Sugar Bowl Academy, Executive Director & Head of School

ORGANIZATION 

Built by Pioneers. Still Pioneering.

Innovation has shaped Sugar Bowl from the beginning. Founded in 1939 by Austrian ski champion Hannes Schroll—with Walt Disney among its original investors—Sugar Bowl helped establish skiing in the American West. The resort installed California’s first chairlift in its opening season, introduced the West Coast’s first aerial gondola in 1953, and remains one of California’s original, proudly independent ski resorts.

Today, Sugar Bowl encompasses four peaks of storied Sierra terrain above Donner Summit, in a region with one of the richest ski histories in America. That pioneering tradition continues with a new eight-passenger Village Gondola, the centerpiece of a $100 million resort revitalization and the largest investment in Sugar Bowl’s history, targeted to open in December 2026.

The organization now known as Sugar Bowl Academy and Sugar Bowl Ski Team was incorporated as the Sugar Bowl Ski Team Foundation in 1992 by Sugar Bowl Village resident Sheldon Ramsey.

In 1999, Board Chair and former U.S. Ski Team member Dr. Patricia Hellman Gibbs founded Sugar Bowl Academy as a program of the Foundation, working alongside key staff members including former U.S. Ski Team member Jim Hudson and Academic Program Director Barbara Sorba. Inspired in part by her own experience at Stratton Mountain School—co-founded by her father, Warren Hellman—Dr. Gibbs envisioned a p