HTI Group's 70 Summer Interns Get a Life Lesson from Greek Ski Star AJ Ginnis

Every summer, dozens of young interns pass through the workshops, offices and engineering floors of the HTI Group, the South Tyrolean industrial powerhouse behind some of the world's best-known ski lifts, snow groomers and snowmaking systems. This year, before they packed up and headed back to their studies, the group's 70 summer interns got something a little different from their usual professional briefings: a masterclass in resilience from one of alpine skiing's most improbable success stories.

A gathering at Jöchlsthurn

The meeting took place last week at the historic Jöchlsthurn residence in Vipiteno, a property owned by the group, where HTI's annual gathering for its interns offered participants a chance to reflect together on their experience — one that went well beyond the professional side of their placements across the group's various companies and operating divisions. The young participants, who had arrived from Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and the United States, had the opportunity to revisit what they'd learned during their internships, compare impressions and perspectives, and hear the story of an athlete who built his own sporting career through a long sequence of setbacks, choices and fresh starts.

Who is AJ Ginnis?

The guest of honor was AJ Ginnis, the first Greek athlete ever to win a medal at the FIS Alpine Ski World Championships — a milestone reached with silver in slalom at the 2023 World Championships in Courchevel. Ginnis's own path to that medal is one of the more unusual stories in modern ski racing. Born in Athens and raised in Vouliagmeni, just outside the Greek capital, he first learned to ski at age two on Mount Parnassus, where his father ran a small ski school. He later moved to Austria before enrolling at the well-known Green Mountain Valley School in Vermont to refine his technique, joining the U.S. ski team at just 17 and making his World Cup debut two years later in Madonna di Campiglio.

But injuries repeatedly derailed his American career — his progress through the U.S. system was interrupted by setbacks on five separate occasions — and by 2020, with his place on the U.S. team increasingly precarious and the pandemic further stalling any restart, the Greek ski federation approached him about competing for his country of birth instead, through his mother's Greek heritage. Ginnis made his debut for Greece in Alta Badia in December 2020, and the switch would prove transformative: in February 2023, in the slalom at Chamonix, he produced a stunning 21-place comeback in the second run to finish second — the first World Cup podium in Greek alpine skiing history — a result he built on later that year with his historic World Championship silver in Courchevel.

The lesson: perseverance

At Jöchlsthurn, Ginnis walked the young interns through that same arc — the path that carried him to the top of international ski racing, dwelling on the difficulties encountered along the way, the injuries, and the process of helping build Greece's national alpine ski team almost from scratch. Perseverance sat at the heart of his message: the ability to overcome obstacles, keep looking forward, and maintain trust in one's own goals — themes he tied directly to the long and often improbable road that eventually led to his silver medal in Courchevel, crediting perseverance, faith in the future and the support of a solid personal environment as the elements that made it possible.

Part of a bigger internship culture

The Ginnis meeting is the marquee moment in what has become a well-established program at HTI. The group's summer internship scheme gives young people a first concrete contact with the world of work, letting them gain hands-on experience and get to know different professional areas — while, from HTI's side, functioning simultaneously as a channel for fresh ideas and a way of identifying young talent early. Over the years, several former interns have in fact returned to the group after finishing their studies, beginning full-time careers as employees — a pipeline the company clearly continues to invest in, judging by the international spread of this year's 70-strong cohort.

Inside HTI Group

The company hosting the event is not a small operation. Headquartered in Vipiteno/Sterzing, the HTI Group closed 2025 with record revenue of €1.62 billion, up 15.8% on the previous year, and now employs roughly 5,000 people worldwide. Its portfolio spans ropeways and cable cars (Leitner, Poma, Bartholet), snow groomers and tracked utility vehicles (Prinoth, Jarraff), snowmaking and dust-suppression systems (Demaclenko, HKD, WLP), wind energy (Leitwind), hydroelectric power (Troyer), and digital ski-resort management software (Skadii). The ropeway division alone accounts for roughly 60% of group turnover, and 2025 saw the company install more than 80 new cable-car systems worldwide, alongside sales of over 1,000 snow groomers and tracked vehicles and more than 2,000 snow generators — including, notably, an urban cable car now under construction in Varanasi, India, part of a push by group president Anton Seeber to apply the company's mountain-transport technology to easing traffic in congested cities.

Against that backdrop of industrial scale, the Jöchlsthurn gathering reads as something more personal: a reminder, delivered by a skier who nearly saw his career end multiple times over before switching flags and reaching the podium, that behind every gondola cabin and snow groomer rolling off HTI's production lines is a workforce the company is still actively trying to inspire — one summer internship at a time.