Syndication 
REI’s employee recognition events continue to celebrate the retailer’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Chances are if you’ve ever shopped for a tent or a pair of hiking boots, you’ve stepped foot in a REI store. The largest consumer co-op in the U.S., REI is owned and governed by its active members who purchase a lifetime membership. The retailer has made its impact priorities — advocating for a healthy planet, access to nature, and an inclusive outdoors, which it defines on its website as “understanding and accounting for how factors like gender, age, race, body size, ability, and other factors can shape the way each of us experiences and finds meaning outside” — central to its brand and mission.
In practice, that has included defending public lands, closing its near-200 stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday and paying store employees to spend time outside instead, becoming the first U.S. retailer to achieve zero waste, and diversifying the outdoor industry through its startup accelerator for BIPOC-owned businesses, Path Ahead Ventures, among other actions and initiatives.
Deanna Nwosu
Despite the current administration’s war on issues like DEI and sustainability, “it’s kind of business as usual for us,” Deanna Nwosu, CMP, program manager, employee events and communications at REI, told Convene. Meanwhile, other U.S. retailers have reversed course on public support and funding for related initiatives — in January, for example, Target stopped selling its LGBTQ Pride merchandise and ended its internal Racial Equity Action and Change program.
Responsible for the brand’s internal events related to employee recognition, Nwosu said that “it’s very easy to execute these things because it’s embedded in the way the company operates. We have a new CEO, Mary Beth Lawton, and at our annual member meeting this year, she made a double-down recommitment to our values, and stated very clearly and explicitly, that includes our commitment to racial equity, diversity, and inclusion. So, when it’s a business principle, when it’s a strategic priority, it really trickles down into every aspect of the business. And from our standpoint, we are highlighting the work of our coworkers, and it makes it really easy.”
Showing Some Love
When Convene spoke with Nwosu in June, she and her team were fresh off hosting the Anderson Awards, REI’s largest employee recognition event. The peer-nominated awards program, named after REI co-founders Lloyd and Mary Anderson, is an important way to “recognize, celebrate,” and show “some love to these folks who are the best of the best,” said Beth Cohen, REI’s senior project manager, employee events. “But we also have other objectives around building connections.”
Beth Cohen
Close to 200 employees from around the country attend, creating a rare opportunity for employees from different locations and departments to gather in person, in one location — REI’s hometown of Seattle. “We hope that people come to this event, learn about all the good work that … they might not see in their day-to-day work lives, get inspired, and then go back to their teams feeling really excited about all that the co-op’s doing,” Cohen said, and then create “some ripple effects.”
To achieve those goals, Cohen said she and Nwosu try to “pack a lot” into the two-day agenda while also keeping REI’s impact priorities at the forefront. For example, this year they expanded stewardship opportunities to better accommodate the varying physical capabilities of its employees. Options included writing thank-you notes to supporters and inventorying and cleaning gear for local nonprofits in addition to more physically strenuous efforts like trail work and habitat restoration.
Also new to the Anderson Awards event is the Co-op Fest, an afternoon-long outdoor festival comprised of competitive games and group activities, like birding and adaptive cycling (bicycles modified to accommodate riders with disabilities). “This was a chance for our attendees to build their own adventure throughout the afternoon,” Cohen said, noting that attendees had more freedom to mingle with REI partners, inclusion groups, employee resource groups, and other internal teams at activations that highlighted the work of those groups.
REI Co-op’s Anderson Award recognizes employees “who live REI’s Values in Action and embody the co-op spirit every day,” according to the brand.
‘Looking for the Ice Ax’
Experiential offerings like these have taken the lead over passive-style presentations at the Anderson Awards. Nwosu said that the shift is intentional, designed to help attendees walk away with a deeper understanding of the work their colleagues do and why. “Are they going to retain it from an executive giving a 20-minute talk about how great the co-op is, or are they going to retain it when they’re out doing stewardship side by side?” Nwosu said.
Setting up a “swag suite” for attendees is another example of how they “show vs. tell,” Nwosu said. At last year’s Anderson Awards, attendees could learn about and take their pick of items from 10 businesses in REI’s Path Ahead Ventures initiative and have a chance to meet some of the founders at other points in the program, including during a mindfulness day hike.
Mainstage speakers, who underscore REI’s mission to make the great outdoors inclusive for all, also add experiential elements to their talks. When Erin Parisi, who has set out to become the first trans mountaineer to climb the Seven Summits, keynoted the Anderson Awards last year, she left REI employees with more than just inspiring words about her transition journey and summitting mountains: Parisi brought the Petzl Summit Evo ice axe she used to climb Mt. Vinson Massif, the highest peak in Antarctica, on stage to be inducted into the Co-op Living Archive, a collection of artifacts significant to the brand’s history.
“It was a great moment,” Nwosu said. “A lot of our recipients hung out after to get pictures with Erin. Our internal inclusion network, PRISM, they were sharing so many resources and stories about it afterwards. And even at the event this year, some folks went on the tour of the Living Archive looking for the ice axe.”
Sweet Retreat
A quirky yet beloved tradition at REI Co-Op has brought employees together every fall for nearly 50 years: a Twinkie Roast. It all started when a few REI employees jokingly threw a Hostess fruit pie into a bonfire and made a wish for good snow for the upcoming winter season. The opposite happened. The following year, they threw in a Twinkie instead, and their wish was granted: a winter of perfect snow.
Almost 50 years later, the tradition lives on — “a nice pause before a really busy holiday season and a busy end of the year,” REI’s Deanna Nwosu said. But it also signals how REI tries to approach inclusivity, she said, “in a slightly different way.” Since REI has a dispersed workforce, Twinkie Roasts are hosted both in-person at REI locations around the country as well as virtually. “We’ve found fun ways to bring it to life over a Teams call so that everyone can participate and feel included and part of this tradition,” she said. And, mirroring a focus on sustainability at their large-scale events, the discarded Twinkie wrappers get sent to a special recycling facility.
Jennifer N. Dienst is senior editor at Convene.
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