Andy Shepard
Andy spent 15 years at L.L.Bean working on strategies, products and services to inspire people to get outdoors, and then in helping bring the unique L.L.Bean culture and experience to communities across the country as they began opening stores outside Maine.
In keeping with L.L.Bean’s long tradition of asking its employees to give back to their communities, Andy also began working on a plan to address some of the challenges facing rural communities in Maine. The Maine Winter Sport Center (MWSC) was founded in 1999 and became part of a global dialogue about a sustainable, empowering approach to improving health and well-being for individuals and communities.
At MWSC, he focused on assessing and working with the communities to meet their comprehensive needs. focusing on developing and leveraging economic development assets, health and wellness initiatives, developing leadership capacity in volunteer organizations, as well as fundraising strategies.
In 20 years of operation, the center captured global media attention by building world-class nordic venues, buying failed alpine ski areas, giving them new life and then turning them back to community-led 501c3 boards to operate. The MWSC also helped 16 biathletes and cross-country skiers onto Olympic and Paralympic teams, and hosting 6 Biathlon World Cups and World Championships that were broadcast to hundreds of millions of viewers across the world.
The scale of these events often meant our work supporting programming in communities throughout Maine and helping thousands of people develop the confidence to develop a healthy, active outdoor lifestyle in year-round outdoor activities was overlooked. In the process, the Maine Winter Sports Center won awards around the globe, nationally and at home, for its innovative and effective approach to youth and community development.
In 2014, following a loss of funding, and 8 weeks before the start of our next fiscal year, MWSC went through its own existential crisis and had to put all the lessons we had been applying to our work in other communities to work on our own survival. We not only made it through those 8 weeks, but Andy was able to secure the funding to keep the business operating until he retired in July of 2020. The organization continues today as the Outdoor Sport Institute.
After 20 years as the president and CEO of the MWSC and then OSI, and with the organization on solid footing, Andy stepped aside to apply his 40+ years of experience in the for-profit and non-profit worlds to the purchase and redevelopment of Saddleback Mountain as its CEO and General Manager. Saddleback is the largest independent ski area in the East and a critical piece in western Maine’s economy. With the support of Arctaris Impact Fund, which bought the mountain in 2019 and has invested over $45 million into facility upgrades, the mountain is making a dramatic recovery.
Andy was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Maine in 2005, a recipient of the Russell Wilder Award by the US Ski and Snowboard Association in 2009, was named the Outstanding Non-Profit Business Executive for Maine in 2010 by MaineBiz, inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame in 2016 and the US Biathlon Hall of Fame in 2019. The MWSC was also named one of the top youth development programs in the world by the FIS in 2007.
Andy is also on the board of ClimateWork Maine, a co-founder and past Vice Chairman of the United States Biathlon Foundation and past trustee of Carrabassett Valley Academy and Pineland Farms.
