Rick Ridgeway
VP, Public Engagement ∙ Patagonia
RICK RIDGEWAY is Patagonia’s Vice President of Public Engagement. He represents
and promotes the company’s core values with external stakeholders including NGO’s,
trade organizations, academics and universities, and government agencies. In this role he
is one of Patagonia’s key spokespersons in all its global markets. During his 17-year
tenure at the company he has developed and launched environmental and sustainability
initiatives including Freedom to Roam, the Footprint Chronicles, the Responsible
Economy Campaign and Worn Wear. He also was founding chairman of the Sustainable
Apparel Coalition that today is the largest apparel, footwear and home textile trade
organization in the world creating the Higg Index, a suite of standardised tools to
measure sustainability and produce industry benchmarks for continual impact reductions.
Before joining Patagonia, Rick was owner/president of Adventure Photo & Film, a
leading stock photo and film agency. In addition Rick is recognized as one of the world’s
foremost mountaineers. With three companions he was the first American to summit K2,
considered the hardest of the world’s high-altitude mountain to climb, and he has done
other significant climbs and explorations on all continents including the first direct coast-
to-coast traverse of Borneo at its widest point and a traverse of the Tibet’s Chang Tang
plateau on a route never explored. Rick participated in the first big wall climb in
Antarctica, and the first American mountaineering expeditions into Bhutan and China.
He has produced and directed many adventure shows for television, his magazine articles
have appeared in Outside, National Geographic and Harvard Business Review, and he is
the author of six books, including Seven Summits, The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and Below
Another Sky. National Geographic honored him with its “Lifetime Achievement in
Adventure” award. He serves on the boards of Conservacion Patagonica and the Turtle
Conservancy, and is on the Advisory Boards of World Wildlife Fund, Unilever USA, and
the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
and promotes the company’s core values with external stakeholders including NGO’s,
trade organizations, academics and universities, and government agencies. In this role he
is one of Patagonia’s key spokespersons in all its global markets. During his 17-year
tenure at the company he has developed and launched environmental and sustainability
initiatives including Freedom to Roam, the Footprint Chronicles, the Responsible
Economy Campaign and Worn Wear. He also was founding chairman of the Sustainable
Apparel Coalition that today is the largest apparel, footwear and home textile trade
organization in the world creating the Higg Index, a suite of standardised tools to
measure sustainability and produce industry benchmarks for continual impact reductions.
Before joining Patagonia, Rick was owner/president of Adventure Photo & Film, a
leading stock photo and film agency. In addition Rick is recognized as one of the world’s
foremost mountaineers. With three companions he was the first American to summit K2,
considered the hardest of the world’s high-altitude mountain to climb, and he has done
other significant climbs and explorations on all continents including the first direct coast-
to-coast traverse of Borneo at its widest point and a traverse of the Tibet’s Chang Tang
plateau on a route never explored. Rick participated in the first big wall climb in
Antarctica, and the first American mountaineering expeditions into Bhutan and China.
He has produced and directed many adventure shows for television, his magazine articles
have appeared in Outside, National Geographic and Harvard Business Review, and he is
the author of six books, including Seven Summits, The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and Below
Another Sky. National Geographic honored him with its “Lifetime Achievement in
Adventure” award. He serves on the boards of Conservacion Patagonica and the Turtle
Conservancy, and is on the Advisory Boards of World Wildlife Fund, Unilever USA, and
the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.