Networking on the Rope to Success (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine August 2001

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Networking on the Rope to Success (Cont.)

SO,I HADN'T joined a business team working out its "issues," nor was I present at the creation of some goofball startup intent on "team-building." It was a networking event, a kind of extreme salon, but with Gu and PowerBars instead of chardonnay and chicken-on-a-stick.

Or something like that. Dempsey's li'l executive mountain-climbing excursion was more about sharing a passion. And instead of a crew of gassy--though incredibly wealthy--windbags in J. P. Tod driving shoes, he'd assembled a small group of reasonably fit movers and shakers who looked at home in fleece.

"Dude," said one of my new corporate buds. "We-and you-will definitely get beat up if you start talking about 'reaching the summits of success.'"

Among them were Susan Luria, 34, a tough-as-nails marketing executive from Cleveland who was president of 1800Homecare.com (now defunct); Dino Vendetti, 40, a Seattle investment banker with the build of a middle linebacker; Michael Ashton, 26, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown Inc., who reminded me of a couple of friends from high school who were a little too smart to be cool but who you end up working for; Ethan Aumack, 26, the token nonprofiteer from the Grand Canyon Trust in Arizona; Bob Williams, 46, Dempsey's Bay Partners partner and a hard-core cyclist who sounded as if he could hold his own on CNN's Crossfire or ESPN's SportsCenter; and Marcy Keenan, 42, a Bay Partners "entrepreneur in residence," and an enthusiastic bruiser who'd previously run two software companies. There was one couple: Steven Gatoff, 34, an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, and his then-girlfriend, Kate Jaquet, 28, an analyst at Seneca Capital.

It was a squad of type-A personalities, to be sure--but seemingly well-adjusted type A's. As our Rainier Mountaineering Inc. guides John Race, 31, and Art Rausch, 39, led us through the rigors of Snow School on our second day, nobody lost his temper when someone nearly put his crampons through the rope while learning to turn corners on a rope team. Nearly all of us qualified as out-and-out yuppies, at least on paper, but no one aired the self-actualization aphorisms that sometimes frame such events. "Dude," Gatoff replied when I asked him about mountaineering as a business metaphor. "We--and you--will definitely get beat up if you start talking about 'reaching the summits of success' in business."

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