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Julie Dugdale

Writer. Editor. Journalist. Storyteller.
   Humankind --> I try to be both.


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Outside Business Journal •

How outdoor brands are taking vaccine mandates into their own hands

In the summer of 2021, Kim Miller found himself in a familiar position: considering the best move to shepherd his team through a life-threatening storm. In his previous life as an expedition leader, he’d shouldered that very burden on plenty of high peaks. As the CEO of Scarpa North America, he now faced a different deadly threat: Covid-19. “My mentality as a leader is to keep people safe,” Miller says. “And motivated, engaged, and happy at a time when people are freaking out.”

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Outside Business Journal •

Outdoor Retailer has wrapped. Here's what you missed on the last day.

[Co-bylined] Aaaand, that’s a wrap on the 2022 Outdoor Retailer Snow Show. As attendees trickled in to hit their last meetings and squeeze in just a few more booths, conversations were upbeat. Coffee queue congratulations were plentiful coming off of last night’s fourth annual Innovation Awards ceremony, where 14 winners were crowned by an independent judging panel for their game-changing outdoor products and services.

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Outside Business Journal •

Live from the second day of Outdoor Retailer

[Co-bylined] Right on cue, the flakes were flying outside the Convention Center as the second day of the OR Snow Show ramped up. The morning kicked off with an early session covering outdoor market research and consumer trends, which parsed data on a phenomenon we’ve all happily witnessed over the past couple of years: More people are itching to buy outdoor stuff. In fact, the core outdoor market grew by $5 billion between 2019 and 2021, now sitting at $27.4 billion. Accompanying this data was the pointed re

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5280 •

Can Conservation Easements Give Young Colorado Farmers a Chance?

Dwarfed by five stainless steel grain-storage bins outside the Root Shoot malt house in Loveland, Emily Olander gestures toward the horizon. A two-story cookie-cutter house with a white fence peeks out from the rolling green land. “See that?” 38-year-old Emily asks. “That’s what we don’t want.” The Olanders, who farm nearly 2,200 acres in northern Colorado and run a malt business that regularly supplies 150 breweries in the state, have nothing against the homeowners, of course. It’s the big-picture development they’re wary of—an encroaching sprawl that’s gobbling up farmland along Colorado’s I-25 corridor faster than older farmers can devise ways to affordably retire without selling their fields to the developers behind the ubiquitous mixed-use retail and residential enclaves.

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5280 •

It Takes Two

Somewhere between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, just off the coast of a tiny volcanic island called Raikoke, a small vessel bobbed in the chop of the Sea of Okhotsk. An assorted group of photographers, scientists, and filmmakers lined the boat’s railing and stared in disbelief as the landscape came into focus. The island, usually lush and green, smoldered in an ashy gray state of complete desolation. The air was heavy with sulfuric smoke tendrils, and flocks of birds circled in infinite loops overhead with nowhere to land. The sea-lapped shores, once home to a thriving sea lion rookery, had been reduced to smoking rubble.

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Denver Life •

Our Happy Place: The Lifestyle We Live And Love [cover story]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past year, it’s to appreciate the place we live—because, well, we’ve all been spending a lot of time here. We found ourselves rediscovering what we love about the institutions, venues, businesses, restaurants, parks, and people that make up our (suddenly smaller) world. Sure, the way we go about crafting our lifestyle has been—and will continue to be—outside the norm these past months, and the places that infuse the personality of our neighborhoods may operate differently or more intermittently than they ever have, but their contribution to the character of our city remains.

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5280 •

Ready, Set, Race!

Pick a weekend in Colorado—literally any weekend—and odds are that somewhere within our state’s boundaries, you’ll find a bunch of sweaty people sporting race bibs, timing chips, and an array of moisture-wicking, speed-enhancing, heart-rate-tracking gear. They might be on bikes or wearing skis or in kayaks. Maybe they’re just hoofing it in sneakers. It could be a snowy January day in the city or a scorcher in July on a high mountain pass. The exact details of each competition—be it a 5K, a century ride, or a backcountry ultra-grind—are mostly irrelevant. What is important to note? Friendly (albeit high-caliber) athletic competition is a way of life here in the Centennial State.

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Outside Online •

Why Scientists Don't Dig This $2 Million Plan to Save the Oceans

Dutch engineering student Boyan Slat shocked the environmental community when he announced in a 2012 TEDx talk that he had invented a way for the oceans to rid themselves of plastic with minimal human intervention. After all, we’re funneling a jaw-dropping 8 million tons of the stuff into the oceans each year, in addition to the more than five trillion pieces of plastic garbage already swirling in the waters. Could a then-17-year-old really have found a simple solution to this massive problem?

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Boston Magazine •

Family Ties (cover story)

Too often, people talk about our city’s power players as an elite cabal of the über-rich. But in an ancient town like Boston, family names are worth far more than any Forbes ranking. Power, at its core, is about having a lasting voice that effects change, whether you were born into a stately Brahmin house or got your start pushing a souvenir cart outside Fenway. Many families on this list—all include at least two successive generations—first made their mark here decades or centuries ago: a rags-to-riches tale of launching a business just to stay afloat only to reach unimaginable heights. Today, we know those humble beginnings as empires built on the inherited wisdom, work ethic, and ambition passed down from generation to generation. From our biggest money movers and development moguls to our most dedicated public servants and media pioneers, here are Boston’s power families.

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Outside Online •

Meet Christina Anderson: The Most Important Person at GoPro

How’s this for a branding achievement: In making the space-survival film of the year, The Martian, Ridley Scott turned to GoPro cameras as a key storytelling tool. As Quartz points out, “GoPros had more screen time than Kristen Wiig or Donald Glover.” Watching Matt Damon’s ill-fated astronaut log his every action with the small camera, you have to wonder at how GoPro has become synonymous with first-person video capture. One woman deserves much of the credit for that: Christina Anderson.

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5280 Health •

Peace Out (cover story)

We know there are circumstances under which no amount of sage advice or mental TLC will soothe the soul. For many of us, though, feeling unsettled, disgruntled, or burnt out is the result of multiple ongoing factors we can address. So we sought the guidance of professionals and everyday people who’ve carved their own paths to healing or fulfillment. Our hope is that the following pages might be a toolbox of sorts, stocked with ideas to grab when you need ’em. Here, our guide to de-stressing, simplifying, and living a more peaceful life.

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