SOAR Blog

Chip Smith, President

As a California native, Chip developed an early love for outdoor sports through water and snow skiing, road and mountain biking, surfing and a few years of football and cross-country running.

His passion for sports helped him develop into a successful marketing professional with more than 15 years of experience in the sporting goods, healthcare, software and communications industries. The majority of those years were spent with sporting goods industry leaders Shimano American Corporation and Specialized Bicycles, Inc.

Chip began his career in 1988 with the Los Angeles office of Ogilvy & Mather advertising, where he spent three years as a billing supervisor. He then spent seven years in sales and marketing positions with Shimano American Corporation, the world’s dominant leader in bicycle components. As marketing manager, Chip directed the company’s strategy and execution of advertising, collateral, point-of-purchase, trade show, advocacy efforts, governmental outreach, promotional efforts, as well as product launches to the trade, government and consumers in the U.S. market.

Specialized Bicycles recruited Chip away from Shimano to become its global marcom manager, a position he held for nearly three years as he directed a team in all aspects of Specialized’s international marketing communications efforts. Chip then spent the next four-plus years in a variety of marketing and sales consulting engagements with firms both inside and outside the recreation marketplace before joining SOAR Communications in 2005.

Chip earned his bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Brigham Young University, and his MBA from Pepperdine University. He also lived in Tokyo, Japan for a year and half, where he learned the Japanese language.

He moved to Salt Lake City, Utah in 2004 where he lives, skis, and rides with his wife, Debbie.

Maura Lansford, Account Executive

Maura started her career in the fast-paced world of technology PR after earning a degree in Communications from Brigham Young University-Idaho. When presented with an opportunity to work with self-proclaimed ski bums, roadies and tree huggers, Maura jumped at the chance to join a more relatable crowd.

Now a SOAR veteran of more than four years, Maura boasts an impressive electronic rolodex of media contacts from her time managing media registration, and writing and placing stories for the industry’s most influential outdoor recreation, home fitness, fly fishing and cycling tradeshows. She’s also spent her fair share of time organizing and producing product-and event-focused television segments and seasonal gift guides.

Whether swimming at the family cabin in Montana, skiing at Snowbird or pushing a stroller around the neighborhood park, Maura enjoys spending time outside with her young family and friends.

Alex Strickland, Account Executive

Alex comes to SOAR with a combination of media and marketing experience and a love for playing outside. As an active mountain biker, skier and marketing professional and a recovering runner and newspaperman, Alex brings a unique perspective gained from years working in and with the media and enjoying the outdoors in all seasons.

At SOAR, Alex helps promote the products and public involvement of cycling apparel maker Primal Wear, provides public relations services to non-profit Bikes for Kids Utah and assists in media relation and promotion for Outdoor Retailer and Interbike, two flagship trade shows in their respective industries.

Alex was a small-town newspaper editor in Western Montana where he photographed, wrote, designed and managed two weekly newspapers that covered more than 350 square miles and a dozen communities. His experience also includes stints as a news editor and senior writer in the marketing departments at a pair of state universities and as an accounts manager and production designer at FUEL Marketing a Salt Lake City-based advertising agency.

In addition to his full-time professional work, Alex is a freelance writer and photographer and his writing and photography has been published in numerous print and online publications across the country including WashingtonPost.com, Montana Magazine, Outdoor Informer.com, Empire Builder magazine, NewWest.net and others.