Ronald Griswell

About Ronald

• I was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where I spent a lot of time outdoors.
• In high school, others said my identity as a Black man clashed with being an outdoorsman—I felt it was more important to hold onto my Black identity and pushed my passion for the outdoors aside.
• During my junior year of college, I did a service-learning trip in Belize and was inspired by how connected the community was with nature.
• When I got back to my campus, I was shocked to find that the school didn’t offer any outdoor programs—I started spending all of my time researching how I could get outdoors.
• I left college and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to work for Wilderness Inquiry as an outdoor educator.
• From there, I continued to travel and help others experience the outdoors.
• There weren’t many people like me fostering these experiences for people, which inspired me to move back home, re-enroll in college, and help the university start their first outdoor program.
• I scaled my idea of bringing more people like me into the outdoors and created HBCUs Outside, an organization that bridges the gap between historically Black colleges and the outdoor industry.