Donna Carpenter was born in NYC. At 17, while attending Barnard College, she met Jake Burton Carpenter, who founded Burton Snowboards. The following year, they married and moved to his house in Manchester, Vermont. Burton Snowboards operated from their house. The store was in the dining room and the shipping from the basement. Soon, Carpenter became a driving force in the business, helping with the designs and upgrading the manufacturing technology.
In 1985, after Carpenter graduated college, the couple moved to Austria to establish a European base for the company. There, at the age of 22, Carpenter set up the headquarters and warehouse. After five years, they returned to the US, and Carpenter was nominated the chief financial officer and chief international officer. Over the years, Burton Snowboards became one of the largest and most successful snowboard companies in the world, with offices in the US, Canada, Austria, Japan, China, and Australia. The Carpenters are credited with modernizing the traditional snowboard and turning snowboarding from a hobby to the mainstream sport it is today.
Their innovation manifested not only with the products but also in their management. In 2003, after attending a meeting with the company’s Global Directors, Carpenter realized that out of 25 people at the meeting, there were only two women in the room, including herself. Since then, the company has been working to promote diversity in the company and snowboarding. Today their CEO senior team is half men and half women.
In 2016, at 51, Carpenter was named co-CEO of the company, a position she held for four years. In 2019, her husband had died of cancer, and Carpenter took many of his responsibilities, including chairman of Burton’s Board of Directors. Under her leadership, the company has been promoting diversity in the boardrooms as well as on the snowboard slopes and is using the sport to raise awareness of climate change and its hazards.
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