Michael Kennedy congratulated for 20 years as Snow Australia Chief Executive

Michael Kennedy has been congratulated by Snow Australia as he celebrates 20 years of service as their Chief Executive - the longest tenure for any administrator of a National Sporting Organisation for an Olympic and Paralympic sport in Australia.

Kennedy was appointed as Chief Executive of Snow Australia, then known as Skiing Australia, in 2002. Since then the organisation went through a groundbreaking change in governance when it merged all state associations into one unified structure, has rebranded twice to reflect its commitment to represent the entirety of the snow community and has progressively grown in relevance to become one of the most important national sporting organisations (NSO) for Olympic and Paralympic sports in Australia.

As Snow Australia recognises his remarkable milestone, Kennedy said he is proud of the collective achievements attained during his tenure, and grateful for the opportunity of serving as Chief Executive of the organisation for such a long time.

Kennedy shared “First, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. I’ve been passionate about snow sports, skiing and snowboarding since I was a little kid. I am lucky enough to have lived that journey all the way through from an athlete into a coach and then high performance and now a CEO.”

Coming into the role off the back of his success in high performance as a coach and a program manager, Kennedy was convinced that the organisation needed to rely on sporting achievements to create opportunities within the system and grow. 

Kennedy added “we did not have a lot going for us at the time, but what we did have was a core group of pioneering athletes. For me, an athlete-first approach and making sure that we were successful internationally as a sport has been the key driver the whole way.

“As the athletes have achieved and we have had ongoing success, we’ve been able to really build other things off it, build our participation, build our relevance, our presence within the sport system.”

Olympic Winter Institute of Australia (OWIA) President, Dean Gosper served as Chair of Snow Australia between 2003-2022 and shared most of Kennedy’s journey over the last 20 years.

“We both were aware that we had to be athlete-focused, that always came through very strongly in all our conversations,” Gosper said. “We also had to be clear that we had to be sport-focused. Because at the time we started getting involved, the organisation seemed to be involved not just with the sport, but also with everything that had to do with the industry. So the main decision we made was to focus our direction just into sport, and that paid off.”

Australian Olympic Committee President, Ian Chesterman advised “I was on the selection panel for ‘Kenno’ when he started his role as CEO. We saw a young bloke with a lot of passion and a real commitment to the sport. I didn’t expect to see him in the chair 20 years later, so it’s been fantastic to watch him grow in that job. It’s fantastic to see where Snow Australia is today and so much of it is due to Kenno’s work.”

OWIA Chief Executive, Geoff Lipshut said Kennedy’s vision to focus on high-performance proved crucial to transform the perspective of Snow Australia.

“I think what he [Kennedy] brought to the table, especially in the early days, it’s a transformation of a fairly political organisation that had a lot of user group influence and some industry influence to being a pure national sporting organisation, dealing with the issues of development of pathways into supporting elite performance,” Lipshut said.

As he reflects over the last twenty years as Chief Executive of Snow Australia, Kennedy is proud of the organisation’s collective achievements and how far he has come, personally, on his journey of discovery, fuelled by genuine passion for snow sports and an unwavering commitment to service the snowsports community.

Kennedy admitted “when I started out in the role I was thirty, I had just come off 14 years of back-to-back winters and I really didn’t know much about where this role was going to take me or what I was going to do.

“I just knew that I was really passionate about the sport and, even back then, I had a vision of what it might look like down the track. I don’t know how far along the journey I am, but however long it has to go, I’ll stay passionate and committed, focused on doing my best every single day to make snowsport the absolute best version of itself.”