Snow Australia celebrates 20 years of Michael Kennedy as CEO

The history of Snow Australia over the last twenty years has been marked by profound transformation. The organisation went through a groundbreaking change in governance in 2018, when it merged all state associations into one unified structure, has rebranded twice to reflect its commitment to represent the entirety of the snow community and has progressively grown in relevance to become one of the most important national sporting organisations (NSO) for Olympic and Paralympic sports in Australia.

A common thread throughout this journey of transformation has been the presence of Michael Kennedy, who in November 2022 celebrated twenty years of service as Chief Executive Officer of the organisation, the longest tenure for any sporting administrator of any major sporting code in Australia. 

As Snow Australia recognises his remarkable milestone, Kennedy said he is proud of the collective achievements attained during his tenure, and grateful for the opportunity of serving as CEO of the organisation for such a long time.

“First, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years,” Kennedy confessed. “I’ve been passionate about snow sports, skiing and snowboarding since I was a little kid. I am lucky enough to have lived that journey all the way through from an athlete into a coach and then high performance and now a CEO.” 

Kennedy tells people he sometimes thinks of himself as the young kid who dreamt to become an astronaut and ended up working for NASA. Fueled by an enormous passion for snow, skiing and the freedom he associates with spending time in the mountains, Kennedy’s journey started as a young child skiing with his family at Mt Buller. From there he went on to compete at the highest level in mogul skiing, up to the FIS World Cup, before transitioning into coaching and program manager roles.  

Looking for ways to stay involved in the industry he was so passionate about, he started his involvement in high performance sports prior to the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Winter Games, working with Alisa Camplin on her historic first ever snow gold medal for Australia. Later that year, he applied for the position of CEO of Skiing Australia. 

“I was on the selection panel for ‘Kenno’ when he started his role as CEO,” said Australian Olympic Committee’s President Ian Chesterman. “We saw a young bloke with a lot of passion and a real commitment to the sport. I didn’t expect to see him in the chair 20 years later, so it’s been fantastic to watch him grow in that job. It’s fantastic to see where Snow Australia is today and so much of it is due to Kenno’s work.” 

Skiing Australia in 2002 was very different from the successful organisation Snow Australia has become today. Facing financial challenges, with just two members of staff and limited turnover, the organisation didn’t have a clear pathway towards growth and relevance. 

Coming into the role off the back of his success in high performance, as a coach and a program manager, Kennedy was convinced that the organisation needed to rely on sporting achievements to find its place in the Australian sporting landscape, particularly as the Australian sport system relies significantly on success to allocate funding.   

“We did not have a lot going for us at the time, but what we did have was a core group of pioneering athletes. For me, an athlete-first approach and making sure that we, as a sport, were successful internationally, has been the key driver the whole way,” Kennedy explained. 

“I think without successful athletes as a sport in Australia, within our sport system, you become irrelevant pretty quickly.” 

Kennedy focused the organisation on high performance results, adopting a targeted approach towards the disciplines where chances of success were higher. Athletes like Kirstie Marshall (Aerials), Jacqui Cooper (Aerials), Alisa Camplin (Aerials) and Torah Bright (Snowboarding) were some of the first ones to win medals on the world’s stage and enjoy sustained success, creating opportunities of growth for the organisation and the snow sports community at large. 

Olympic Winter Institute of Australia (OWIA) CEO Geoff Lipshut said Kennedy’s vision proved crucial to transform the perspective of Skiing Australia, which by 2004 had become Ski and Snowboard Australia.

“I think what he [Kennedy] brought to the table, especially in the early days, it’s a transformation of a fairly political organisation that had a lot of user group influence and some industry influence to being a pure national sporting organisation, dealing with the issues of development of pathways into supporting elite performance,” Lipshut said.  

Kennedy recognises that having a number of amazingly talented and committed athletes over the last two decades has been the catalyst for the ongoing success of Snow Australia.  

“As the athletes have achieved and we have had ongoing success, we’ve been able to really  build other things off it, build our participation, build our relevance, our presence within the sport system,” Kennedy said.  

“I think we’ve ended up in a place now where we’re essentially a top tier sport within the Australian Olympic sport system. Adding the paralympic disciplines, adding SkiMo [ski mountaineering] recently, these things add to the richness of what we’re doing.”

Current OWIA President Dean Gosper served as Chair of Snow Australia between 2003-2022, sharing most of Kennedy’s journey over the last 20 years. Gosper was a mentor for Kennedy, and the two were on the same page in terms of strategic approach, providing a unified direction for the organisation.  

“We both were aware that we had to be athlete-focused, that always came through very strongly in all our conversations,” Gosper said. “We also had to be clear that we had to be sport-focused. Because at the time we started getting involved, the organisation seemed to be involved not just with the sport, but also with everything that had to do with the industry. So the main decision we made was to focus our direction just into sport, and that paid off.” 

One of the greatest achievements of the organisation under Gosper and Kennedy was the ground-breaking unification of the sport. Ski & Snowboard Australia made history in 2018 when it became the first Olympic sport in Australia to unify into a single organisation in order to govern the whole sport from the grassroots to the elite. 

Established after an extensive consultation process that involved all stakeholders, the unification model meant that resources and operations would be streamlined, giving the organisation the ability to have one strategy, workforce and financial management system in place. 

The restructuring was hailed as a game changer for Snow Australia, now able to have a single voice and gather everyone’s effort in a single direction. John Wylie, at the time Chair of Sport Australia, commented that the operation had been forward-looking, displaying “decisive and bold leadership for the long-term good of the sport,” and had also been conducive to improving financial resources and opportunities for Australia’s winter athletes. 

Gosper added that “the unification of the sport was of particular significance because it allowed us to speak with one voice, but operate regionally. This remains an enviable exception in Australian sport administration.” 

The unification brought on another change of name, from Ski and Snowboard Australia to the current Snow Australia.  The rebranding was also an opportunity to renew the collective commitment to supporting athletes and developing champions, while at the same time ensuring balance and coordination between the many disciplines and associated communities within the snowsports landscape, along with supporting the clubs, providing broad opportunities and leveraging synergies across disciplines, for example in the coaching space. 

In fact, the last few years have seen unprecedented growth and success for snow sports in Australia, which in turn highlighted the importance of continuing to create opportunities for future athletes and grow the pathways towards high performance. As the focus transitioned from achieving success to sustaining success at the highest level, the topic of legacy came to the forefront of the organisation’s commitment to grow the sport. 

“If you look at the sport, if you look at where we were at compared to other sports, I think the one thing that we were really missing was a real ‘bricks and mortar’ sort of home,” Kennedy said. “A place where all disciplines could come together, that serves the high performance, but also provides a place for the community to come together and interact with the high performance, and equally a place where we can also capture the history of the sport, celebrate our past champions and try to really inspire the next generation.” 

That vision has materialised into the National Snowsports Training Centre, the multi-purpose venue which is being delivered in Jindabyne and is on track to be completed in 2023, when it will become the home of Australian snow sports. 

“It started to seed as an idea back in 2017,” continued Kennedy, “and we had tremendous support from the NSW Government and philanthropy, through John Hancock and his family.

“We are in the process of delivering this world-class facility which for the next 20, 30, 40 years will be a place that captures the essence of what snow sport is all about. It’s been a really important part of my own legacy, my own drive, that we can make sure we deliver this amazing facility.” 

As he reflects over the last twenty years as CEO of Snow Australia, Michael Kennedy is proud of Snow Australia’s collective achievements and how far he has come, personally, on his journey of discovery, fueled by genuine passion for snow sports and an unwavering commitment to service the snowsports community.  

“When I started out in the role I was thirty, I had just come off 14 years of back-to-back winters and I really didn’t know much about where this role was going to take me or what I was going to do,” confessed Kennedy. 

“I just knew that I was really passionate about the sport and, even back then, I had a vision of what it might look like down the track. I don’t know how far along the journey I am, but however long it has to go, I’ll stay passionate and committed, focused on doing my best every single day to make snowsport the absolute best version of itself,” he said.