---
title: "Burton Nears 50 Years as Co-Founder Steps Down as Interim Chief Executive"
description: "In an interview, Donna Carpenter recalled the loan crisis that nearly sank the company her late husband founded"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-08T13:29:59Z
modified: 2026-10-08T14:50:08Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/burton-nears-50-years-as-co-founder-steps-down-as-interim-ch-379281
language: en
tags: ["sustainability", "leadership", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Burton Nears 50 Years as Co-Founder Steps Down as Interim Chief Executive

*In an interview, Donna Carpenter recalled the loan crisis that nearly sank the company her late husband founded*

By rews desk · October 8, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/burton-nears-50-years-as-co-founder-steps-down-as-interim-ch-379281

## In brief

- Donna Carpenter is leaving the interim CEO role at Burton Snowboards as the company nears its 50th anniversary in 2027
- The Burlington, Vt., company, founded by Jake Burton Carpenter, is a leader in the $4.35 billion global snowboarding market
- Carpenter recalled 1989, when a bank pulled its loan and she told 50 employees not to cash their paychecks
- Women in leadership at Burton rose from 10% in 2002 to about 50%, and 90% of its materials are bluesign-approved

Donna Carpenter, who helped build Burton Snowboards from a niche outfit into a leader of the $4.35 billion global snowboarding industry, is stepping down as interim chief executive as the family-owned company approaches its 50th anniversary next year.

Ms. Carpenter, 63, has run the Burlington, Vt., company since June, and she previously served as chief executive from 2016 to 2020. Denny Bruce will take over the job, [she said in an interview with CNBC Make It](https://cnbc.com/make-it/2026/10/08/burton-snowboards-brand-relevance.html) published on Thursday. Her late husband, Jake Burton Carpenter, started the business when snowboarding barely existed as a market, and resorts, trade shows and ski shops shut it out. Nearly half of new American businesses fail within five years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The formula for lasting, Ms. Carpenter said, is not to chase relevance at all. “As soon as you’re doing that, you’re probably not relevant anymore,” she said. Burton’s job, as she put it, is creating collisions, between riders and designers, sport and art, mountain and street style, and then asking one question of every decision: “Does this make it better for the rider?”

The values underneath are not negotiable. “We call them ‘unf---able truths’ — the values that you have and what you stand for,” she said. “Those aren’t going to change, but everything else has to change.” Profits have funded the company’s growth, so Burton has taken on no long-term debt and no outside partners, and it has stayed in the family. “We are riders,” Ms. Carpenter said. “I ride as much as possible, staying connected, listening to that voice of the rider. I think they’re the ones who are deciding where the sport goes.”

There were moments the company nearly died. In 1989, in the middle of the savings and loan crisis, the bank walked away from its loan in the middle of the term even though Burton was current on the deal. Ms. Carpenter, then chief financial officer and eight months pregnant, went from desk to desk telling the company’s 50 employees their paychecks could not yet be cashed. Nobody left. “You put them through hell,” she said. “You get to the other side, and you’re a family.”

Other “oh s---“ moments, as she calls them, were course corrections. What she long saw as an inclusive company had 10 percent women in leadership in 2002; the figure is now about 50 percent, after a deliberate push that added expanded maternity and paternity leave and childcare subsidies. In 2011 Burton accepted thinner margins to use environmentally certified bluesign textiles; 90 percent of its materials now carry the approval, according to the company. “Consumers today want to see behind the curtain,” she said.

Burton boards now turn up on resort slopes across the world and at the Olympics; Mari Fukada of Japan rode one at the Milano Cortina Games in February. There was never an exit plan, Ms. Carpenter said: “It was always bigger than us.” Asked what he was most proud of, she recalled, her husband would answer: persevering through the tough times. Her version sounds much the same. “We work like we ride: You fall down. You get up. You learn.”