Years as a Camper: 0
Years as a Staff Member/Positions held: 7 years on staff, Head counselor Camp III (2 years), Asst Head Camp 1, Asst. Head Camp 2, Foxhole counselor on aquatics, tennis & ropes
Current Profession and Title/Years in role: Life & Business Coach for last 7 years
Can you tell us about your role as a coach and how you have taken that work on the road? I help parents in business create more time with their kids. From executives to entrepreneurs, business is demanding & it’s easy to let the precious moments slip by. Coaching around relationships, income & legacy creates more time with the people we care about the most.
We decided to live out on the road, mainly, for our nonprofit called Hug Your People. We visit every state helping kids who are fighting cancer. My business fits into the road life because most of our first contacts through Hug Your People are the parents. Life & business are tough enough, but, when you throw cancer in the mix, it’s overwhelming. It’s not a big leap from the work I do to the people we help with Hug Your People. So, why not sell your house & travel the country coaching parents & helping kids? That’s what we do.
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 think the accomplishment that I’m the proudest of is my family being open in our cancer battle from early on & helping other families navigate that path. We have so many blessings that it just made sense for us to extend our hands to help as well. Over the last two years, we have raised a lot of money for pediatric cancer & given kids wagons for their transportation during treatment. I’m really proud of that.
Professionally, any time a parent sends me a text that says they took extra vacation this year or never missed a soccer game or volunteered with their kid’s school for the first time it’s just amazing. I think that matters the most.
We are working to give $1 million annually to kids fighting cancer through Hug Your People. That is probably our biggest goal right now. That and getting Baxley to camp in the next couple of years.
Do you have any career advice for members of our Camp community? Your career should leave you better than it found you & you should leave it better than you found it. It’s about mutual growth. Find a place to grow & try to make a significant contribution while you’re there.
How do the values or skills you learned at Camp show up in your everyday work and/or personal life? Everything I learned at camp is very present in my daily life. We said the Camp blessing tonight at dinner. One of my fondest lessons was my first year on aquatics in 1991. We were practicing systo’s (systematic searches) & Howard Longino was the Lake Chief. During practice, I came up short of the wall by about two feet. I didn’t realize I was that close to the wall until I got to the surface because it was a swim lake back then. Howard saw it & made us go back the 2 feet & finish the search correctly. I never forgot that. Paying attention & doing things right because you work at the best camp of all is the standard. Howard is still a good friend of mine & we just had dinner together this week with a few other camp families. That’s the power of camp. It still amazes me how often camp shows up with the best things you can imagine.
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? Where to begin. There are many people. Captain Lloyd Griffith for sure. I think he was the first person I had ever met that cared more about others than himself. Bo Roberts is someone that impacted everyone he hired to work at camp. From the first interview, I just felt like I didn’t want to let him down. He is a special human being. Jon Vance was someone that really gave me some latitude to be myself. I had not done that in any leadership role until Jon. Rich Brown was the reason I went to camp in the first place. His call of “hey, what are you doing this summer?” changed my life. I think if you spend any time at camp, you collect the names of people that just make an impact on you. You never forget them.
Favorite Camp meal: Cookout
Favorite mess hall entry song: Desperado
Favorite special event at Camp: Long Cruise
The devotion you best remember from Camp: Breaking popsicle sticks.
If you had to have an intro song every time you walked into a room what would it be? “Be With You” Mr. Big (with Jim Mahan on the fake mic)
What would you eat if you could only have one food for the rest of your life? Pizza