The first CrossFit gym opened in Santa Cruz, California, in 2001. Three years later, Nicole Carroll embarked on her journey with the fitness program that would change her life and eventually transform the fitness landscape around the world. Carroll, now CrossFit’s GM of Training and Education, reflects on those early days in Greg Glassman’s original gym as well as CrossFit’s rapid growth and acquisition, focusing specifically on what we needed to do to preserve the impact of CrossFit for future generations in a radically shifted landscape: “To preserve what’s most important, we needed to create a shared common understanding of what the ‘magic’ of CrossFit actually is. Next, we would have to continue to communicate and bring new people into that magic effectively,” Carroll explains. “This challenge is shared by all of us: CrossFit HQ, CrossFit affiliates, coaches, gym members, and garage-gym devotees. Rising to this challenge is, in my opinion, the most important thing we can do right now — as a business, as a brand, and as a community. It is collective work. Work that, if we align behind it as a team, will benefit all of us as well as the world around us.”