When companies such as Columbia and adidas want to promote that their guiding ethos is reflected not only in their product but in their organizational culture, they turn to individuals like Emmy Negrin.
Negrin (they/them) has carved out a fascinating professional niche. After serving as Director of Global, Social and Community Impact at adidas, and Head of Inclusion, Diversity & Purpose at Discord, today Negrin is the Head of Community Impact at Columbia Sportswear. They lead philanthropic efforts for Columbia’s four sub-brands, including Columbia, prAna, Mountain Hardwear and SOREL. In addition to their role at Columbia, they are an Executive Coach and Founder of Rooted Impact, providing coaching and consulting to help leaders and organizations lead with purpose and collective impact.
We spoke with Emmy about their unusual career path and why Portland is a great place to do this kind of work.
Q: Please introduce yourself to our readers and tell them what you do at Columbia.
A: I’m Emmy Negrin, and I’m the Head of Community Impact at Columbia Sportswear Company, which includes Columbia, SOREL, Mountain Hardwear and prAna brands. That includes nonprofit partnerships, employee giving and volunteering, cause marketing, and the ways that we engage our consumers and support our communities.
Q: How did your career path bring you to Columbia?
A: I’ve had a nontraditional career path that I’m proud of. I got my start working in nonprofits and leading international service learning trips as a wilderness tour guide. I studied International Development and Social Change in college, which led me to explore how to be an agent of change though multi-sector partnerships. Then I transitioned to the tech industry and got my first role at Yahoo leading Learning and Development and Social Impact work globally.
Initially, I had a lot of skepticism about working at Yahoo because I’m really passionate about community and giving back, and I thought I was going to be working in nonprofits my whole career. But I found that actually there’s a pocket within these larger companies—essentially the nonprofit Community Impact arm—that still allows me to do the work I’m passionate about.
Above: Columbia employees organized a food drive and fundraiser for the Oregon Food Bank.
Q: Does your nonprofit background inform the way you approach your work now?
A: Absolutely. I studied abroad in Namibia and South Africa, which was an amazing experience that ultimately led to me creating a microfinance organization with an amazing local entrepreneur, Rosa Namises. That was really eye-opening because it wasn’t as successful as we thought it would be—there were so many societal challenges that women and children were facing in terms of domestic violence. So I changed my approach. I went back with a grant. I was there six months, living locally, being mindful of participating in the background, letting local leaders lead these efforts. It was so layered, so complicated. It was a pivotal moment for me because I learned that you can have good intent, but you can be harmful if you’re not thoughtful about how you position yourself within this work and this space.
In my work now, within a larger company like Columbia, there’s an inherent power dynamic that I’m really mindful of when a nonprofit reaches out to my team. I try to level the playing field and start by listening to the nonprofit. I ask, “What is your greatest need? What are you experiencing? What can a company like ours uniquely help you solve?”
Q: How did you find your way to Portland?
A: I was working in the Bay Area with my wife, but we never really found our place there. We convinced our jobs at the time to let us work remotely for six months. We chose four different places to call home, to do a “test run” to try and find a place to settle down. Portland was one of those places. We like to say that it came on real strong. It was making a strong case for us to move here.
I didn’t realize that there was such a thriving Athletic and Outdoor industry here. My background, as I mentioned, is in nonprofits, but I was also a wilderness tour guide. I used to lead backpacking trips with youth all over the world. So I love being outside. I didn’t realize all these companies were here! I thought, “Okay, this could be a way to bring a lot of my passions together at once.” But what ultimately brought us here is I got recruited to work for adidas, and so that helped make the decision clear.
Above: Columbia employees volunteering with the Forest Park Conservancy.
Q: How does the Portland community affect your work?
A: Portland is very community-minded, and it’s small enough that its network is really, really strong. Once you’re here, it’s very welcoming. If you’re in the space of wanting to do community work—community impact, social impact—there’s a huge network of people and a lot of different events. A lot of industry summits and company-led events. And there are a lot of partnership opportunities—it’s not really competitive in that way. We’re all trying to solve problems, trying to find ways to support our parks or clean up our local resources. We can all do that together.
There are also a lot of corporate social responsibility or community impact networking groups. I’ve been to many of those—companies across the industries of healthcare, tech, outdoor and sport. It’s pretty cool when you meet someone new and you’re like, “Okay, what problems are you trying to solve? How do we rally our resources so that we’re more equitable in our approach?”
Q: What Community Impact efforts are Columbia working on now?
A: Our Community Impact strategy focuses on two key areas: Conservation, protecting the open spaces where we adventure, and Access, making the outdoors accessible for all.
We partner with nonprofits across all Columbia Sportswear Company brands that align with our business focus and address critical community needs, while engaging both internal and external audiences. My team leads a program called Tough Mother Funder that encourages our consumers to donate at checkout at our Columbia stores. We also partner on product collabs like Leave No Trace x Mountain Hardwear, cause marketing campaigns, and our Collegiate Outdoor Program, which supports 18 universities with product donation grants to support their Outdoor Recreation programs. (Ed.: To learn more about Columbia’s programs, check out the 2024 Impact Report.)
Q: You mentioned that Columbia encourages employee giving. What does that look like?
A: We have a volunteer time-off policy: 16 hours each year of paid-volunteer time off. Also, all full-time employees get up to a thousand dollars matched to any cause that they care about as long as it meets our criteria. I’m really proud that we’ve embedded employee giving into the culture of the company.
Q: How does giving look on the customer-facing side?
A: I mentioned this before, but we have a long-term consumer engagement program called the Tough Mother Funder program. Currently we’re promoting our partnership with the Land Trust Alliance through the Columbia Retail Store Grant Program. If a consumer donates at checkout, that money goes back to their local Land Trust. We are seeing a lot of positive engagement and it helps us live our mission in a more intentional way. Locally in the Portland Area, all donations are given to the Friends of the Columbia Gorge Land Trust.
Q: Do you feel that your work carries any particularly important resonance in our current political moment?
A: So many nonprofits that rely on government funding are having that funding cut. I think it kind of doubles down on the business case of why our departments exist. Not to say that we can offset what the government does, but we can supplement in thoughtful ways.
What’s most encouraging to me is when companies realize their power, and when consumers can start to engage with those companies in meaningful ways. Companies like Columbia can be a safe place for a consumer to come and say, “I actually feel like myself in your product and it helps me exercise, helps me take care of myself. And its mission also stands for what I care about.”
At Columbia, we have a Community Cares program that’s hyper-local to Portland, where we promote nonprofits of a certain size to help bring people into the store. If the nonprofits bring in over 500 people, they’ll get a 10% kickback of sales. It’s a good fundraising angle. We give back to causes employees care about. And we give product away, especially if an organization is outdoor-focused.
Q: It sounds like you’ve carved out an interesting professional niche for yourself.
A: I’m really passionate about alleviating inequalities and making the world more equitable. There are enough resources to solve major societal problems. It is going to take cross-functional partnerships across industries. In a time where it’s easy to feel powerless, I’m grateful I get to do work that can drive a tangible impact and move the needle step by step. In addition to leading Community Impact work within companies, I’m a certified Executive Coach with a focus on supporting leaders and teams to live and lead with purpose, aligning values with action to create transformational change in their lives and the world.
Thinking back over the course of my career and life experience, it is sort of wild that I get to do this. But Portland is the perfect spot for this work. Every company, every small business is community-minded. You saw how coffee shops reacted to the SNAP emergency. A problem arose and immediately they’re like, “What can we do to help?”
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