ISHA News: Meet the new directors, officers

ISHA's Board of Directors has elected a new chairman, three new directors and a new treasurer. They are:

Rick Moulton (Chairman), long-time chairman of ISHA’s Awards Committee, is an independent film producer based in Huntington, Vermont. His most notable films include the Vermont Memories series for Vermont Public Television, “Legends of American Skiing” (1983), “Spirit of a Classic” (Mad River Glen, 1988), “Ski Sentinels” (National Ski Patrol, 1983), “Thrills and Spills in the North Country” (New England Ski Museum, 1998), “Passion for Snow” (Dartmouth skiing, 2012) and “Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Rise of Broadcast Journalism” (2018). Rick studied mass communication at the University of Denver.

Henri Rivers (Director) was elected president of the National Brotherhood of Skiers (NBS) in March 2020. NBS comprises 50 ski clubs in 43 cities, with 3,500 members. A native New Yorker, he has been an avid skier since 1975. Henri is a PSIA-certified instructor and USSA official. He first became involved with NBS in 1996. In 2003 he became a coach for the NBS national team and in 2008 he was appointed the Olympic Scholarship Fund administrator. During his tenure as OSF administrator, he grew the national team to 15 athletes. In 2016 he was appointed national competition director and in 2018 was elected executive vice president of NBS. He served for two years before being elected national president. After 25 years managing large construction projects, including hospitals, dormitories and other municipal facilities, in 2007 he founded Drumriver Industries, which designs and builds renewable energy projects.

Christof Thöny (Director) of Bludenz, Austria, studied at the University of Innsbruck and teaches Catholic religion and history at the Bundesgymnasium Bludenz, while working as a project manager and publisher. Since 2005 he has been curating historical and cultural exhibitions. He is the author of more than 50 publications, mainly focused on regional history and the history of skiing. His projects include “Hannes Schneider, Pioneer of Skiing,” staged in the Arlberg and at the New England Ski Museum; “80 Years of Arlberg Kandahar” at the Museum St. Anton; “Wintersportarchiv,” funded by the EU and including ski museums and associations in Vorarlberg and Allgäu (wintersportarchiv.org); and the skiing-history website skispuren.com. His book “Skispuren” won an ISHA Ullr Award in 2020.

Ivan Wagner (Director) is chief editor of Der Schneehase, the Swiss Academic Ski Club (SAS) yearbook, which received an ISHA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. Born in Prague, he trained with the Czech national ski team. After the Russian invasion of 1968 he emigrated with his family to Switzerland, studied electrical engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), and joined SAS in 1969. He became a successful university alpine racer and mountaineer. Ivan earned a master’s degree in industrial management at Purdue and spent four decades in banking, retiring as chair of banking and financial services at Ernst & Young. He’s a member of the Kandahar Ski Club and received its Sir Arnold Lunn Medal in 2010.

Bob Soden (Treasurer) has been involved with ISHA for many years, as a writer/researcher and historian and as chair of the Museum Outreach Committee. He is working on a history of Jay Peak. A lifelong resident of Montreal, Bob studied engineering at Sir George Williams University and Concordia University. In 1963 he achieved certification from the American Ski Teachers Association of Natur Teknik. Though English is his mother tongue, he is fluent in French and uses both in promoting ISHA in Canada. For 40 years Bob was involved in engineering management and consulting. He has been a project manager for multiple large paper companies and has worked with Petro-Canada and the TransCanada Pipeline.

Other officers were re-elected. They are President Seth Masia, Vice Presidents Jeff Blumenfeld, Wini Jones, and John McMurtry, and Secretary Einar Sunde. 

2021 ISHA Awards Video Now Online

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the ISHA Awards Program, originally scheduled for Snowmass, was held online on April 29. View a video of the program, with brief talks by the honored writers and filmmakers, at skiinghistory.org/events.