Jay Orris

Founder, Peak to Peak Leadership

Jay Orris is a former brand management professional currently focused on family responsibilities and non-profit roles, particularly in the area of leadership for students. He and his wife Christy have recently formed Peak to Peak Leadership, designed to bring values-based leadership to students ranging from middle schoolers to college students. The organization uses a model based on the Aspen Institute’s seminar series to generate deep discussions among students and to catalyze an exploration of their own personal values. Until June 2009, Jay was Marketing Director at Healthy Food Holdings, a management company that acquired and built natural food brands. He left the company to travel the world with his family on the Fall ’09 voyage of Semester at Sea. Prior to joining Healthy Food Holdings, Jay was a Marketing Director for WhiteWave Foods. He was a brand manager with responsibility for 11 product lines for Horizon Organic when Dean Foods purchased it to form WhiteWave Foods. He also spent five years in working on various brands at General Mills in Minneapolis. Jay received his MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College and his undergrad degree in Biochemistry and Economics from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. Jay grew up in Toronto. Before moving to the United States in 1994 to attend graduate school, he spent more than five years in Japan, most of it working for a small, privately held import company. He lives in Boulder with his wife and their active 15 and 16-year old sons. In his spare time, he can be found on the golf course, or more recently on the tennis court trying to keep up with his sons. If not local, the entire family is likely on a voyage around the world with Semester at Sea, a trip they have undertaken four times.