the Founder/CEO of Courageous Girls, a non-profit that supports the healing and empowerment of girls who have suffered abuse. Her memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountain, is being made into a movie starring Selena Gomez years later, she became the first openly gay woman to climb all Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent.
These achievements were remarkable for reasons beyond mountaineering. They represented Sylvia’s reclamation of herself and her destiny in the wake of childhood sexual abuse and the resulting addictions. She is using the lessons she learned while climbing about courage, strength and resilience to help others who carry similar burdens.
A former silicon valley tech executive, Silvia is now a sought-after speaker, memoirist and the Founder/CEO of Courageous Girls, a non-profit that supports the healing and empowerment of girls who have suffered abuse. Her memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountain, is being made into a movie starring Selena Gomez
Emma Lucy Braun was an environmentalist before that was even a thing.
Born in Cincinnati in 1889, Lucy, as she was known, was raised walking the woods in search of wild flowers with her parents. The forest and its plants became a life-long passion. She attended the University of Cincinnati, where she studied botany and geology and became only the sixth woman to earn a PhD from the school. (Her sister was the first!)
As a member of the UC faculty, Lucy was known for her extensive field work. She traveled 65,000 around the country studying woodland ecosystems. But her specialty was the forests of the Eastern United States, especially those of nearby Appalachia.
In 1950, her fellow natural science professionals recognized her talent and accomplishments by electing her the first female president of the Ecological Society of America.
Lucy’s life-long love of nature brought her to the fight to conserve natural areas and set up nature preserves, especially in Southern Ohio. She founded the Cincinnati chapter of the WildFlower Preservation Society and fought to protect what became the Durrell Edge of Appalachia Preserve System.
