Finding Your Summit

186: Steve Porino: NBC Sports Broadcaster and Alpine Ski Racer discusses what it was like for him to go from being among the best ski racers in the midwest, to then becoming a television broadcaster and attending the Olympics on multiple occasions.

Steve Porino

How did Steve Porino get introduced to skiing? “My dad is European. His father was Italian. His mother was Swiss. He grew up between Italy and Switzerland. It was during the war. So the name comes from the Aosta region of Italy and his parents were divorced. It was back and forth, again like I said during the war. Skiing was a big part of his life that his father had introduced him to. He first came to Canada where he met my mother. I happen to be the only American in my family. My sisters are Canadian. My dad’s Italian. But skiing was part of his heritage. But he was working as a banker in cities. He was working in New York City. He was taking the family up all the time to go learn how to ski in Vermont, and that is what the family did.”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Steve Porino, NBC Sports Broadcaster and Alpine Ski Racer about developing as a skier while not growing up in an area known for skiing. “If you look at all of the great, not all, but many of the great ski racers in the world, it all started in places like that in many ways. It's these sorts of fundamentals, and you are not distracted. Maybe you have a different opinion. But if you grew up in Sun Valley, you are kind of spoiled, right? Life is good. You’ve got these incredible mountains and sometimes it is hard to do the basics, do the arithmetic if you will, that makes you a great skier.”

What You Will Learn:

Steve Porino discusses some of the coaching he benefited from while developing as a skier. “Lindsey Vonn’s dad was one of my coaches, and she comes from a tiny little ski resort, and I don’t pretend to compare myself to her success. But, a lot of the greats come from these tiny little places where they practice the fundamentals and then in terms of passion, which if you want to reach a high level in anything, you’ve got to have the passion. From Wilmot Mountain, everything else seemed like the greatest place I’d ever been. That is sort of how I escalated through skiing as I became one of the best in the midwest.”

Steve Porino shares his experience of attending the Burke Mountain Academy. “My dad moved back to New York. I wanted to keep ski racing. I couldn’t do it in Connecticut. I went to a ski academy, Burke Mountain Academy, the first ski academy in the country where Mikaela Shiffrin 100 years later attended. But that mountain the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont seemed like Nirvana... it was 1800 feet. So I thought that was just the greatest thing in the world.”

What was Steve Porino’s introduction to downhill skiing? “I had no aspirations of being a great downhiller because I was a little guy. I went on my first downhill and I was really good. Then very quickly, suddenly I was going to a downhill out west, which at that point I hadn’t really been out west. As I said, I grew up in these tiny little ski areas and I was in Beaver Creek, Colorado with this downhill that was two minutes and thirty seconds, which would be my Everest-plus. That is long...These speeds are 70-80 miles an hour.”

What was life like for Steve Porino after his skiing career? What “It is a rough transition. We have all started our sport long before we made the decision to do so. In adult life, you make a decision to take a track in life. As a kid, you follow your passion in most regards. So, here you are ending a career when most people are starting a career and that is where I was. I was picking away at school and I think I used school to basically put my life on pause, not at the time, because I knew this is where I wanted school to take me. It was just time to delay whatever was going to come next, and I needed that time. I probably needed more time.”

Steve Porino discusses pursuing his college education after ski racing. “I started to get into coaching of skiing while I was finishing school at the University of Utah because the U.S. Ski Team ultimately paid for my schooling at the University of Utah. I loved coaching. My fear was that I wasn’t going to give myself a chance. I was going to go right back into the same world and not experience anything else. The one thing I knew about myself is that I like to do the thing you and I are doing right now, just talk to people and learn. That was the one great passion I had in addition to my ski racing career was traveling and meeting new people of different cultures.”

Alpine Skiing to ESPN

How did Steve Porino make the transition into broadcasting? “One of my idols as a ski racer who was a broadcaster at the time, Todd Brooker was his name. He was a crazy Canuck for people that followed ski racing back in the...

185: Don Dow: Former NFL player and founder of Dow Events talks about the football lessons he has brought with him to business and how he and his company are overcoming the challenges of COVID.

Don Dow

What does Don want people to understand about his accomplishments? “We both played in the NFL, we both got drafted. And the thing that people need to understand is those things don’t just happen magically. Hard things are hard, right? They’re hard. Starting a business is hard. Sustaining a business is hard. But when you get through to the other side, there’s so much reward in terms of the daily discipline, the hard steps you took to get to that place where now you can really reap and go, that was worth it.”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Don Dow, former Huskies teammate with Mark Pattison and event production company owner. “My earliest lessons in the event business was being a player and going to the Rose Bowl or going to an Aloha Bowl or going to the Sun Bowl, as we did. Because here’s the buses, here’s the hotels, here’s all the organization, you're going to these parties as a player, organized and otherwise. So for me, my earliest experience in this business I’ve been in was as a player and being hosted as opposed to being on the other side of it.”

What You Will Learn

How did Don transition from playing pro football to events? “Where it really started for me was when I came out of football, a guy in Seattle by the name of Bob Walsh was my agent. And I went to work for Bob shortly after I was released from the Seahawks, right at the end of training camp the year I was drafted. And he said we’ll bring you in, we’ll give you training, you can do sales and everything else… I went to the 9ers the following year, blew a disc in my back right before the Superbowl in practice, came back, went to work for Bob, and never left.”

What is it that sets Don’s event company apart? “I think where we’re different, especially in the internet age—once the internet happened, all of a sudden there was transparency. You could go find a ticket on StubHub, you could kind of put it together on your own. But in my world, in the Dow Events world, no matter what event we’re at, and we really set the tone for this at the Masters, is you land, and my team has you from the time you land until we put you back on the plane. So it’s transportation, it’s accommodations, it’s tickets, it’s hospitality, it’s dinner reservations. It’s a complete, full-service, turnkey program. And that really set the stage for us in where the company’s gone in over 25 years.”

What was the start of COVID like for Don and Dow Events? “I literally went to Augusta about the 4th or 5th of March, I was getting ready for my 25th consecutive Masters, we had a lot of stuff in the works, you know, clients coming in as always, etc., etc. And the world stopped. And so literally, anybody in my business has a safe deposit box or a safe somewhere full of badges, 2019 badges, that are now worthless. And you’ve put deposits out for houses and transportation and catering and everything else, you’ve got client money that’s come in to you. And thank goodness as I mentioned earlier I’m definitely a relationship client guy, because I can sit and talk with our clients and roll them, hopefully to 2021. I’m not sure that the Masters is gonna happen with spectators in April. I don’t see it happening. So now all of a sudden we’re rolling clients to 2022, and in the meantime, we’ve got to survive.”

What does Don predict events will be like after the pandemic? “To the extent that people participate in 2021, I think it will largely be high net worth individuals that come to things like the Masters or CMA Fest or Wimbledon or some of those other things that are on our calendar. I don’t see it as being corporate. I think they’re gonna be much more cautious. I also think that the second half of 2021 is gonna be like Mardi Gras every day for those high net worth—people just want to get out and go experience stuff… I think 2022 is going to be absolutely nuts.”

“I think the work from anywhere is going to stay. I’ve always said in my business, I could be on a boat and as long as I’ve got an uplink, I can run Dow Events worldwide. The flipside of that, I was on the phone with a longtime, 20+ year client the other night, he called and we kind of did a year-end chat. And he said to me, ‘What’s going on with Masters? Are we going?’ I said, ‘I really don’t think so.’ I said they’ll make an announcement in late January, but I said I’m thinking they’re gonna do it like they did in November, maybe expand guests for members and maybe some of their sponsors, but that’s gonna be it. He said, ‘Well gosh, I’ve got to get face to face with our customers. This whole thing with Zoom and everything is...

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Dung Duong, Entrepreneur and Author of Shifting Optics: Life in Perspective, about growing up in Vietnam under really difficult circumstances.

183: Brian Von Herbulis: Retired U.S. Marine and Chief Executive Officer at Ultra Solutions discusses how he overcame getting kicked out of college to then earn his MBA degree, serving in the U.S. Marines, and living up to his personal mission statement to be an honorable man and enrich the lives of others.

Brian Von Herbulis

How did Brian Von Herbulis arrive at his mission statement, ‘To be an honorable man, enrich the lives of others’? “I heard somebody once mention their personal mission statement, and that made me think. What am I doing on this planet? What am I doing with my life? What is my mission here right now? That mission statement can change over time. But right now, when I developed that personal mission statement, it was just a couple of months ago, and in reflection I thought about how I want to live my life? What I want to be doing. What I want to be thought of by my family, by my friends, by those that I encounter, and it is simply being an honorable man.”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Brian Von Herbulis, Retired U.S. Marine and Chief Executive Officer at Ultra Solutions about what being ‘honorable’ means to him. “The word ‘honor’ to me has so many connotations to it. It is kind of an umbrella term for all of the facets of my life that I want to exercise and showcase to people. It is about being a person of integrity, knowing and living by your values and principles. It is about who you surround yourself with and making sure you are loyal to those people that you have committed to and people in a positive relationship with. It is about being trustworthy. It is about being confident. It is about being humble when that is the right approach. It is about being genuine. It is about being authentic to who you really are and finding purposefully ways to live your life.”

What You Will Learn:

How does someone get to the point in their life where they openly want to enrich the lives of others? “It is about reflection. Who impacted you in life and how did you take those lessons learned in your journey of life and look at those people that had an impact on you? What did they do right? What did you learn from them? How do you want to move forward projecting that same thing? I think back on my own life and I think about those people that had a tremendous impact on where I am today and how I got there, and I am so grateful for them, and they were such strong, such honorable people for me to follow as mentors to me, and that is where it starts.”

Brian Von Herbulis explains how he has taken stock of how he has treated others in the past to improve his ability to enrich the lives of others. “You think back about the opportunities that you had to impact others and whether you did it right or whether you made a mistake in your approach to those people. So, you are constantly learning, iterating in your own life and processes, and then having that positive impact going forward. I spent a career in the military and there is no greater opportunity to shape young lives as an officer of the Marines. So, when I look back at all of those encounters I had with thousands of Marines, did I do things right? Was I honorable in my approach to them and how I treated them, how I taught them, how I prepared them, how I trained them? Then, how did I discipline them?”

Did Brian Von Herbulis come from a military family? “I don’t have a tremendous military lineage in my family. My grandfather was a Navy corpsman, so a medic in World War II, stitching up Marines on the beaches in the Pacific. But like so many of that World War II generation, he came home and suffered tremendously in his mind, and he struggled in life. So, I never saw the military in such a positive way. I knew it had a really negative impact on my grandfather. I grew up an athlete and I had dreams of being a professional baseball player, and put the majority of my time and effort into that. Unfortunately in that process I suffered some injuries, and lack of talent, I never made it to the big leagues in baseball.”

How did Brian's life change when his parents got divorced after 25 years of marriage during his sophomore year of college when he found out upon arriving home on Christmas break? “I became different at that point. I became jaded. I became angry. I was lost. I went back to school not to go to school. I was unfocused, undisciplined, and I partied like a rock star. Baseball fell apart. My grade point average I think that following semester was like a 0.07. I didn’t even go to class. I don’t even know how I got the 0.07. I was just lost. Here I am maturing. But really, I was falling apart. So, when I talked about mentors, this is when they became really important. Because I ended up getting kicked out of college. I went home and had to quickly figure out what it means to grow up.”

Brian Von Herbulis highlights the key element...

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Benjamin Alexander, Expert Alpine Skiier and former international DJ.

181: Kevin Sorbo: Actor, Director, Producer, Author who has been in 64 films discusses what it took to rise up from Mound, Minnesota to become internationally known for his television role as Hercules to having to overcome strokes that surged down into his brain.

Kevin Sorbo

Kevin Sorbo discusses his early background and the moment that he knew he wanted to become an actor. “I grew up in a really small town called Mound, Minnesota on the western shore of beautiful Lake Minnetonka, about 25 miles west of Minneapolis, fourth of five kids. My dad was a schoolteacher. My mom was a nurse, but pretty much a stay-at-home mom since she had five kids so quick in her life. I was 11-years-old and we went to the Guthrie Theater, a very famous theater in Minneapolis. A lot of Broadway plays start there before they move to New York, and it was The Merchant of Venice. It was a Shakespeare play. I didn’t know what the heck they were saying because it was Shakespeare. But I was mesmerised by the actors on stage. I went home and told my mom, ‘You know what? I’m going to be an actor.’”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Kevin Sorbo, Actor, Director, Producer, about pursuing his acting dreams after he went to college. “I double majored in Business, Marketing and Advertising, but took a minor in drama. I started doing a lot of commercials. Minneapolis is home to a lot of big companies. I don’t think people realise. They have Best Buy there. They’ve got 3M. They’ve got Honeywell, Pillsbury, General Mills. So, there are a lot of commercials. Target, all of those things are headquartered there. I got that all-important Screen Actors Guild card before I made the big move out to Los Angeles.”

What You Will Learn:

Kevin Sorbo talks about the evolution of his professional acting career.“When I got Hercules I had to move down to New Zealand. By the third year, that series became the most-watched TV show in the world, in 176 countries. I did my first big budget motion picture Kull the Conqueror. My movie career was really starting to take off because of that series. At the end of season five on Hercules, I had all kinds of problems with my left shoulder. I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, and these three fingers on this hand were numb and cold, and it was just weird. But, I was blowing it off because I was working 12-14 hours a day. I was lifting weights two hours a day.”

What was the origin of Kevin Sorbo realising he had a health issue? “You know what it was like when you were younger. I was 225-230 (pounds). I was ripped up. I was in better shape in my 30s then I probably was in my 20s, and I was doing my own stunts because my ego said that I could. I went back to the States to do promotional work on my first movie Kull the Conqueror and then I went to see my doctor in L.A. and said I got something going on here. I don’t know what is going on. They found a lump way up here in my left clavicle. They wanted to do a biopsy on it.”

Kevin Sorbo discusses what happened when his neck was cracked during a health procedure. “A voice in my head warns me, ‘Don’t let him crack our neck,’ over and over again. I’m going, why am I getting this, ‘don’t let him crack your neck?’ He has never cracked my neck. So, while I’m arguing with the voice, he cracks my neck. Well that lump ended up being an aneurysm that had been spitting blood clots down into my arm, and that vicious crack knocked a series of strokes into my brain. I spent the next four months learning how to walk and balance again. It took my three years to fully recover from it.”

What was it like having to recover in rehab? “You know what it is like when you step out of the limelight that way. I wasn’t a pro athlete. But I felt like I was a good athlete in great shape. All of a sudden I’m playing this guy Hercules and I can’t even stand up and walk. I’m in a rehab center with 90-year-old stroke victims. It was tough on my ego. It was tough on my psyche. It was tough on my body. It was just brutal for me to get through this thing. I wrestled with God. When these things happen, we tend to blame everybody but ourselves.”

Kevin Sorbo opens up about how his life was changing during recovery. “I was forced to make a lifestyle change, obviously. It sucked. I will tell you, for two years I had vertigo. It didn’t matter if I was laying down, seated, or standing up, I was always falling back. You get that jerk sometimes like you are falling back. I had that sensation almost 24 hours a day. Halfway through the second year of my recovery there would be like a week window where I didn’t feel that anymore. I would tell my wife that. She goes, ‘See, you are getting better. That gave me hope.”

True Strength

Kevin Sorbo talks about pushing towards writing his book. “My wife bugged me for a long time to write a book...

177: Kevin Richardson: Book Author at Morgan James Publishing, and former University of Washington Husky football player had aspirations of playing professionally in the NFL. When this dream didn’t materialize, it took him 33 years to move past it. Kevin Richardson shares his inspiring story of overcoming thoughts of suicide and depression and evolving into a writer.

Kevin Richardson

Kevin Richardson discusses where his early football journey began, before he was recruited to play for the Washington Huskies in the mid-1970s, prior to Mark Pattison. “My time going up to the University of Washington was DisneyLand to me. Even though I went to high school and it was very prestigious in Sacramento, California, Rio Americano High School. It was known for its Olympic-caliber swimmers. Debbie Meyer, who won three gold medals in the ‘68 Olympics, was a schoolmate of mine and she is a dear friend to this day. There were others of course that earned gold and silver and bronze.”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Kevin Richardson, book author at Morgan James Publishing, and former University of Washington Husky football player, about his attraction to the University of Washington. “There was this allure that was bringing to that gym of the Pacific Northwest, the Emerald City. So, it was like already in my DNA. It was just a matter of taking that first trip and walking out of that tunnel for the very first time with Lambo and looking up and seeing that huge concrete monolith on that other side and envisioning people in the sky.”

What You Will Learn:

Kevin Richardson talks about an early football influence named Forrest Blue. “As I got to the U (University of Washington) I ended up blowing out my knee in spring practice in 1973, and under the tutelage of somebody I never knew would come into my life, a guy named of Forrest Blue, who lived in our neighborhood back home, I ended up having this impromptu lunch from a guy that brought his son to my mom’s daycare center in her home and I sat there and I talked to Forrest. He gave me the greatest sage wisdom in the world about moving on, down the road and projecting to the NFL, because that was where he was.”

Kevin Richardson discusses the process of revving up his momentum during his training process. “I needed to have a workout partner and I looked around the Huskies football team trying to figure out who that guy might be. There was only one guy that stood out and that was Dave Pear. So I approached Dave right before the Washington State game in 1973 and asked him who he was going to train with and he goes, ‘Well, I don’t know. Whoever shows up.’ Next thing you know, we become training partners. I became his personal trainer for the most part. We rub off on each other. His tougher mindset, street-fighting mentality rubbed off on this teddy bear, ok? So when I became a senior as a fifth year, I finally found my stride. I was there. At the end of the season I ended up leading the team in quarterback sacks and everything else. But my eyes were on the NFL draft.”

How did the weight of being downgraded from first team to second team feel when Kevin played as a Washington Husky? “My whole thing was I was going to start every game. I elevated myself. I was there. Everything Don James said to the media about me, the expectations they held, and everybody else, the press, family, friends, everybody, was just blown out the window. Nobody ever said why it was done, why Doug was put on first team in front of me. I was left spinning in the wind, twisting, unknowing. I’m this big passionate gentle giant teddy bear inside. But yet, I can be a hulk in a second on the football field. I can flip that switch immediately when needed to.”

Where did it all fall apart and get really tough for Kevin Richardson after not making it into the NFL after being so highly regarded at the University of Washington? “When this happened and I was put on second team, everybody’s jaws were dropping, lke what is going on? That plane ride home it started to hit me, and that was like November 20th, 1976 and by the end of January I was in full-blown out severe depression, suicidal ideation, creatively thinking of ways of ending my life. That moment changed my life, I mean completely.”

How did everything change for the better for Kevin Richardson? “When I started to write. It took me back to that deep, deep, deep space and I was able to start sorting everything out and going through those old dusty filing cabinets in the hallways of my mind and pulling this file out and pulling that other file out, and resorting it and shifting it, while new life experiences were happening at the same time. They were enabling this writing process. So, the whole truth about finding my way, the writing got me there. It was this writing-to-heal component, this journalizing thing that really flipped my...

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Mike Marolt about the areas in which his father supported his athletic ambitions, adventure and setting goals.

178: Hilaree Nelson: Professional Ski Mountaineer for North Face, National Geographic Live Speaker, and TNF Athlete Team Captain who has had over 40 expeditions and has been voted National Geographic person of the decade discusses how she evolved from someone who enjoyed mountaineering to making it the focal point of her professional life.

Hilaree Nelson

Hilaree Nelson talks about her hometown of Seattle and how it informed her appreciation of being outdoors. “Ironically, it took me leaving Seattle to find my way as a mountaineer and really discover what that was, and a sky mountaineer at that. I skied from a super young age at Stevens Pass in Washington. I skied at Crystal and I skied a few times at Baker. There are amazing mountain ranges surrounding Seattle, and a lot of people I know who discovered mountains have moved to Seattle for that reason.”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Hilaree Nelson, Professional Ski Mountaineer for North Face, National Geographic Live Speaker, and TNF Athlete Team Captain about how she fell in love with climbing mountains. “I ended up leaving to go to Colorado to go to university. I think it was there that I first started going uphill with my skis instead of just downhill and really fell in love with it. But, I would say my real connection to wanting to do this for the rest of my life was after living in Cheminée in France, and experiencing the Alps and the history that they have.

What You Will Learn:

How has Hilaree Nelson transformed mountaineering from a passionate hobby into a successful career? “When I first started down this path I didn’t think it would actually be a career. I was working three different jobs. I was also a Hally Ski Guide. I was doing everything I could to make ends meet and really just following a passion, a love, something that I found myself to be really good at.”

Where has Hilaree’s motivation for mountain climbing come from? “I wanted to see how far that could take me I guess, where I go, and sort of learning my physical and mental boundaries within the sport of ski mountaineering. As I progressed I had a lot of doors open for me, partly because I was a female in a fairly male-dminated world, the world of mountaineering in general.”

How long did it take Hilaree Nelson to start going pro? “It probably wasn’t until I was 5, 6, 7, years into this path, I had a sponsorship from North Face that I started focusing solely on being a pro athlete in that regard and letting go of some of the other jobs and starting to make some money enough to support what I wanted to do, what I love to do.”

What have been the elements of mountaineering that have excited Hilaree Nelson? “I found myself really drawn to really remote places. I have a really mathematical brain. So, places that really required a lot of logistical planning, places that despite the logistical planning things often were a mystery. Things would totally go awry and it was all about thinking on your feet. It was all about adjusting, adversity, all things that really go back to that initial experiential passion of knowing my boundaries, blasting through them. How can I do better? How can I be more? How can I do more? Ironically, a lot of those things weren’t even on the mountain. They were traveling to get to the mountain or traveling to get back.”

How has she developed her strong, unflappable mindset? “I grew up in a very family-orientated way, a very protected sheltered home. I was the youngest. I had the big brother that looked out for me all of the time. I had the same group of friends that I played basketball with. That was a huge part of my life as a kid was playing basketball. I played basketball with the same group of girls from the age of 8 to 18. So, for me to step away from that and go out on my own to a state that I had never been to and didn’t know anyone there, and I immediately found friends that got me into rock climbing and ski touring. I think that the question mark that I always had about myself growing up was, I can do all of these things with all of this help and all of this familiarity. But, I want to see who I am when I am by myself and I am forging my own path.”

Enjoy the Great Outdoors

“No matter where you live, if you can just take 10 minutes in a day and find a park or find a way to walk around the block and be outside. It has always been my go-to place to scream at the top of my lungs or to let out whatever type of frustrations I have in life. Again, I am really fortunate to live here. But, gosh, I hope everyone can just find that space wherever you live to just manage the things that we are going through and just life in general.”

Common Mistakes

During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Hilaree Nelson mentions the most typical mistake that she notices amateur climbers making. “Part of these lines...

178: Danny Wuerffel: Former Heisman Trophy Winner and Executive Director of Desire Street Ministries shares his path to going from being an amazing quarterback in Florida and transformed that energetic drive and desire into making a meaningful impact in the lives of those less fortunate. Danny Wuerffel also is the force behind the Wuerffel Trophy which recognizes the top college player in the United States who is also involved in community service efforts.

Danny Wuerffel

Danny Wuerffel discusses growing up with his family in Florida as one of the top quarterback recruits. “I definitely have to thank my family and sort of the foundation of my parents. I remember being young winning something, bragging about it. My dad, I will never forget a look he gave me in fourth grade when he found out I was bragging in a sense. He was like, ‘That is not how we do things.’ So, there was this tension of always wanting to win. But at the same time trying to be humble about it and recognize that it is not all about you.”

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Danny Wuerffel, Former Heisman Trophy Winner and Executive Director of Desire Street Ministries, who also emphasizes the role his spiritual faith has had in his life. “A lot of my understanding of the world and not seeing yourself as the center comes from my faith, and there is a long line of Christian faith in my family. My dad was an Airforce Champlain, and a lot of other folks and families. So, a part of the way that we understand our faith is to live it in a way that really impacts other people. So, I think that was very foundational for me. At different points as I got older, kind of recognizing that and embracing it for myself.”

What You Will Learn:

Danny Wuerffel talks about how humility has continued to be important to himself and his family. “You never want to be around somebody who thinks that they are better than you are. My son is on a soccer team and there is a couple kids on the team that are really good. But, he just struggles because they walk around like they know they are good. So, he immediately doesn’t feel connected to them. So, I think the ability to be honest, and to be real, and share your own struggles, and to walk with people, and to listen, you know? I was going to write a book. It was kind of a joke. Sometimes when you are successful, it can stunt your growth as a human being.”

Danny Wuerffel discusses getting involved in Desire Street Ministries as the executive director. “I was drafted by the Saints and I felt like I wanted to be a part of something to help people. So, I was kind of looking around and I didn’t have anything specific that I was looking for. Just a unique coincidence if you will, or perhaps divine intervention if you believe that led me to a small organization in the 9th Ward of New Orleans working in the Desire Housing Project called Desire Street Ministries. It was working with families and kids in the neighborhood trying to raise up leaders with the goal really, it sounds insane, but to help transform at one time the worst neighborhood in the country to a desirable, wonderful place to live.”

What is the moment that pushed him towards the work that he does? “As I drove by these empty buildings, I saw a girl walk out with a doll, a little girl, and then I realised that she was living there. That ever so often in these projects you see an air conditioner and there were people living in these neighborhoods. My heart was broken. I definitely wanted to be a part of helping and making something better. So, Desire Street is very holistic. At the time we started an after school program and then we started a school. We had started building houses. We had started helping people get into jobs and businesses. We started a health clinic and a church.”

How long has Danny Wuerffel been the director of Desire Street Ministries? “In the years since (Hurricane) Katrina, I became the director in 2005, and we moved our headquarters to Atlanta to expand. What we do now is we basically, instead of starting and running new Desire Streets, we found that there are already heroes living and working in neighborhoods all over the country. But, so often they don’t have the resources they need, the training, the support. So, rather than these heroes having an incredible effect on their neighborhood, they are often burning out or just hanging on.”

How does Desire Street Ministries expand their reach? “Really what Desire Street does now is we partner with leaders to establish thriving and sustainable works in the inner city. Our new mission is to develop 20 sustainable ministries in the next five years and we are really excited about how that works and the things that we can do to support them.”

African American Leaders

Danny Wuerffel talks about being committed to work hand in hand with African American leaders...