AN INSPIRED
Our Story – An Inspired Beginning
“Leadership Trek®” It is both our name and philosophy. Leadership Trek® Corporation, and its more easily said namesake, “LTrek®.” But where did this name come from?
In 2005, Rachel Woods had been working in the leadership development industry for several years when she decided it was time to incorporate. When she began to brainstorm ideas for the business that could inspire, she turned to a world closer to home.
In 2003, she was introduced to the world of mountaineering and trekking (yes, there is a difference), when her husband, Riley, joined a team called, “Team Everest ’03.” This team would trek to the base camp of Mt. Everest. The team’s leaders would go on to summit Mt. Everest. What was uniquely inspiring about this journey, or “trek,” was that “Team Everest ‘03” was comprised of the largest group of people different needs to have ever trek to Mt. Everest Base Camp at an elevation of 17,400 feet. Riley was one of team members to tackle this feat, despite using a wheelchair as a T-5 paraplegic. While supporting Riley and reflection on his accomplishment, Rachel began to see parallels between the world of mountaineering and trekking and the world of goal setting in leadership development.
This sparked the idea of the use of “trekking” when tackling long-term transformational goals. Afterall, we believe that learning should be continual and that true leadership transformation is a journey, not an event. Stuart Smith, a friend who has accomplished the “Seven Summits” (summiting the highest mountain on every continent) and the “Adventure Grand Slam” (summiting the highest mountain on every continent and trekking to the North and South Poles), introduced Rachel and Riley to these types of achievements in the outdoor adventure world. These new insights not only sparked the trekking theme, but also the idea for one of LTrek’s signature leadership transformation systems, the Seven Leadership Summits®, in which leaders tackle one leadership mountain at a time, studying leadership virtues dating back to Aristotle: Hope, love, faith, justice, prudence, courage, and temperance.
