Sports Leadership Institute - Conversations with Legends

Listen, learn, and commit. This session goes into great detail on the intentionality and implementation of diversity & inclusion strategies and opportunities; how to adopt a symbiotic relationship in the greater communities for which the team and sport serves, innovations that emerge from inclusion and community engagement, and the commitment required to start and scale the work. Our speakers lead these efforts for the Los Angeles Rams, Washington Football Team, Mortenson Construction, and throughout the city of Nashville via Vanderbilt University and the MLB to Music City baseball project.

Maximizing human performance is determined by one's ability to understand the human system and the conditions that make us, break us, connect us, and push us to explore. Andy Walshe and Jurgen Heitmann are co-founders of the Liminal Collective and have spent a lifetime exploring human performance; not just as a means of hacking and comprehension to drive repeatable success, but primarily on how to make humans more human and inspire the desire to enable humanity’s greatest endeavors. Along with Sanyin Siang, Andy and Jurgen share their experiences, opinions, process, and passion for human performance and how to recognize and refine those capabilities that make a person special, supreme, and super.

Sports betting in the United States used to be the boogeyman of collegiate and professional sports. With the repeal of PASPA, the entire landscape has shifted and the economic impact has proven that sports betting is here to stay. To navigate the new, and next terrain of the sports betting reality, Larry Potts, Michael Golub, Lou Rogacki, and Dan Wallach act as your guides to everything you need to know about compliance, regulation, opportunities, and opposition.

Basketball is more than just a game. Basketball has the rare and transcendent power to inspire, embolden, entertain, and teach life lessons. In this session, Sanyin Siang explores the origin story of basketball as told by the grandson of the game's founding father and creator, Dr. James Naismith. Jim Naismith shares his grandfather's vision and purpose for basketball to epitomize sportsmanship, enable equality, and transform the lives of people around the world with the greatest good in mind and spirit.

Racial Equity featuring Cynt Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, Fred Nance, Global Managing Partner of Squire Patton Boggs LLP, Rick Spielman, GM of the Minnesota Vikings, and moderator/commentator Sanyin Siang. Our speakers discuss the complexities and necessities of holding the difficult conversation to inspire education and understanding on the topic of racial equity, inclusion, and togetherness. You will hear best practices and big ideas to maintain the momentum of equality, as well as personal stories that will leave you emotional, empowered, and excited to take action!

Featuring leaders from ESPN, Toyota, the University of Oregon, and moderator/commentator Sanyin Siang. Our speakers discuss the importance and influence of your brand, the responsibility to guide your efforts to create a positive impact for the greatest good, and how your brand can best identify and reflect core ideals, trust, and relationships. Brand is bigger than just yourself, your team, league, conference, university, or company. Now, more than ever, brands are intertwined with society and behavior beyond standard causality and correlation. For better or worse, individual and collective brands have the opportunity and responsibility to be more, do more, listen more, and inspire action.

Retired 4-Star Army General Bob Brown, fmr Navy SEAL Remi Adeleke, LAFC Owner/President Tom Penn, and moderator/commentator Sanyin Siang discuss what it takes to lead in times of great uncertainty and strife. Whether it be in the form of COVID-19 or some other Black Swan occurrence, adversity is best thought of as a constant. It is extraordinarily challenging for any leader to operate against the odds, without a playbook, and with exponential consequence from every decision. Retired 4-Star Army General Bob Brown, fmr Navy SEAL Remi Adeleke, LAFC Owner/President Tom Penn, and moderator/commentator Sanyin Siang discuss what it takes to lead in times of great uncertainty and adversity; how composure, trust, knowledge, and humility can be your lighthouse through the storm.

COVID-19 has created a world of uncertainty, doubt, and instilled a looming crisis of confidence for personal health & safety. In this session, Logan Gerken of Mortenson Sports & Entertainment, Tom Glick of the Carolina Panthers, and Gene Taylor of Kansas State University discuss what steps that can be taken before, during, and after fans are allowed back into the venue to reestablish, reinvigorate, and restore confidence in the live sports experience. Health & safety protocols, staff support, innovation and empowerment, and what the new gameday experience will look like within the framework of the "next normal."

As architects of some of the best and most well-respected teams to compete in their respective sports, Darren Shand of the New Zealand All Blacks and 3-time Super Bowl winning NFL GM Mike Lombardi are masters at establishing and nurturing a winning culture. Sanyin Siang guides a conversation that examines and identifies the prioritization, inspiration, and innovation a leader should have to create a winning team culture; as well as the intentionality necessary to sustain it over time.

Join our speakers, Jerry Colangelo, Wayne Embry, and George Raveling, as Sanyin Siang guides a conversation regarding living a life of good character and leaving a legacy of significance. Three Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame members share their thoughts on the responsibility of sports and leadership, learning from failure, selecting mentors, what it means to have your character tested, supported, and shaped with intention.