Human Resources Manager, Monarch Mountain
Name: Charlie Goodson
Email Charlie: Charlie@SkiMonarch.com (he'd love to hire Camp alums)
Summers as a Camper: 10 summers
- 1995 - 2004: Starter Camp, First Session, CILT
Years as a Staff Member/Positions held: 5 summers
- 2005, 2006: Junior Counselor, Sailing
- 2007, 2008: Senior Counselor & Camp IV Assistant Head
- 2017: Head Counselor of the Camp I Mountaineers
Current Profession:
- Human Resources Manager, Monarch Mountain (2023 - Present)
Previous Roles:
- Real Estate/Water Attorney at private practice (2020 - 2023)
- Various legal internships with non profits and courts (2017 - 2020)
- Operations Manager at OnDeck Capital (2013 - 2017)
Current Responsibilities and Career Path
I am the HR Manager at a ski resort, and it is a lot like working at Sea Gull except we are teaching people how to slide down frozen water instead of how to navigate open water. I have a hand in hiring almost all of our 400+ seasonal staff each winter and I help support them throughout the season while they are working up here. We are our own little bubble with a team of great people working many different functions from taking guests on guided Cat Skiing trips, to patrolling the mountain, selling equipment and managing multiple restaurants. I got out of college and didn't really know what to do so I took a job in Denver to go experience living near the mountains. After working in finance for about four years, I decided to go to law school to sharpen my critical thinking skills and ultimately help people deal with whatever legal troubles they have. Being an attorney was very hard on my mental health and after a few years of trying to make it work, I decided to find something that more aligned with my values. That is when I switched into my current role at Monarch and I have never felt more at home. I have always been motivated to help people, and while attorneys do that, I get a lot more out of coaching and developing people the way we teach campers at Camp. I try to bring the lessons I learned at Sea Gull to the ski business as there are a lot of parallels.
Key Lessons from Camp
I am consistently recycling lessons I learned from Camp at Monarch, from mentioning sayings I learned in devotions when I was 6 to the long-standing Camp quotes like, "Things don't just happen, YOU make them happen." I look at things like the Activity Cup Challenge or Look Sharp Contests, and try to plug in different versions of that at Monarch. I haven't gone so far as to create a skiing version of the Gator song (although its not a bad idea...) but I am trying to recreate the value system of Camp here. Being the only HR person for a staff of 450 people has its challenges but things like the Blue and Green books at Camp taught me how to break big problems down into a series of steps to help me achieve my goals.
Proud Achievements
Passing the bar exam and becoming a licensed attorney is a career achievement I'm proud of but Camp has contributed to so many of my personal successes that mean more to me than any "professional" achievement. Going through lightning training taught me the value of practice and repetition, as well as how to safely navigate dangerous terrain. I bring that to my backcountry skiing trips where we are assessing avalanche danger and working together as a team to achieve our goal of skiing a certain line. Skiing Mt Shasta, winter camping in the eastern Sierra Mountains of California, rowing my raft down the Middle Fork of the Salmon river at high water and running a couple 50k trail races are the things I am most proud of, and I wouldn't have felt up to those challenges without going through lightning training.
Influential Camp Mentor
Jon Vance is for sure my influential Camp mentor. I am kinda like the Jon Vance of Monarch and try to impart wisdom and coaching to our team over a cup of coffee in the morning before the guests get here. He is someone I have kept in touch with over the years and I think he set the perfect example of being supportive of staff members, having a sympathetic ear, coaching people through challenging circumstances and ensuring everyone is living up to the expectations of a Camp Sea Gull and Seafarer cabin counselor. Hiring the right team is so important to the success of Camp and Monarch, but being the person who can coach staff members through the periods of malaise that can set in is something I take a lot of pride in.
Advice for Staff
Managing a cabin of kids is the ultimate manager bootcamp. You learn how to balance multiple different responsibilities like making sure your campers are safe, then making sure your activity is running smoothly and ensuring everyone is writing letters at rest hour. You have to balance multiple different personalities and find different ways to make sure your message is getting through to different people. It is an underrated business generalist internship that Camp staff should proudly brag about during job interviews because being able to handle multiple different projects at the same time is how you gain more responsibility at work. Unless you are going to college for a specialized degree, you are going to learn how to do your job when you start, and learning how to manage new responsibilities that come up out of no where is something that Camp prepares you for. No day is the same at Camp and it'll be like that in your professional career, so learning how to navigate those challenges is an excellent way to prepare yourself for any type of management position.
If I had one piece of advice to current staff members, it'd be to trust your instincts and try to look at the long game. I went to law school thinking I was going to be an attorney, but when that didn't work out I didn't get frustrated with my choices, I appreciated that I couldn't be in this role without the things I learned in law school. Just because something doesn't feel like it is working out in the moment, doesn't mean that it isn't working out the way it should.
