PLAY HARD.
We recharge our creativity outdoors by skiing volcanoes, scaling desert towers, and running across the Grand Canyon.
WORK HARD.
Helping great ideas thrive since 2016. We relentlessly guide, inspire, innovate, and generally make life better for our partners.
CARE HARD.
Personally and as a team, we volunteer with nonprofits, advocate for public lands, and give to environmental causes as a 1% for the Planet member business.
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Erik Lambert
FOUNDER + CEO
East Coast Ethic meets Colorado CasualErik started skiing at age 1 when his dad pushed him around the yard on some homemade planks. Having improved since then, he now prefers to ski volcanoes, mountain bike in the desert, and climb very small rocks. Before founding Bonfire Collective, Erik spent 10 years as a marketing and communications pro in the outdoor industry—as digital editor for Alpinist and Backcountry magazines, and as marketing director for the American Alpine Club. Erik is also co-founder of Bluebird Backcountry, the world’s first inbounds backcountry ski area. He believes that leaders in the outdoor community have the power and responsibility to inspire movements that will advance recreation and environmental causes.
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Sunnee Hoppe
Director of Strategy
Scattering sunshine across people and planetThe daughter of an international business owner and a flight attendant, Sunnee was taught the power of the outdoors and exploration at an early age. Sunnee brings 18 years of advertising experience to Bonfire Collective, with expertise growing competitively positioned brands, transforming businesses, and crafting evocative stories. Sunnee brings the power of exploration into everything she does – whether concepting an out-of-the-box strategy for her clients, or backpacking deep into the Himalayas, she believes people are at their best when they align their passion and purpose.
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Jonathan Crays
Creative Director
Crafting dreams with an outdoors spirit.Born and raised in the Mitten (Michigan), Jonathan moved to Colorado to embrace wild adventures, new career opportunities, and a sunnier lifestyle. A creative chameleon with a versatile skill set, he shapes captivating stories and effective designs across all disciplines. With more than 14 years of experience, Jonathan has collaborated with Fortune 100 brands, startups, and everything in between. When he’s not working, you can find him fishing on a river, mountain biking, or playing pickleball.
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Sara Grant
Account Supervisor
Midwestern export stuck in the eternal battle: mountains or ocean?Sara grew up amongst the cornfields and white cedars near the Fox River on the lands of the Potawatomi Tribe. These days she prefers looking out over the mountains from 10 pitches up or with a snowboard strapped to her feet. After graduating from University of Michigan, Sara headed west to Portland and started Saradipity Media, a one-woman-show helping mission-driven brands and nonprofits amplify their voices. She has over 15 years of experience in writing, marketing, project management, event production, and nonprofit management. She takes sick pleasure in systems and spreadsheets and can always be trusted to keep stoke levels soaring. Although she frequently refers to her van as home, Sara currently resides on Maui to appease her ocean-loving Aussies (husband and pup) and ensure her daughter’s grom status.
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Amy Hume
Account Manager
Experience Creator with Endless PositivityAmy’s active endeavors started in earnest when she came to Colorado for college at CU Boulder. With the backdrop of Boulder’s Flatirons and new local friends, she ramped up her hiking, camping, and skiing abilities to become a true outdoors lover. She returned to the Midwest after school to start her ad-agency career at a big Chicago firm but missed the mountains and sunshine and has been back in Colorado for almost 25 years. Amy has cultivated her communications experience at agencies of all sizes and across industries, from travel to packaged goods to healthcare to higher education and beyond. Outside the office, she loves to step out of her comfort zone and encourages others to do the same. She loves running, hiking, travel, and photography. Her positive outlook is palpable, and she’s hoping her daughter inherited the trait to take with her in life.
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Leah Anderson
Account Manager
Create. Climb. Bike. Ski. Repeat.Born and raised in the northwoods of Minnesota, Leah moved west in her early twenties to pursue rock climbing and other big mountain adventures. She’s since lived in Colorado, Utah and Kentucky (plus a brief stint on the road full-time) on a never-ending search for the best climbing area – though currently the Red River Gorge is winning. Leah brings a unique blend of agency and brand marketing experience to Bonfire. After spending the first part of her career in the agency world, working in industries from CPG to healthcare to liquor, she made the switch over to the brand side, working in-house at a prominent global climbing company. Her expertise includes digital marketing strategy, including social media, content creation and copywriting, but she’s always working to expand her skillset. She currently lives in Western Colorado, traveling less and soaking up all the climbing, mountain biking, trail running and skiing the area has to offer.
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Julie Bacon
Account Manager
Northeast grit meets Sierra spiritJulie Bacon is a master of sandbagging and a seasoned Account Manager based in Truckee, CA. Known for convincing friends to say “yes” to epic outdoor adventures, she balances client relationships at Bonfire with over 10 years of marketing expertise and the entrepreneurial chops gained from founding her own business, Hot Skillet Media. When she’s not wrangling campaigns, you’ll hear Julie howling with excitement before you see her, out mountain biking, snowboarding, or plunging into Donner Lake—even if it means breaking through ice. Hailing from Maine but with roots in Asheville’s Blue Ridge Mountains, she thrives on the wild beauty of the Sierra, fueled by a love for good music, adventure, and a commitment to delivering seamless, high-impact results for her team.
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Brian Bensch
Paid Media Director
Hyper-rational analyst disguised as adrenaline junkieBrian is a technical marketing and growth leader with a borderline unhealthy affinity for heights, and so will often be found outside summiting mountaintops. He spent his early career in sales at Google before jumping into ad operations and growth marketing at AirBNB and Hipcamp. A ski fanatic with an eye for entrepreneurial adventures, in 2016 Brian founded Snow Schoolers, a business that collaborates with resorts to offer affordable and accessible ski and snowboard lessons (23,000+ students to date) in Tahoe and Colorado. At Bonfire Collective, Brian is a strategist with a focus on how paid media drives sustainable growth systems in collaboration with owned and earned initiatives. He believes that performance and brand marketing are better together, and that world-class story-telling is both critical and measurable.
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Jeannie Markosky
Digital Marketing Coordinator & Administrator
Redneck roots plus a penchant for adventureBorn and raised on a family farm in western PA, Jeannie’s love for the outdoors was intrinsic. After graduating from Penn State, hunting and fishing in the Laurel Highlands turned into trail running, rock climbing, and freediving on the tropical paradise of Guam. She spent three years living the island life and building a worldwide nonprofit organization aimed at providing outdoor recreation to the military community. Whether it’s creating financial reports, launching paid media campaigns, or leading groups of novice hikers through the jungle, Jeannie’s enthusiasm gets it done. She believes that forging a connection between people and their environments is essential in building a foundation for positive change. When she’s not busy keeping the office organized, you can find her slaying social media for her nonprofit, letting off steam in the boxing gym, or projecting at her local crag.
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Justin Page
Graphic Designer
Sailor who fell for the MountainsBorn in Florida, Justin grew up sailing in the Gulf of Mexico. After graduating college with a BFA in Graphic Design, he moved to the West Coast and found his love for the mountains and developed an obsession with the desert. He has more than a decade of experience designing for various companies across logo and brand, apparel and merchandise, and passion projects centered around music. He moved to Golden from San Diego with his wife, two daughters and frenchie: Disco. While he misses the waves, he’s stoked to have access to some of the finest climbing, camping and mountain biking in his backyard. He is driven by culture and raw experiences. He believes deeply in the human need to connect with the outdoors on a consistent basis–it fuels his soul and thirst for life.
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Mark Sherr
Sr. Paid Media Specialist
Luck is not a business modelBorn and raised in Brooklyn, Mark has a deep appreciation for other cultures. After working with a boutique ads agency based out of Manhattan and spending the pandemic living in Brooklyn, he knew it was time to hit the road. Over the last 3 years, Mark has lived in and traveled to over 30 countries and officially completed a full revolution around the globe, all the while working remotely for businesses big and small, across multiple continents. Hiking in beautiful and remote places across the globe helped Mark to realize the importance of nature, conservation, and businesses that take both seriously. You can probably find Mark playing pickup basketball in a random country, eating street food with locals, or hiking to the top of the closest peak.
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Ty Morrison-Heath
Sr. Paid Media Specialist
Avid type two fun aficionadoLover of the outdoors, passionate marketer, and total gear nerd. Ty grew up exploring the choss of the Alaskan Chugach Range and developed a deep respect and love for human-powered adventures in the mountains. Ty’s formal education is in data analytics, so he approaches paid media with a scientific and data forward methodology and a focus on highly targeted advertising to ensure the best possible return for clients. His home base these days is the “Mountain Biking Capital of the World”, NW Arkansas, but he spends a significant part of the year in his van touring around the country to play, visit with clients, and explore breathtaking places with his camera in tow.
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Matt Samet
Editor
Lifelong climber and a passionate student of the written wordMatt grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he learned to rock climb, mainly on the crystalline boulders of the Sandia Mountain foothills above town, where he’d go bouldering each day after school with friends. He moved to Colorado in 1991, and is currently based in the Boulder area, where he is an active first acentionist on the local sandstone and granite. Matt is an avid reader, mainly of magazine articles, and loves to deconstruct how his favorite writers string phrases and sentences together, to try to improve his own craft; he holds a BS in journalism, and a master’s degree in creative writing-English, and was once nicknamed the “Grammar Hammer” by coworkers for his grammatical exactitude. One of his favorite aspects of being an editor is helping other writers realize their voice through optimized storytelling: cutting away the chaff to get to a story’s emotional and sensory core.
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Corey Buhay
EDITOR
Chase the adventure, capture the stokeCorey grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, where she learned to set a table properly and dance the Charleston. That was before she discovered mountains. Corey moved to Boulder, Colorado, to pursue adventure and outdoor writing. Her work has appeared in Climbing, The Mountain Project Journal, Alpinist, and Elevation Outdoors, and she’s carved a niche for herself identifying plants and writing about privies as the Assistant Skills Editor at BACKPACKER Magazine. She believes spending time outside makes us all better, kinder, more passionate people, and that’s exactly what the world needs.
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Jesse Dwyer
Advisor
Dirtbag climber turned Silicon Valley communicatorJesse is a communications expert and ghostwriter for executives and entrepreneurs. He is the founder of Tinyideas.org, whose clients include Fortune 100 CEOs and Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms and tech startups. As a ghostwriter he has authored more than three national bestsellers. Originally a dirtbag climber in lieu of college, Jesse went to school when he realized he might climb 5.13, but he couldn’t add it. (“Five plus thirteen,” he says, “turns out to be eighteen. Who knew!?”) After finishing a Master’s at Dartmouth College, Jesse began his career at the prestigious San Francisco firm SNP Communications and later held senior-level posts at Facebook and Dropbox. He believes that nothing is more rewarding than helping great people and their great ideas succeed. In his spare time Jesse continues to climb and is an avid whitewater guide.
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Sarah Wood
Advisor
Full throttle or don’t botherSarah, or Woody, as her friends like to call her, started mountain biking, whitewater kayaking, and skiing in the hills and rivers of Southern Indiana. After running a small business in Nashville, she based out of Colorado for 10 years. There she spent more than 200 days each year on the road living in Vana White, her 2006 Sprinter, as the Executive Director of 5Point Adventure Film Festival. Woody is now an Instigation Engineer at Industry Nine, utilizing her business, management, and mechanical acumen to drive operations and apprentice as an engineer. She believes in the power and change that the outdoors can provide every life.
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Pete Ward
Advisor
Creative, disciplined, detailed, strategic, leader, supporter, spiritual, capitalist, coffee, wine. Three every day, more as required.Born and raised in New York, Pete found his roots in the quiet solitude of the Adirondack mountains and on the elegant bone-white conglomerate of the Gunks. He founded and directed the first-ever officially sanctioned professional competition climbing tour in the U.S. and was an early evangelist for competition and indoor climbing, pointing the outdoor industry towards the counter-intuitive opportunities presented by global urbanization. In recent years Pete has found an outlet for his creative energy through constructive disruption on the international level, living or studying business in the U.S., U.K., China, Brazil, and Switzerland.
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Elizabeth Train
Advisor
A little bit country, a little bit rock ’n rollElizabeth has called the West home for more than 20 years and can’t imagine living without mountains in her backyard. When she’s not riding a bike, sliding around on skis, or adventuring with Roxy the dog, Elizabeth focuses on brand and content strategy that helps outdoor companies get the right messages to the right people in the right ways. Her work has been critical to the growth and success of nonprofits including People for Bikes, Boulder B-Cycle, and Camber Outdoors. She also advised many outdoor and lifestyle brands as Client Strategy Director at the creative agency Walden Hyde. Elizabeth believes passionate people can change the world through storytelling, and she loves to help them do it.
