Black Diamond Announces Recent Promotions And Hires To Its Leadership Team

Black Diamond Equipment is pleased to announce changes to its leadership team in an effort to strengthen its commercial capabilities. Internally, Kolin Powick was promoted to vice president of product and Bill Ayers to vice president of finance. Over the last year, Oliver Holzmann and Tony Rivera joined Black Diamond in the roles of vice-president of global marketing and business unit director for apparel, respectively.

“These moves, the promotions of Kolin and Bill as well as bringing Oli and Tony on board, represent our ongoing investment efforts in the people necessary to support our global growth moving forward.”

Internally, Black Diamond veteran Kolin Powick was promoted to the position of vice president of product. With a background in mechanical engineering, Powick’s career at Black Diamond began as director of quality in 2002. With over 30 years of experience as an all-around climber, Powick moved into the role of category director for climbing in 2014. Known by many as “KP” from Black Diamond’s popular QC Lab and technology reports, Powick will remain involved with the brand’s efforts to educate current and future generations of climbers on current product technology and climbing best practices.

Black Diamond also promoted Bill Ayers to vice president of finance. Ayers, currently serving in his second tenure as a BD employee, has over twenty years of experience in finance. In addition, Ayers brings a wealth of climbing knowledge to the BD team and is a passionate climber with a strong climbing resume on rock and ice as well as alpine disciplines.

After working at Red Bull from 1999-2019, Oliver Holzmann joined the team in the position of vice president of global marketing. At Red Bull, Holzmann led a team of 75 across its categories for sports, athletes, events, advertising, brand, retail marketing, culture, music, artists, consumer collecting, collegiate, digital marketing and communications. Prior to his time at Red Bull, Holzmann was a professional snowboarder and big mountain rider.

Tony Rivera joined Black Diamond as an omni channel manager with over 12 years of knowledge buying, merchandising, team building and managing sustainable revenue generating experiences. His experience is showcased in former roles as the global merchandise manager at Burton, business unit manager and director of operations & strategy at Outerknown and most recently at Arc’Teryx as its senior manager of merchandising.

Walbrecht adds, “Each of these individuals brings significant experience to our innovate and accelerate strategy that will help define the future of the BD brand.”