Kevin Goradia
Owner and CEO, Crux Climbing Center
The Basics
Company Name: Crux Climbing Center
Location: Austin, TX
Founded: 2016
Full-Time Employees: ~40
Products: We are a climbing, fitness and yoga center with a gear shop
Social: Instagram // Facebook // Vimeo
Claim to Fame: A climbing gym by the community, for the community, our non-corporate vibe and we allow dogs! Also, our taco cannon.
The Culture
The best thing about working at crux is:
Our open honesty with employees and members that allows for feedback that is heard, which allows for change to happen from all levels. Being a smaller company run by younger leaders, we take more risks whether that's operational decisions, stances on public issues, or events we throw. Because of this we know that we can make a lasting impact on our community.
When we’re not working, we’re:
Climbing, playing with our dogs, plotting out our next climbing trip, eating tacos.
What we’re reading:
The Rock Climber’s Training Manual (thanks a lot Covid 19), Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard & Swell by Liz Clark (its hot here so we’re dreaming of water!), Principles by Ray Dalio, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and literally any guidebook we can get our hands on.
What we’re listening to:
Local artists like Sweet Spirit, Black Pumas, Wild Child, Molly Burch, Tameca Jones, Ley Line. Tierra Whack, MorMor, Chloe x Halle & Dolly Parton.
If they made a movie about our workplace, it would be called:
‘Trying Something New’.
Inclusion in the outdoors matters because:
We cannot protect this planet, and all that it has to offer us, until we are united in that goal. The outdoors belongs to all of us. If all are not included in the outdoors, we are not only robbing them of the joys, life passions and career paths that we have benefited from, but we are also robbing ourselves of a better society more connected with the spaces around them. We believe that our connection to climbing and the outdoors is informed by our past experiences, which go on to inform policies and ideas that affect all of us. With a more inclusive outdoors, we will have even more diverse ideas, informed by more diverse experiences, that might help us all find a better solution moving forward-together. Inclusion in the outdoors matters because historically, it has not mattered enough.
Five years down the line, it’s our hope that:
Climbing becomes more accessible, especially financially. Spaces for climbing are all welcoming - Climbing as a sport is intimidating enough, the fear of race, gender, ability, or any other discrimination should be eliminated.