Dr. Robert Forto
Adventure Strategist, Leadership Practitioner, Dog Trainer, Musher, Podcaster, and Entrepreneur
Dr. Robert Forto, DSL, is the Adventure Strategist®, leadership practitioner, professional dog trainer, musher, podcaster, entrepreneur, and writer based in Willow, Alaska. His work brings together more than three decades of experience with working dogs, business ownership, media, outdoor adventure, and leadership with academic research focused on succession and the next generation of family business leaders.
Forto is the co-founder of Alaska Dog Works, a professional dog-training company serving families in Alaska and beyond. His career with dogs began long before the business. He purchased his first purebred Siberian Husky in 1987, competed in obedience, became involved in dog mushing, and eventually built a professional career around training dogs and the people who live and work with them. Today, that experience continues through Alaska Dog Works, where the family is preparing the next generation to assume greater responsibility for day-to-day operations.
From the Trail to Leadership
Much of Forto’s approach to leadership comes from environments where decisions have immediate consequences. Dog teams, wilderness travel, entrepreneurship, family businesses, and decades of working with clients have provided a practical laboratory for understanding communication, preparation, systems, trust, responsibility, and decision-making under pressure.
That experience became the foundation for his work as an Adventure Strategist. Through Dreamchaser Leadership, Forto works with leaders, entrepreneurs, family businesses, and organizations facing growth, transition, succession, and difficult decisions. His approach connects lessons from the trail with practical leadership systems that can be applied when the stakes are real and the consequences extend beyond a single leader.
Education and Family Business Succession
Forto earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2018 and a Master of Sports Management from Liberty University in 2020. In December 2024, he completed the Doctor of Strategic Leadership at Liberty University.
His doctoral research focused on transgenerational succession and emerging female leaders in family firms. The subject is more than an academic interest. Forto and his family are applying many of those principles as his daughter, Nicole, assumes increasing responsibility for the day-to-day operations of Alaska Dog Works.
That combination of research and lived experience shapes Forto’s work with family businesses. Succession is not simply about choosing the next person in charge. It requires systems, documentation, trust, preparation, and a willingness by the current generation to create space for someone else to lead.
Family Business Succession / Dissertation / Leadership Research
A Life in Dog Training and Mushing
Dogs have remained a constant throughout Forto’s adult life. His experience spans competitive obedience, professional dog training, service dogs, working dogs, recreational and competitive mushing, kennel management, and decades of educating dog owners.
After his release from incarceration in 2006, competence with dogs provided the first opportunity to rebuild his professional life. He began working at the American School of Dog Training in Aurora, Colorado, and within months was running the operation that became Denver Dog Works. Several years later, the family moved to Alaska and established Alaska Dog Works in Willow.
Today, Forto continues to train, teach, write, podcast, and participate in the mushing community while helping prepare the next generation of the family business.
Mushing Magazine, Mushing.com, and First Paw Media
Forto has spent years documenting the people, races, dogs, history, and culture of dog mushing through podcasting, writing, interviews, and other media. In 2024, Forto and his family became the new stewards of Mushing Magazine, now Mushing.com, under First Paw Media.
The work builds on years of producing content for the mushing community through the Mushing Podcast and related projects. Today, Forto sees part of that responsibility as helping preserve the stories and history of the sport while continuing to document the people shaping its future.
More Than 17 Years Behind the Microphone
Forto is a veteran podcaster who has spent more than 17 years behind the microphone as a host, producer, interviewer, and media entrepreneur. His shows have covered dog training, mushing, leadership, outdoor adventure, rescue dogs, travel, and the people behind those worlds.
His podcast work includes Dog Works Radio, the Mushing Podcast, the Peak Experience Podcast, and Team and Trail Podcast, along with additional programs produced through First Paw Media. Across those projects, the goal has remained remarkably consistent: document useful stories, ask good questions, preserve knowledge, and give experienced people a place to share what they have learned.
More On: Podcasts / Media Page
Adventure, Expeditions, and Team & Trail
Adventure remains central to Forto’s work and leadership philosophy. Through Team & Trail, he and his family document travel, outdoor experiences, expeditions, working dogs, and the lessons that come from leaving familiar environments and seeing what happens when plans meet reality.
For Forto, adventure is not an escape from leadership. It is one of the places leadership becomes easiest to see. Preparation matters. Communication matters. Rest matters. Decisions compound. Teams depend on one another. Conditions change, and plans must change with them.
Those experiences continue to influence his writing, speaking, coaching, and work as the Adventure Strategist.
The Complete Personal Record
Forto’s professional story also includes a chapter he does not hide.
In the late 1990s, a gambling addiction connected to day trading led to massive financial losses, fraud charges across multiple states, an eighteen-year sentence, and more than six years in custody. The consequences affected his family, career, dogs, finances, and future. Restitution was paid in full, and Forto was released in October 2006.
The decades since have been devoted to rebuilding through work, education, family, business ownership, dog training, mushing, media, and leadership. Rather than allowing fragments of that history to circulate without context, Forto has published a complete first-person account of what happened, the consequences, the mistakes made along the way, and the work that followed.
Read the complete personal account: The Record Is Here: My Story of Failure, Accountability, and Rebuilding
The Work Today
Today, Robert Forto works at the intersection of leadership, family business, adventure, working dogs, media, and succession. He continues to operate and advise businesses, produce podcasts and media, participate in the mushing community, write and speak about leadership, and help prepare the next generation to assume greater responsibility.
The different parts of that work may appear unrelated at first. A dog-training business, a mushing publication, a leadership practice, podcasts, family-business research, and outdoor expeditions do not fit neatly into a traditional professional biography. For Forto, that is precisely the point. The common thread is the study and practice of how people prepare, make decisions, build systems, lead teams, respond when things go wrong, and create something capable of continuing without them.
That is the work of an Adventure Strategist.
Work With Robert Forto
Robert Forto is available for leadership coaching, family-business succession work, consulting, speaking, podcast interviews, media appearances, and selected collaborations. His work is particularly suited to entrepreneurs, family-business leaders, emerging next-generation leaders, and organizations navigating periods of change, pressure, transition, or succession.
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Robert Forto, DSL
Adventure Strategist
Willow, Alaska
