Our Vision
Our Mission
What We Believe
- We believe that active people are happy people. And happy people are healthy people.
- We believe that both outdoors and activity are keys to longevity.
- We believe it is important to help endurance athletes and adventurers stay active as much and as often as possible.
- We believe that enduring a physical challenge teaches you things about yourself that you can’t learn from a mental challenge alone.
- We believe the process of preparing for an endurance event and following through with it changes you.
- We believe the sacrifices you make order to commit to an athletic achievement for the sake of accomplishing something is the journey where we learn about ourselves.
About the Founders
Joan Studley and Cortney Jacobsen are product management veterans of the tech industry and two gritty girls who are passionate about bringing products to the market that support healthy, active living.
Cortney Jacobsen has held product leadership positions at Amazon, Brightcove, and Disney. Her undergraduate majors of Classical Piano and Electrical Engineering speak to her mission to balance creativity and logic, and found that a career in product management suited this quest well. She fell in love with the outdoor life when she moved to Seattle 1998. In 2015, she started Northwest Energy Lab, a coaching service for endurance athletes. She is excited to reach more active and adventurous people through building GritLink.
Joan Studley has worked at Microsoft, aQuantive, and CDK Global, and ultimately discovered a skill and passion for product management. She has an underlying personal belief that we should constantly pursue knowledge and discovery, and we create a more enriched community through sharing with others. She has participated in endurance sports for years, primarily cycling and running, which help her decompress while exploring nature. She is excited to combine her interests of connecting people and information with outdoor endurance activities thru GritLink.
Executive Advisory Board
Christine McHugh, Strategy & Operations Advisor
After spending 27 years as an executive at Starbucks, Christine joined a growing health and wellness company as their Chief Strategy Officer. In her two years there, the company went through a name and brand change and doubled in size. Earlier this year she founded her own boutique management consulting firm to help mid market businesses unlock performance and potential in their companies and teams. She is President of the Board for the Green Apron Alliance, a non profit organization for Starbucks alumni and volunteers each week at Northwest Harvest's SODO Community Market. In her spare time, Christine is writing a book about her career and life journey at Starbucks.
Matthew Carlisle, Technical Advisor
Matthew is a hands-on solution architect with 20 years of experience helping companies apply the right technology to business problems. He has been working in the cloud since its inception, and has experience from embedded firmware up to enterprise architecture and cloud migrations. He has a patent in an esoteric and obscure area of Internet communication protocols. He would love triathlons if it weren't for the running and swimming.
Provider Advisory Board
The GritLink Provider Advisory Board is comprised of a group of folks from businesses and clinics in the sports healthcare community that help answer questions and make decisions specific to the GritLink provider network through discussions with the GritLink business leaders. The purpose of the Provider Advisory Board is to guide the GritLink leadership team in the capacity of professionals in the sports healthcare arena.
Bruk Ballenger
Physical Therapist at
Prevail PT
Stephanie Norby
Massage Therapist and Owner of
Rolling Stone Mobile Massage
Bryan Carroll
Physical Therapist, Strength & Conditioning Coach, and Nutrition Coach
at Summit for Wellness
Nikki Vaughan
Strength and Conditioning Coach and Owner of Nikki K. Fitness
Mike Rogers
Physical Therapist and Owner of
Paragon Fitness & Physical Therapy