TRAILBLAZERS: How Renée Huang turned a longing for connection into Wild Women Tribe

Renée Huang created Wild Women Tribe in 2018 after recognizing a deeper need among local women for connection in nature — not just activity, but space for honesty, presence and community. Photo: Wild Women Tribe

The Park City founder uses nature, language and community to help women step outside the checklist and back into themselves

PARK CITY, Utah — Before Wild Women Tribe became a Park City network of hikes, workshops, and retreats, it began with something quieter: a personal longing for deeper connection.

For founder Renée Huang, the impulse behind the work did not begin with a business plan. It began much earlier — in childhood, in poetry, in wonder, in the feeling of being most herself outdoors. By the time she launched Wild Women Tribe in 2018, she had been living in Park City for eight years, and that instinct had found its shape in a community built around something many women here were quietly craving: more than activity, more than social routine, more than just another thing to do.

“I was feeling this calling, this really deep desire to have more connections of depth with women in the outdoors,” Huang said. “It soon became quite apparent to me that other women also felt like they wanted to connect with each other in nature.”

What began with local gatherings and collaborations with coaches, yoga teachers, and facilitators quickly struck a chord. Women showed up for early daylong workshops and weekend excursions, initially held on Saturdays and Sundays, but what many seemed to be seeking was larger than a hike or an event. They were showing up for presence, honesty, friendship, and the chance to feel a little less alone.

That desire for connection remains at the center of Huang’s work.

For her, nature is not just a backdrop. It is part of the transformation.

“I think one of the things that nature does for us is it reminds us, it takes us out of the minutia of the day-to-day and the tasks and the checklists and the schedules,” she said. “It kind of pops us back into this deep remembrance of humanity in the collective.”

That idea runs through Wild Women Tribe’s ethos. Huang talks about the work in terms of “rewilding” — not as a trend, but as a return to the body, the earth, and parts of the self that can get buried beneath obligation, routine, and the steady pressure of modern life.

Just as important, she said, is what happens when women gather in that space together.

One of the biggest surprises in building Wild Women Tribe, Huang said, has been how quickly women from very different backgrounds connect when they let their walls down. On retreats and group experiences, it is common to see women in their 20s through their 60s sharing stories, offering encouragement, and forming friendships — people who may never have crossed paths otherwise.

“What I’ve identified is this common thread of the curious, kind, open-hearted woman,” Huang said.

That openness, she said, matters more than age, title, or life stage. In a community like Park City, where people can easily stay in their own lanes, Wild Women Tribe has become a place where women from different circles can meet more honestly.

Huang’s own path into that work has not been linear. Before founding Wild Women Tribe, she worked in print journalism, including at The Globe and Mail in Canada, and later moved into communications and public relations. Over time, that background merged with deeper study in meditation and neuro-linguistic programming — work centered on how language shapes thought, belief, and identity.

That thread now appears in Wild Women Tribe’s retreats and workshops, where writing, reflection, and spoken-word exercises are part of the experience.

“We’ll do these exercises where it’s like you can really nerd out on your choice of words, whether you’re writing them or thinking them or even saying them,” she said.

As Wild Women Tribe has grown, so has its collaborative reach. The organization now offers retreats and recurring programming while partnering with other women facilitators, including coaches, healers, yoga teachers, and outdoor guides. Huang said that the spirit of collaboration is intentional.

“I try as much as I can to collaborate with as many of the women-owned businesses as I can,” she said. “If we support each other, then our ripples are overlapping, and they’re creating larger waves.”

That may be one of the clearest ways Huang fits the Trailblazers mold: not simply by building something of her own, but by creating more connective tissue in the broader community. Her vision is not built around competition. It is built around the idea that when women feel more grounded, more connected, and more fully themselves, that steadiness ripples outward — into families, friendships, work, and community life.

Asked what advice she would give someone trying to build something in Summit County, Huang’s answer was simple.

“I think I would say, do what you love,” she said. “I think heart-centered businesses, the ones that thrive because the founders are so in love and passionate about what they’re offering — that comes from the heart.”

She also understands the hesitation that can keep women on the sidelines. Often, she said, the barrier is not whether someone feels called to the work. It is whether they trust themselves enough to step toward it.

“That doubt or that nervousness or that insecurity is really the threshold through which we get to step into transformation,” she said.

For Huang, that threshold is where Wild Women Tribe begins: not with certainty, but with willingness. In a town known for movement and outdoor culture, she has created something that asks women to pause, listen, and reconnect — with nature, with community, and with themselves.

Readers can also follow along on @wildwomen_tribe.