Helena Gilbert-Snyder graduated with a business degree from the D'Amore-McKim School of Business and credits Northeastern with preparing her “for life after college.”
Halfway through the 100-mile mountain bike race deep in the rugged San Juan Mountains of the Rockies near Telluride, Colorado, the rain came down in buckets—blowing sideways—and the thunder and lightning began.
Helena Gilbert-Snyder was running third in the women's pro class of the Telluride 100 and was determined to hang on despite the inclement weather that can roll in quickly in the Rockies.
“It was the hardest race I've ever done, hands down, no comparison. Honestly, it's just the most memorable match. I don't think I've ever been so completely mentally and physically exhausted at the end of an event than this,” says Gilbert-Snyder, who will graduate from Northeastern University in 2021, the same year as that weather blow.
“My hands were so cold I couldn't shift gears. I couldn't eat anything because I couldn't use my hands to open anything. There was lightning and thunder. It was like 35 degrees,” says Gilbert-Snyder. “He's a favorite as I don't think I've ever pushed myself as hard or finished a race feeling as spent as he did.”
Despite the conditions, Gilbert-Snyder held on for third place, one of several podium finishes for the Northeastern grad in six seasons of elite racing.
He first started mountain biking his senior year at El Cerrito High School in Northern California and won the championship. While he won every game that final season, he was also choosing a university to attend next school year and drove 3,000 miles across the country to find what he was looking for.
Gilbert-Snyder says she chose Northeastern for the cooperative, experiential learning.
“That was the selling point. “These fellowships are here to prepare you for life after college. Our goal in those four or five years is to prepare you for the rest of your life,” he says of Northeastern. “Everybody says that, but the co-op program was actually what made me choose Northeastern.”
“One of my biggest focuses when choosing a college was that I didn't want to graduate from college and not know what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be prepared to become an adult in the working world, to have pathways for it and to have connections. And Northeastern really prepared me to be a fully functioning adult by the time I graduated,” says Gilbert-Snyder.
Before graduating with a business degree from the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Gilbert-Snyder worked at two co-ops. The first was at LEK Consulting in San Francisco as a case team assistant. Her second co-op became her full-time job after graduation.
As her enthusiasm for cycling accelerated, Gilbert-Snyder thought she would combine her two interests—business finance and bicycles—in her second co-op. He managed to secure a partnership with Specialized, one of the largest bicycle manufacturers in the world.
Working in Specialty Business at the company's headquarters in Morgan Hill, California, she performed data analysis in an effort to improve the customer experience during her spring 2020 co-op. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she worked remotely.
Gilbert-Snyder continued to work part-time for Specialized after her co-op and throughout her fourth year at Northeastern. After graduating in the spring of 2021, she was offered a full-time position and is currently working in financial planning and analysis.
“I work as a financial analyst in the US market, so all my work is focused on the US. I do a lot of work understanding the market dynamics, our sales programs — are they effective, are they not effective?' she says.
When Gilbert-Snyder isn't crunching numbers and analyzing sales in the cycling industry day in and day out, she rides or races her bike after work and on the weekends.
Gilbert-Snyder's interest in cycling became serious during her sophomore year at Northeastern. She brought her Canyon Inflite cyclocross bike to Boston from home in Northern California and rode it to ride around campus and train on the roads outside of Boston.
It would cross Cambridge and head northwest to the airport at Hanscom Field in Bedford and return to campus, loops that would be 70 to 100 miles.
“I remember how much I loved it in the fall when there were like apple trees and the leaves were changing color and there are little roads, kind of like country roads with all these old houses. I probably could have walked these streets forever during the fall,” he said.
“It's so wonderful,” she continued. “The roads are so beautiful. “Probably one of the highlights of cycling in Boston is the fall months, out in the open where all the trees are showing their colors.”
Although she did not bring a mountain bike to campus during her sophomore year at Northeastern, Gilbert-Snyder joined the university's cycling club and competed with the team. Her teammates, she said, shared their bikes in mountain bike races.
“There were some awesome teammates who were like, 'You should totally come to the race and just use my bike.' So I would go on random people's bikes for those weekends, which was great. It was just fun. The team was super, like, “Oh, totally come on, let's compete. Well, we'll hook you up,” he said.
Gilbert-Snyder competed at the USA Mountain Bike Nationals after her sophomore year at Northeastern and finished sixth in the women's U23 division. That fall, during her junior year, she placed sixth at collegiate Nationals in cross country and grabbed a bronze medal with a third-place finish in the short track.
In addition to mountain biking and gravel riding, he also competes professionally in road cycling events and has had many podium finishes.
“My strengths are strong climbs. A rolling course that has these climbs that last less than two minutes is something I really like,” he said. “I don't really like long climbs, but I like short hard efforts, repeated short hard efforts, and that's my inner mountain biker, I think, because that's what mountain biking is.”
Gilbert-Snyder is also an ambassador for the sport of cycling. He works with two high school mountain bike teams in the Bay Area of Northern California, speaks at fundraising events and is on the board of directors for the USA Cycling regional association.
In addition, she formed an elite women's cycling team – Monarch Racing – and runs clinics for young riders.
“The purpose of all this is to show girls that they have the opportunity to do this sport and that there is a future for them if they want it, but also to support them,” she said.
“Giving them an environment where they can talk to older women and see their peers doing it, having fun, being successful, whatever that means to them,” she said. “The goal is to keep them in the sport, to increase their numbers in the sport, because there's no reason why cycling shouldn't have as many girls, women, men and boys. There is no reason for this to happen. So we need to give them an environment that is supportive and believes in them and gives them the opportunity to be competitive, to learn, in safe and supportive ways.”
The Monarch team, which currently has about 10 members with sponsorships that provide financial and equipment support, has been successful regionally and nationally, he said.
Internationally, Gilbert-Snyder recently took part in the grueling eight-day Absa Cape Epic mountain bike race in the challenging terrain of South Africa's Western Cape, covering 435 miles with over 52,000 feet of climbing. He raced in the mixed team class with Randy Egues and they finished ninth in just over 37 hours.
Although she has competed in several road cycling events over the past two years, Gilbert-Snyder plans to devote a little more time to mountain biking this year as she aims to compete in the UCI Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships at Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia. .
“It's usually somewhere in Europe. So the fact that it's in the United States, it's kind of like, it would be nice to go. So we'll see,” he said.
