Gwen Allard
1999
Recreation/Development | 2001
A pioneering snow sports educator, Gwen Allard spent a half century focusing on
helping others learn how to ski, with a particular focus on children and adults with
disabilities. Growing up in Schenectady, NY, Gwen learned a love of outdoor recreation
from her father. She learned to snow ski at the nearby Maple Ski Ridge.
Gwen was one of the first to embrace adaptive education and went on to become a
well-respected leader within the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) and
American Association of Snowboard Instructors (AASI) for her innovative teaching
methodology and the ability to effectively communicate it to students. Along the way,
she was a model of perseverance in rallying the entire ski industry around adaptive
sport. In the mid-70s she founded the Gore Mountain Adaptive Program, one of the
earliest adaptive ski programs in the country. Gwen realized that the development of
standardized, professional teaching methods was essential. After earning her PSIA
Level 3 in 1974, she then went on to become executive director of PSIA-Eastern in
1975, where she also founded the PSIA-E Foundation
.
With her passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, Gwen was able to
provide consult and counsel to the ski resort industry on how to best manage new
protocols to truly provide a great experience for adaptive snow sports enthusiasts.
One of her most noted accomplishments was the development of the Adaptive Sports
Foundation at New York’s Ski Windham. Starting with a fledgling program in 1983, she
grew it to become an epicenter for adaptive winter sports. In 2005, the foundation
opened the Gwen Allard Adaptive Sports Center which continued to grow and now
features its own chairlift. Another success story was the development of the Double H
Ranch in New York. Gwen was consulted on how to turn an abandoned ski area on the
property into a usable resource for the disabled community. Calling on her industry
network, Allard generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in donated equipment, put
togethera staff and volunteer team to make the ranch a great success upon opening in
1998. Double H Ranch was the proving ground for a PSIA-AASI program that ultimately
reached 70 organizations nationwide impacting over 10,000 adaptive instructors and
20,000 adaptive students
