Leadership Is No Accident

Amobi Okugo is a professional soccer player, who currently plays for Austin Bold FC in the USL Championship. Amobi’s passion and soccer talent led him to a scholarship to play collegiate soccer for UCLA. Since then, Amobi has paved out an impressive playing career, having played for several leading Major League Soccer clubs, such as the Philadelphia Union, Orlando City, Sporting Kansas City, and the Portland Timbers. Off the field, Amobi's entrepreneurial spirit drove him into creating an athlete-based financial-literacy company, known as, A Frugal Athlete, which specializes in educating and helping athletes maximize and manage their financial assets to create long-term economic success and stability.

In this episode, Amobi shares how he was able to pursue his dream of being a professional athlete, detailing his journey into Major League Soccer. He provides a first-hand perspective regarding leadership in sports, outlining the different coaching styles he has experienced during his playing career. Amobi also describes his entrepreneurial journey as the founder of a financial literacy business, A Frugal Athlete.

Leslie Braverman is the co-founder of Pacific Northwest Pilates, a Portland-based, highly recognized Pilates studio, celebrating 20 years of business this year. Leslie is a former professional ballet dancer, who performed with the Oregon Ballet Theatre. She discovered her passion for Pilates during her rehabilitation from a serious dance injury. Leslie found Pilates to be both a newfound passion and solace, leading her into a new career path as both a Pilates instructor and entrepreneur.

In this episode, Leslie discusses how she became the co-founder of Pacific Northwest Pilates, translating her passion for dance and ballet into a new passion using Pilates to help others improve their health and mobility. Leslie shares the challenges she has faced in growing a business, discussing how the company used challenges, such as the pandemic, as an opportunity for innovation and creativity, by adapting to virtual teaching, creating a breakthrough virtual platform for Pilates instruction and classes.

Sarah Bradham is the Acting Executive Director at Mazamas, a 127 year old mountaineering organization formed on the summit of Mount Hood in 1894. Sarah’s strong passion for the outdoors combined with her strategic leadership has provided her with the opportunity to help the Mazamas continue to evolve, tackling new challenges and changes, while maintaining the soul and history of the organization.

In this episode, Sarah Bradham talks about her role as Acting Executive Director at Mazamas. Sarah mentions the challenges the organization has been facing and how the pandemic has forced Mazamas to adapt their in-person mountaineering classes towards a more virtual oriented platform. Sarah also shares how Mazamas are politically active in protecting the outdoors, whilst restoring a sense of community amongst a socially-distanced society.

Dave Stitt is recognized as one of the leading team coaches in the UK, where he works with some of the most important teams in the construction industry. Dave began his career in the construction industry where he was given the opportunity to take a coaching training program and that sparked a twenty plus year career as an executive coach. He is the author of four books, and his most recent is the newly released ‘Coach for Results’. When he is not coaching, you’ll probably find Dave out on his bike or in the pool, training as one of the UK’s top masters triathletes.

In this episode, Dave talks about the most common challenges the teams he works with face and how he helps them increase their performance. We also discuss delegation and Dave shares five keys from his book, ‘Deep and Deliberate Delegation’. To round out our conversation, he explains how he does all this and finds the time to be a top triathlete.

Having held a long-time passion for sports and fitness, Catherine Beldotti Donlan set aside her destined conventional career path within international relations, opting to pursue a career within the athletic industry. Since switching career paths, Catherine has become a leader for some of the world’s most prolific athletic brands such as Reebok, Ryka, Puma, and Converse. Her ability to strategically plan and understand consumer demands tied together with her visionary creativity led Catherine into reaching the highest executive levels within the athletics industry.

In this episode: Catherine Beldotti Donlan shares her story of working in the athletic industry for prominent brands such as Reebok, Ryka, Puma, and Converse. She has been a champion for the emergence of women’s sports in the industry and a role model for other female leaders. Catherine also talks about her transition away from the athletic industry into working with Venture Capital lead companies. We wrap up by discussing how Catherine’s passions will shape what lies ahead.

Phillip Crockford is the CEO of V-Teamwork, a leadership company based in Brisbane, Australia. His passion for helping others combined with his boundless creativity has led Phillip into innovating a unique way of improving the performance of coaching leaders. Through the use of the popular game, Minecraft, Phillip provides leaders the opportunity to hone their leadership skills in a safe environment. Phillip virtually replicates the conditions of working together as a team, providing leaders and team members an accessible and simple platform for developing their own leadership skills of self-awareness, communication, self-reflection, interaction, and confidence.

In this episode, Phillip Crockford talks about how he uses Minecraft to develop and coach leaders through teamwork and strategy, helping leaders to increase their team skills and confidence. Phillip touches upon how the Covid-19 Pandemic and working from home has impacted leadership and teamwork.

When Liz Valentine founded her ad agency Swift, the building had no individual offices. The reason for this; to ensure that all Swift employees are on an equal footing, no matter their position. Valentine’s leadership philosophy is based around respect and personal freedom. She understands that good work comes from good people, and allowing them time to decompress and pursue their passions helps that work blossom further. In this episode, Valentine talks about how taking a year off at Nike changed her perspective on her work environment, how she founded Swift following the 2008 financial crisis and her path to a top leadership role at a global agency.

Describing Nir Zavaro as “self-made” might be accurate, but there’s a lot more to his story than just those words; for months, Zavaro couch-surfed in Tel Aviv – one of the world’s most expensive cities – all while writing his first book and freelancing as a marketer for restaurants. At the start of his career, he fell in love with snowboarding and landed a job at Burton; imagine a more seemingly insurmountable task than trying to sell snowboards in the middle of Israel. Nonetheless, Zavaro prevailed. Nowadays, he is the founder and CEO of Streetwise Consulting, helping companies such as Microsoft, Unilever and eToro tell stories and ensure that everyone knows their name.

In this episode, Zavaro talks about how Marketing is intertwined with all aspects of a business, his natural talent for storytelling and how he became Israel’s only Olympic Commentator for Luge, Skeleton and Bobsleigh.

While nearly everyone in the world has their own perspective on sports, Lina Taylor viewed them as a ticket to a better life. Born in Bulgaria in 1975, Taylor could not leave the communist-led nation unless she had very special circumstances. But at age 16, both her exceptional volleyball talent and her indomitable spirit propelled her to the pinnacle of the sport. Representing Bulgaria for Beach Volleyball in both the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympic games, Taylor’s life was changed by sport. Years later, she is using sport to change the lives of others, helping young athletes in organizations like the Boys and Girls Club or The Foundation of Teamwork nonprofit. In this episode, Taylor recounts her childhood in Bulgaria, her volleyball career, and how she helps corporate leaders learn from her journey and take their game to the next level.

Though Himalaya Rao currently works as the Managing Director of the Black Founders Matter fund, in her view, her work could also be defined as social work. In her effort to find and uplift aspiring BIPOC entrepreneurs with her fund, Rao is working towards systemic change in the world of business and finance. As her fund’s letter to Black Entrepreneurs reads, “we know what you’re facing.” Rao has spotted others’ untapped potential in countless moments throughout her life and career. It has all led up to now, where she has a huge amount of freedom to help black creators realize the potential that others may not have seen in them.