In 2016, shortly after I'd joined Vans, I saw a video online of a young Indian woman speaking at a local TED talk event. Her name was Atita Verghese and he had her notes on her phone, which she checked periodically, but I was struck by what she was saying. She was talking about the strict gender norms in India and how skateboarding had been an empowering discovery: no rules, no coaches, just self expression. I reached out to Atita and we started talking. We put her on the Vans APAC team, she came and visited in California (shown below with Steve Van Doren) and then we went to India to film one of her workshops. We brought along Lizzie Armanto, one of the top women skateboarders in the world and the result was the "Girls Skate India" video below (named after Atita's non-profit.) This is one of my favorite pieces of work I've ever made. We also launched a series of skateboarding workshops, all over the world and ended up getting thousands of women and girls on skateboards for the first time. We followed that up the next year with the Vanguards film, profiling four young women skaters from around the world and continuing the workshops. The following year we continued the workshops and profiled a female skate crew called the Skate Witches. Not only did this work lead to boatloads of women being introduced to skateboarding, it encouraged Vans to adopt pay parity in the skate events they put on, more women got on the skate team, Vans gave Lizzie Armanto a signature shoe, the first for a female pro from any shoe brand in 30 years, and maybe most importantly, there is a new generation of skateboarders who have grown up seeing people like them riding and being represented in culture.
