Q.What did your time at Otterbein look like? Which clubs, classes, and/or hobbies did you participate in? What are your favorite memories?

A.During my time at Otterbein, I enjoyed being involved in many aspects of campus life. I was a member of PRSSA, the Public Relations Student Society of America, and became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Nu Phi Chapter.

I also received a scholarship through a community service grant that allowed me to spend significant time working with the Indianola Middle School mentoring program. That remains one of my most meaningful experiences. We had the opportunity to mentor students in Columbus and give them greater access, encouragement and a vision for what college life could look like. At the same time, we learned just as much about service, responsibility, and the impact we could have on someone else’s future.

I also worked throughout college and completed internships with Victoria’s Secret and Nationwide Insurance. Those experiences gave me an early opportunity to connect what I was learning in the classroom to the real world.

Q.Tell me about your book. What inspired you to write it?

A.Athleadership: The Elite Athletic Mindset: How to Lead Under Pressure and Perform When It Counts came from my own journey of discovering that when life puts on the pressure, you can either break or build.

I have always seen myself as an athlete, not simply because of a sport I played, but because of the mindset. That mindset helped me navigate setbacks, uncertainty, loss, and some of the most demanding moments of my career and life.

Over the last two decades, I’ve also had the opportunity to work alongside CEOs, Fortune 500 leaders, elite athletes, and entrepreneurs. What became clear to me is that the highest performers don’t simply rise to important moments. They condition themselves for them.

My vision for Athleadership is to give anyone the ability to think, feel, decide and perform at their best when it counts most. The world often tells us leaders are born. I believe they are built.

Q.What are a few ways your Otterbein education helped you to write your book?

A.I studied public relations and communications with a minor in business, so there is a very direct connection between what I learned at Otterbein and the work I do today.

Professors such as Dr. Denise Shively challenged me to understand not only how to write, but how to communicate an idea so that someone else could see it, feel it and act on it. I learned to think about audience, message and the responsibility that comes with communication.

Otterbein also gave me room to find my voice. That became incredibly important later as an entrepreneur, speaker, and ultimately an author. Writing a book isn’t simply about having something to say. It’s about learning how to communicate an idea clearly enough that it can become meaningful to someone else.

Q.What advice would you give to a student interested in your field of work?

A.Don’t spend all of your energy trying to figure out the perfect career. Spend more time becoming the person who will be ready when an opportunity appears.

Build relationships before you need them. Ask questions. Take the internship. Volunteer for the assignment that scares you a little. Get in rooms where you aren’t the smartest or most experienced person yet and pay attention.

And don’t underestimate the value of being someone people can count on. Talent may get you noticed, but your ability to deliver, adapt, communicate and build trust is what creates a career.

Your first job doesn’t have to reveal your entire future. Mine didn’t. But every experience can give you another rep toward becoming who you are capable of being.

Q.You’ve worked extensively with Fortune 500 companies, athletes and entrepreneurs while also working as a CEO and entrepreneur yourself. What are some common misconceptions about leadership that you have encountered?

A.One of the biggest misconceptions is that leadership is a position or something you automatically become when you receive a title.

Leadership is a response.

You discover a lot more about someone’s leadership when the plan changes, the pressure rises, the answer isn’t obvious, and other people are looking to them for direction.

Another misconception is that knowing how to lead means you will automatically be able to do it when the pressure is on. Knowledge matters, but access matters more. Can you access what you know when you’re tired, uncertain, challenged or under pressure?

That’s one of the lessons elite athletes understand exceptionally well. You don’t wait until game day to decide how you’re going to perform. You condition the response long before the moment arrives.

Q.What do you hope readers gain from Athleadership?

A.I want people to finish the book seeing themselves differently.

Not everyone will be an athlete, but anyone can become an athleader. To me, an  athleader is someone who is willing to condition themselves to meet the moment in front of them.

I want readers to understand that resilience, agility, alignment and wellbeing aren’t fixed traits that some people have and others don’t. They can be practiced. They can be conditioned.

Ultimately, I want someone to close the book believing, “I can build this.” Because the moments that matter most rarely give us advance notice. The work we do before those moments determines who shows up when they arrive.

Q.What led you to become a trustee at Otterbein after graduating? What was your favorite part of serving as a trustee, and how did this experience influence your career?

A.Otterbein invested in me at an important stage of my life, so serving as a trustee was an opportunity to invest back into an institution that had helped shape me.

What I valued most was being able to see the university from a completely different vantage point. As a student, you experience the university through your classes, friendships, and campus life. As a trustee, you begin to understand the decisions, stewardship, strategy and leadership required to ensure an institution continues serving generations of students.

It reinforced something that has carried throughout my career: leadership requires you to think beyond yourself. You have to consider the people who are here today while also making decisions for people you may never meet.

And it was meaningful to return to Otterbein not simply as a graduate, but to invest in students in particular.

Q.Was there a particular experience or athlete that helped shape your philosophy of applying the mindset of elite athletes to leadership?

A.There wasn’t one athlete or one moment. It was a pattern I kept seeing.

Throughout my career, I’ve had the privilege of working with and around elite performers in sports and business. What fascinated me wasn’t simply what they did when everyone was watching. It was what happened before that.

The preparation. The repetition. The recovery. The coaching. The film study. The willingness to practice something over and over so that when the pressure arrived, the response was already there.

Then I would walk into organizations and see talented leaders facing their own high-pressure moments, but we often approached their preparation very differently. We gave leaders information and expected performance. Athletes would never prepare that way.

That gap became the foundation for Athleadership.

Elite athletes don’t become elite because someone told them what great performance looks like. They condition for it. I believe leaders can do the same.