Years as a Camper: Camper from 1999-2005, CILT 2006
Years as a Staff Member/Positions held: Counselor from 2007-2009, & 2011. Assistant Head of Camp 1 in 2012. Head Counselor of the Camp One Heroes in 2013 and Head Counselor of the Camp One Monsters in 2014. I was also the Marketing and Communications fellow in 2014.
Previous Professional Roles: I worked for the Detroit Pistons from 2014-2019. Initially, I was an Inside Sales Representative and my final position with the team was Manager, Premium Partnership Sales.
Current Profession and Title/Years in role: I am currently the Director of Business Development and Hiring at American Truck and Equipment Company and have been in this role for 2 years.
How did you get involved with Premium Partnership Sales at Detroit Pistons? I got involved with the Pistons through my passion to work in sports. In college, at the University of South Florida, I interned with my athletic department as a game presentation intern. After graduating college in 2012, I interned with the Orlando Magic in the same role. Following my final year at camp in 2014, I knew I wanted to get back into sports. I had a mentor tell me the best way to get into sports was to accept any job you can find and then work your way to the job you want. I took his advice and accepted a sales job with the Pistons. After one year of grinding through cold calls, I was promoted to an Account Executive, of Business Development. In this role, I focused primarily on building a network of local business executives and selling ticket plans to businesses and corporations in the Detroit area. After 18 months into that role, I led the entire sales team in new business revenue and was promoted to Manager, Premium Partnership Sales. In this role, me and my team were tasked with selling high-end products such as suite leases and courtside seats to large corporations.
How did you get involved with American Truck and Equipment Company? My family has owned and operated American Truck and Equipment since 1922. In 2019, my father was looking for some assistance with the company and that’s where I came in. With five years of business development experience, I was able to come in and help increase our customer base and help take some of the workload off my father.
Do you have any career advice for members of our Camp community who are interested in pursuing a similar career path? The best advice I could give someone trying to begin their career in the sports industry is don’t be afraid to take a chance on yourself. I never had any interest in selling or making cold calls, but I knew that if I wanted to follow my passion, I would have to take a chance in order to be successful in this line of work.
What do you believe have been some of your greatest personal and professional accomplishments? Is there a goal toward which you are currently working? I would say the greatest accomplishment I have had professionally was being given the Sales MVP award by the Detroit Pistons in 2018 as well as surpassing the $1 million sales threshold for a season in 2019. Both honors are special to me because they showed that my decision to take a chance on myself, moving to a new state and trying something new had paid off.
The goal I am currently working towards is to be a great father. My wife and I are expecting in February and I hope to take all the lessons I have learned from camp and apply them as a new father.
How do the values or skills you learned at Camp show up in your everyday work and/or personal life? I constantly think about the famous Wyatt Taylor saying, “Things don’t just happen, you make them happen.” At first it seems so obvious, but as you get older and move into the professional world it is so true. You go into work every day not assuming you will get that promotion or close the big deal, you must put in the time and the work and make that a reality. It holds the same at camp, where you weren’t given your Lightning Skipper or Master Pilot. You need to put in the time and effort and make that happen for yourself.
Camp also helped build my self-confidence and helped me become the person that I am today. In my work life, I have used the confidence Camp helped me discover to speak in front of groups both big and small as well as being able to lead a team of people. Camp also helped me develop my leadership skills that I still use to this day.
Is there a person or a situation that had a huge influence on you while you were at Camp? How and why did they/it impact you? I would say one of the biggest situations that had an influence on me were my time as a Head Counselor. This experience gave me the opportunity to lead a group of campers and counselors as well as be involved in the leadership team decision-making. It also provided me the opportunity to work with some awesome people like Hunt Carpenter, Tyson Presnell, and Zach Sneed. Working with them gave me the opportunity to watch and learn how others lead and interact with people.
Favorite Camp meal: Chick-fil-A Sandwiches
Favorite mess hall entry song: Final Countdown by Europe
All-time favorite skit memory: Bill Bradford
Favorite special event at Camp: Band Dance
If you had to have an intro song every time you walked into a room what would it be? My Time is Now by John Cena
What profession other than your own would you like to try? Teacher