Holding the Ladder in Sport and Leadership

Eabha Rutledge is a successful county and club Gaelic footballer with Kilmacud Crokes and her county team Dublin. She has been part of Dublin's All-Ireland four-in-a-row panels and a recent Division 1 league final win against Cork. She is a Fund Accounting Supervisor at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and is also a sport entrepreneur as she set up a dry weather GAA gloves company, Great Grip Gloves. This...

Dr. David Tenney is the High Performance Director for Austin FC in Major League Soccer (MLS). He has a wealth of major league sport experience, including several successful seasons in MLS, and a long history in soccer in the U.S. and internationally.  He joined Austin FC after three years as the first High Performance Director for the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Orlando Magic (201...

Hannah Thornton has always been passionate about sport. She played basketball for Ireland at the age of 14 and at the age of 17 obtained a sports scholarship with the University of Northern Colorado, playing in NCAA Division I's Big Sky Conference. She also devoted a little time to study, obtaining her Bachelor Degree in Sports and Exercise Science and a separate degree in Nutrition.​ After g...

Dr. Maryrose Blank is a Sport and Performance Psychology Consultant with over 15 years of experience incorporating mental skills training with various populations to include the military, athletes, coaches, and other high performing corporate organizations.   Dr. Blank began her career in college athletics, working at several colleges and universities before transitioning to working with...

Don Griffin is the founder of 1821 Skills Camp in Baton Rouge, LA. It is a program directed at young football athletes. He specifically works with quarterbacks and receivers inside the chalk, with the goal to make their better their best. His desire is to impact the athletes in the time spent inside the white lines, so that the life they choose to live outside the lines of the field will bless the...

Scott Hunter is a former NFL quarterback who played for eight seasons for the Green Bay Packers, Buffalo Bills, Atlanta Falcons, and Detroit Lions, retiring in 1980. Before his NFL career, he was the starting quarterback for the Paul "Bear" Bryant-led Alabama Crimson Tide. Hunter is one of five Alabama quarterbacks (Blake Sims, Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones, and Bryce Young) to throw for 400 yards in...

Ari Kafka is a former professional athlete and current Mental Performance Coach for athletes. He likes to help athletes flourish under pressure and overcome mental blocks to excel at their game. Additionally, he helps transitioning athletes who are ending their sport playing careers dig deep to find their unique character strengths and how they can utilize them on a daily basis. He guides them on...

Tatiana Gallová is Slovakian FIBA licensed coach and lecturer, who finished FECC and ICAB program; and has a Ph. D. in basketball coaching. Her latest achievements are finishing best of the class 2013-2015 at the FIBA FECC program and winning the Austrian Cup and Championship 2015/2016 with Flying Foxes SVS Post. Since 2016/2017, she works for men's team Kapfenberg Bulls as an assistant coach and...

After 24 years of combined experience as a special operations veteran in both the Canadian and US militaries, Phil Kornachuk uses proven leadership principles to foster exceptional performance for individuals, leaders and teams from a variety of fields. He currently works for the Fargo, North Dakota-based Allegro Group as the Managing Director of Leadership Development. Solid leaders held the ladd...

Joanne Murphy of Tri Talking Sport is an accomplished international sports announcer, professional event MC and presenter based in Galway, Ireland. With a keen interest in sport, her versatile professional approach to her work coupled with a dynamic engaging style of presenting has seen her work as an announcer across a wide range of events in the sports industry and beyond over the past 10 years....

Chanda Rigby is entering her 11th season at Troy University in 2022-23. She has built the Trojans into the premier program in the Sun Belt Conference, winning five championships in seven years. Since taking over the program in 2012, Rigby has made Troy a perennial championship, and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament, contender. Rigby’s impressive resume includes seven 20+ w...

Greg Prudhomme just completed his 15th season as the Grand Canyon women’s tennis head coach and 14th season as its men’s tennis head coach in 2021-22. Since joining the Division I ranks, Prudhomme has had nothing but success for his programs. The women's team were crowned WAC regular-season champions in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021. The men's team were crowned WAC champs in 2016, 2019, and 2021. Thi...

Jacqui Hurley is one of Ireland’s leading sports broadcasters. In 2009, she became the first ever female anchor of Sunday Sport on RTE Radio One (https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/sunday-sport/). She presents the daily sports bulletins on RTE news and has extensive experience covering soccer and rugby. She is a former Irish basketball international and also played camogie for Cork. She is also an au...

Dubbed "The Jewish Jordan" by Sports Illustrated in 1999, Tamir Goodman is a former professional basketball player and current successful entrepreneur, coach, educator and motivational speaker. He was ranked the 25th best high school player in the country. He gained national attention after averaging over 35 points per game his junior year, all while remaining faithful to his Orthodox Jewish...

Betsy Mitchell is a former American competition swimmer who was a world record-holder, world champion, and Olympic gold and silver medalist. She also was a member of the United States' 1994 Rowing World Championship team. Mitchell represented the United States at two consecutive Olympic Games. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a silver medal for her second-place performance in th...

Harry Sheehy is a retired athletic administrator and former coach who led Williams College (MA) to 17 Division III national team championships during his 10 years as the college’s Chair and Director of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation. He also served as Dartmouth College’s Director of Athletics and Recreation for nearly 11 years. During each year of Sheehy’s decade guiding the Williams...

Jen Croneberger is a former high school and college softball coach, sport entrepreneur and now a widely sought-after 4-time TEDx speaker and thought leader. She speaks and consults in the areas of compassionate leadership and culture change for corporations, schools, organizations and teams all over the country and is the Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of JLynne Consulting Group, LLC. Most...

Christian DeVries is the Women’s Soccer Head Coach for Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. He has made a career of coaching having served at the NCAA II, NCAA III and NAIA levels with stops at Spring Hill College (AL), University of Minnesota, Morris (MN), Missouri Valley College (MO), and Adams State College (CO). He has led his teams to six conference champ...

Terry Waldrop has extensive experience in coaching, sport administration, sport communication, teaching, and sport entrepreneurship. He had tremendous success during his 13-year tenure at National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas. He was honored during his time at TWU to be the only college basketball coach in Texas at the 4-year level...

In just 5 years, Dre Baldwin went from his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. At the same time, Dre built a content publishing empire. Blogging since 2005 and publishing videos to YouTube starting in 2006, Dre has published over 8,000 videos with his content being viewed over 73 million times. Dre's daily Work On Your Game Podcast has over 4 million listeners. Dre...

Jennifer Wasson is in her seventh year as the Director of Athletics at St. Mary Academy-Bay View in Providence, Rhode Island. She has extensive experience in the sport industry. After growing up in the Pensacola, Florida area and prepping at Gulf Breeze High School, she was one of the most decorated basketball players in University of Mobile (AL) history, becoming the first 1,000-point scorer in s...

Dr. Tim Baghurst is a Professor of Education at Florida State University and the Director of FSU COACH: Interdisciplinary Center for Athletic Coaching. He earned his doctorate in kinesiology from the University of Arkansas and has three additional graduate degrees achieved in three different countries. Tim's research has won numerous awards. His research focuses on coaching education and developme...

Martha Gore-Algernon is in her third season as the head girls’ basketball coach at Faith Academy in Mobile, Alabama. She was the head women’s basketball coach at the University of Mobile (AL) from 1995-2008 where she had a 241-156 record. She was twice named Gulf Coast Athletic Conference (GCAC) Coach of the Year and took her teams to the NAIA National Tournament four times. She was MVP of the sta...

Conor Meany serves as the Commercial Manager at Basketball Ireland. In this role, he works with existing partners of Basketball Ireland to get the most out of their sponsorship activities to deliver a clear return on investment/return on objective for their businesses. He has significant experience in content marketing, social media and public relations management. He is basketball "lifer," having...

Todd Rutledge is the Assistant Director of Athletic Facilities at Harvard University in Boston, MA, where he is responsible for the day-to-day operation of 20 buildings and 76 acres of Athletic Campus at Harvard University. He has extensive sport management experience working in major events, sport administration, and sport marketing. He has served as an area supervisor for the US Open Tennis Cham...