Getting Far Out: Breast Cancer, Closing Coalition Snow & What Comes Next with Jen Gurecki

Jen Gurecki built Coalition Snow from scratch — the only women-owned and operated ski and snowboard manufacturer in the world — and ran it for 12 years. Then, in the summer of 2025, she found out she had stage two breast cancer. Two days before a flight to Kenya. And everything she thought she knew about time, identity, and what was worth fighting for started to shift.

"I felt like I had all the time in the world to do everything. And that diagnosis changed everything."

We talk a lot on this podcast about moving on from things that aren't working: leaving the relationship, quitting the job, closing the chapter. But there's something different about hearing it from someone who's done the hardest version of that reckoning out loud, in public, while still in the thick of it.

Closing Coalition & What That Word Really Means

Jen is clear: this isn't failure. It's a choice made with full information. The snow sports hard goods space hasn't changed in the ways it needed to. Climate change is real, and the industry's mitigation strategy is largely blowing snow. Costs keep climbing. DEI fell "out of fashion." And after chemo, surgery, lymph node removal, and a year of recovery still ahead of her, she asked herself a simple question: is this really how I want to spend the time I have left?

"Quitting at the right time probably feels like quitting too early."

She's been sitting with that line from a book she's reading on quitting. And when she maps it onto 12 years of Coalition, it lands. She didn't leave because it was hard. She's someone who started Zawadisha, a microcredit organization in Kenya nearly 20 years ago that's still operating today with an entirely women-led team providing microloans to rural Kenyan women. She knows how to do hard. What she's no longer willing to do is hard with almost nothing to show for it.

Cancer, Chemo, and What Survival Actually Looks Like

Jen's mammogram missed everything. It was a routine MRI, ordered by a gynecologist who knew she had dense breast tissue, that caught the tumor. By the time she met with her oncology team and saw the imaging side by side, it was obvious: the mammogram showed nothing. The MRI showed everything.

She went through intensive chemo from September through December, losing her hair, her eyebrows, her eyelashes — running Coalition through Q4 the entire time. Then surgery, with 17 lymph nodes removed from her left arm, and a recovery timeline her physical therapist estimates at another year minimum. She takes estrogen blockers every day now. She manages lymphedema. She has blood drawn every few months so they can watch for cancer returning.

"I'm not cured. I'm not in remission. I have many, many years ahead of me."

She shares this not for sympathy, but because she didn't know any of this before her diagnosis, and she hopes that by talking about it openly, someone else won't have to learn it the hard way.

Redefining Success (And Who Actually Made the Rules)

One of the sharpest threads in this conversation is Jen's willingness to name the framework we're all operating inside without necessarily agreeing to it. The cadence of content. The constant growth. The metrics that tell us whether we're doing enough.

"What you're 'supposed to do' is literally created by the framework of capitalism."

She's not advocating for checked-out or comfortable. She's advocating for knowing your enough number. Asking whose definition of success you're actually chasing. Questioning whether the grinding is producing what you want, and if it's not, why you're still doing it.

What's Next: Far Out

Jen is building something new, and she'll be the first to tell you the pitch is still coming together. Far Out — the name pulled from a store she ran in Reno years ago — is a marketplace for handcrafted goods, group adventure travel (think skiing in Japan, cycling in Kenya, art retreats under dark skies in Idaho), and original artwork. A fourth pillar called Fourth Space launches in the fall, centered on why we connect with each other, not where.

The whole thing is rooted in a belief that creativity and time outdoors are cornerstones of our humanity. That art is what AI can't replicate. That community is the antidote to individualism, especially now. And that there are people out there who want to spend their money and their time with a brand that knows exactly what it stands for, and doesn't flinch about it.

Jen isn't wrapping things up neatly because none of this is neat. She's still recovering, still figuring out who she is without Coalition attached to her name, still building Far Out in real time. But she's doing it with clarity about what matters and zero apology for the chapter she's closing. That's the whole point.

"I'm not going Anywhere. I'm not dead yet."

Find it All:

Instagram:
@letsget_farout
@zawadisha
Websites:
letsgetfarout.com
zawadisha.org

Follow the podcast: @tarin.it.up.podcast
Newsletter: tarinitup.myflodesk.com
Support the pod: buymeacoffee.com/tarinitup