THE LONG BLUE LEADERSHIP PODCAST

Season 3 of the Long Blue Leadership podcast is a wrap! From established national leaders to rising stars, this season features inspiring stories from U.S. Air Force Academy graduates. SUMMARY This season's guests included Dr. Heather Wilson ’82, former Secretary of the Air Force; Dr. John Torres ’82, NBC News Senior Medical Correspondent; Maj. Gen. Thomas Sherman ’95, Vice Superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and 2nd Lt.  Wyatt Hendrickson ’24, NCAA wrestling champion.   SHARE THIS EPISODE LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/leadership-elevated-a-long-blue-leadership-retrospective/?token=597cb091a9fecae916625c959ba2dd6c]  |  FACEBOOK [https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/leadership-elevated-a-long-blue-leadership-retrospective/?token=597cb091a9fecae916625c959ba2dd6c]    TAKEAWAYS * Leadership is about collecting tools over time. * Your identity is not defined by your profession. * Intentionality in actions leads to personal growth. * Leadership can be practiced at any level. * Admitting mistakes quickly is crucial for growth. * Respect and loyalty are earned through care. * Every moment is an opportunity to make an impact. * Legacy is built in real-time interactions. * Conversations can unlock deeper insights about leadership. * Sharing stories fosters connection and learning.   CHAPTERS 00:00 Celebrating leadership lessons from Season 3 03:07 Insights from Dr. Heather Wilson ’82 05:47 Chad Hennings ’88 on identity and leadership 08:55 Young leader Wyatt Hendrickson's ’24 journey 11:51 Jemal Singleton ’99, leading where you are 14:53 Emma Przybyslawski ’10 on leadership beyond the uniform 17:49 Dr. John Torres ’82, earning respect and loyalty 20:37 Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Sherman ’95 on trust, courage, and legacy 23:47 Looking ahead to Season 4   ABOUT OUR HOSTS BIO's LT. COL. (RET.) NAVIERE WALKEWICZ ’99 Senior Vice President, Engagement With over two decades in leadership roles, my current focus at the Association of Graduates - U.S. Air Force Academy is fostering a robust network of 50,000+ alumni. This commitment involves igniting a culture of engagement and inclusivity, underpinned by a strong foundation in support of our Air Force Academy. - BIO COPY CREDIT:  LINKEDIN.COM MR. WYATT HORNSBY Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications | Executive Producer Wyatt Hornsby is passionate about developing marketing and communications talent and cohesive, high-performance teams. He is senior vice president of marketing and communications at the Air Force Academy Foundation and the Association of Graduates. He leads the work of the foundation and alumni association marketing and communications division, while also coordinating with various Air Force Academy offices, including Public Affairs and Strategic Communications. - BIO COPY CREDIT:  LINKEDIN.COM     CONNECT WITH THE LONG BLUE LEADERSHIP PODCAST NETWORK TEAM Send your feedback or nominate a guest: socialmedia@usafa.org [socialmedia@usafa.org] Ted Robertson | Producer and Editor:  Ted.Robertson@USAFA.org [Ted.Robertson@USAFA.org]  Ryan Hall | Director:  Ryan.Hall@USAFA.org [Ryan.Hall@USAFA.org]  Bryan Grossman | Copy Editor:  Bryan.Grossman@USAFA.org [Bryan.Grossman@USAFA.org] Wyatt Hornsby | Executive Producer:  Wyatt.Hornsby@USAFA.org [Wyatt.Hornsby@USAFA.org]      ALL PAST LBL EPISODES [https://www.longblueleadership.org/]  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS [https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/longbluelinepodcast] AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS     FULL TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS Co-Hosts:  Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz ’99  |  Mr. Wyatt Hornsby   Naviere Walkewicz  00:26 Welcome to our retrospective for Season 3. We’re celebrating the first three seasons of the Association & Foundation’s premier podcast and the countless leadership lessons shared by some of the most accomplished Air Force Academy grads.   Wyatt Hornsby  00:41 Naviere, in Season 3, we’ve showcased some amazing stories and takeaways that apply to life, both in and out of the military. From the start, Long Blue Leadership has given listeners an inside look at real experiences, insights and advice from seasoned leaders as well as those just beginning their journeys. These deep dives explore how leaders not only face challenges head on, but also find ways to inspire and empower those around them.   Naviere Walkewicz  01:06 These conversations are amazing. What really sets this podcast apart are how these leadership discussions consistently touch on teamwork, perseverance, humility, excellence and service before self.   Wyatt Hornsby  01:17 Well said, Naviere. And in this edition of Long Blue Leadership, we’re gonna respond to a few clips and share our own perspectives related to some of our favorite moments, and we’ll also preview what’s coming up in Season 4.   Naviere Walkewicz  01:30 Now Wyatt and I would be remiss if we didn’t share — listen, we could go on about every guest that’s on this podcast, because everyone is remarkable, but we’re just going to focus on a few of them. So let's jump right into some of our favorite moments from Season 3.   Wyatt Hornsby  Let’s do it.   Naviere Walkewicz  All right. Well, this first clip is someone that you’re going to recognize: Dr. Heather Wilson, Class of ’82. What an amazing graduate. And you know, when we think about what she’s accomplished — she’s a Distinguished Graduate, secretary of the Air Force, I mean, going on into Congress — she is a mentor for many. And this particular clip, she actually is referring to someone who’s been a mentor for her and being able to make an impact in his life. So let’s take a listen.   Dr. Heather Wilson  02:12 My grandfather was an aviator. He was also a mechanic. He could use any tool. I mean, he was just amazing with his hands. And I had learned a new tool in school, and I took out a piece of graph paper, and I drew a curve, and I said, “Grandpa, do you think you could find the area under this curve?” And he said, “Well, I’d probably count up the squares and estimate from there on the graph paper.” And I then I showed him something new, and it was called calculus, and it was the first time in my life that I realized I had a tool that my grandfather didn’t have. He had a high school education and had gone into the RAF during the First World War, and he was a great mechanic and a really good man, but I realized that there were opportunities for me that maybe my grandfather never had.   Naviere Walkewicz  03:14 What an amazing conversation with her. What did you think about that comment about the tool?   Wyatt Hornsby  03:19 That's very, very moving. You can see just what her grandfather, what he meant to her, and just to think about those experiences and how they informed and influenced how Dr. Wilson has been a leader to so many in Congress, as secretary of the Air Force and now as president of the University of Texas, El Paso.   Naviere Walkewicz  03:38 Yes. And when you go back to that conversation, I think she talks about tools in a toolbox, and she relates it to her grandfather and her dad, I think, as well. But she talks about the toolbox almost serving as — you never know when you're going to need a tool. So as long as you collect tools over time, they can make a difference. And so she likens them to the people in your life and the people who serve with you and under you and above you. But if you start to recognize the tools that they have, you never know when they're going to make a difference. And in her case, she was actually able to provide a tool like calculus for her grandfather.   Wyatt Hornsby  A great lesson.   Naviere Walkewicz  Yes, yes. So make sure you take a listen on that one.   Wyatt Hornsby  04:15 Well, Naviere, this next conversation I absolutely love — Chad Hennings, Class of 1988, who went on, I believe, to serve in the Gulf War, flew the A-10 before joining the Super Bowl-winning Dallas Cowboys. And I love this conversation. Chad talks in this conversation about who you are isn’t necessarily what you do. It comes from who you are from within. I just love this clip. Let’s listen to it.   Chad Hennings  04:41 One of the questions that I ask someone who is changing and transitioning in their careers, whether that be from professional athletics or from the military, I ask them, “Who are you?” You know, a lot of times they'll say, “I'm well, I'm Captain so-and-so,” or, “I'm a former F-16 fighter pilot,” or, “I’m a former running back.” I go, “That’s what you do. Who are you? What you do does not define who you are.” I mean, that's the thing that I think so many people need to grasp, is that their identity is not based on what they do. It's more of an inner pursuit.   Naviere Walkewicz  05:14 Well, I won't put you on the spotlight and ask you who you are, but I remember that conversation, and it was really quite a reflective one for me, because I remember, as he was sharing those things, I started thinking, “Well, who am I, you know, as a leader, etc.” So that was really meaningful.   Wyatt Hornsby  05:30 Indeed. I mean, all across our lives and careers, we do a lot of different things. We wear a lot of different hats at various points, and I think it’s hard, but I think it’s so meaningful to really reflect on your own personal values in determining really who you are from within. I just loved how Chad talked about that.   Naviere Walkewicz  05:50 Yes, that was just one of the lessons that he shared. And I think it really kind of goes back to understanding yourself and growing as a leader. So it’s certainly a wonderful conversation for those interested. Well, let’s take a visit to one of our younger graduates. Most recently, 2024 class, and his name is Wyatt Hendrickson, so another Wyatt here. Some might remember him as Captain America. I think he’s been called that lately, in the news, but known for just his accomplishments in the world of wrestling and what he’s continuing to go on, hopefully here in the Olympics. But this conversation really is about some real insightful moments that I think he’s had as a young leader, that he recognizes the importance of doing things for yourself. And some might first think, “Well, that sounds kind of selfish, right? You know, we're taught to be team members and team players and do things together.” But when we, when we listen to this clip, I think we understand why he talks about doing things for yourself. Let’s take a listen.   Wyatt Hendrickson  06:49 As a leader in at the Air Force Academy, I started going to these briefs, and I’m like, “You know, I’m not going to try to have the a bad mindset. I’m not going to show up here, just check a box. I’m going to show up here and try to take something from it.” So what I did, I bring like a notebook or a small little pamphlet, just to write notes. And everything you do, do it with intent. Don’t do it because you’re afraid of a bad result — you’re afraid of something here, there. Do it because you want to do it, and you have to decide you’re doing it for yourself.   Naviere Walkewicz  07:18 You know, what I really like about that clip is understanding that you have to do things for yourself and not others. And so I liken it — you know, we are parents, and at one time we are children. And so we probably did things. We do things as parents for your children. When you’re a child, you do things because you don’t want to make your parents unhappy, or you want to make your teacher proud or your coach proud. And I think he learned early as a leader that if you’re going to do something with intent, to do it for yourself. What do you think?   Wyatt Hornsby  07:44 That’s right. Being able to invest in yourself so that you can show up for others as well. And so I think when you really consider that, he’s really talking about a little bit of service before self within that as well. And I think it’s working out well for him. You know, he just pulled off, some say, the biggest upset in NCAA wrestling history. And I agree, we’ll hope that he gets to the Olympics. Just what a remarkable young leader and athlete.   Naviere Walkewicz  08:11 Yes, and what an exciting and engaging conversation that I hope you’ll take a listen to as well. There were some exciting moments in there that he experienced, I think. You know, with the president and, you know, just kind of reflective moments with his coach, but certainly a conversation that many will be engaged by.   Wyatt Hornsby  08:28 And when we talked to him, his life was very busy, and we just so appreciate him taking time to talk with you, Naviere.   Naviere Walkewicz  Yes, absolutely.   Wyatt Hornsby  All right. Naviere, this next guest I absolutely love — Jemal Singleton, Class of 1999.   Naviere Walkewicz  Gold will shine.   Wyatt Hornsby  That’s right, assistant head coach for the Philadelphia Eagles, also coach for running backs for the Eagles. And this was such a great conversation. We were you were able to go to Philadelphia and sit down with Jemal and really hear his story and something — I mean, the conversation was just full of great insights. But one thing that Jemal said that I absolutely loved was, no matter where you are in your life and career, lead where you are. You don’t have to have a big team or direct reports, just lead where you are. So let’s listen to that clip.   Jemal Singleton  09:17 I think the biggest thing that you can do is lead where you’re at, and it doesn’t matter where you’re at. “Oh, well, I'm not the CEO,” or, “Oh, I'm not the head coach,” or, “Oh, I'm not the commander.” So? Leadership comes in a million different ways. And I truly believe that you know kind of what you do with the little things, is how you do everything. And if, in your position, whatever it may be — maybe nobody even works for you — you can still lead from that position. You can lead from that spot. And I think that's it. Don't be afraid to step out. Don't be afraid to be a leader in your own mind. It's got to start there. At some point, you keep honing those skills and then maybe you are going to grow. And then, hey, you have three people working for you, but you then be a leader at that point. And it’s kind of like what I mentioned earlier, about be where your feet are; lead where your feet are at.   Wyatt Hornsby  10:09 What a great insight. And I think that is just so helpful for not only people who are earlier in their career, and maybe they want to be able to grow as a leader. But also for leaders as well, in terms of how they instill in the people who they're privileged to lead, how they can continue to grow and advance.   Naviere Walkewicz  10:30 Yes, what a great life lesson in general. I think sometimes we are so eyes forward on the next thing, that we forget to be our best at the present and the moment. And that was a really, I think, a key message that I took from that was, you know, when he says, lead where you are, you know, be fully present where you are, just like we are right now, reliving, kind of that moment with him. And so what an engaging and amazing conversation with Coach Jemal Singleton. Of course, being a ’99 grad, you'd expect that, but, you know?   Wyatt Hornsby  10:58 We wish him. We wish him all the best. What a run he's on right now. Congrats to the Eagles.   Naviere Walkewicz  11:03 Yes. And if I may just offer this: I did want to extend to the team with the Eagles — I mean, what a world class operation out there, to be able to invite us in and put us in their amazing studio to help us share the story that really goes beyond the football, right? It goes beyond the field and how they're doing things as leaders out there. So thank you so much for that amazing support. We really appreciate it. All right. This next clip, Wyatt, is someone that we know well. She is one of our past AOG board directors, Class of 2010, Emma Przybyslawski, also a Young Alumni Excellence Award winner for us, what a remarkable leader. You know, she served in the Air Force, in the special operations community, but also went on after the uniform to really kind of lead her team and her business. In this particular clip, she's talking about leadership outside of uniform. And I think it's important for our listeners to know that leadership comes in and outside of uniform, and so we want to make sure we highlight that. But this particular clip, she talks about getting to “no” as fast as you can — and that's an odd statement to hear, but I think it's really impactful.   Emma Przybyslawski  12:14 One of my key tenets is having the stomach to say, like, “Oof, this didn't work out the way that I wanted it to,” or, “Maybe we were wrong about that.” Step 1, right? Admitting the problem. Step 2 is then pivot, move on, let it go. Just let it go, and either take some great lessons learned from it — hopefully you do — or just bail on it and like, go on to something different. Get to no as fast as you can. Like, no is an OK answer, but man, let’s get there as fast as we can. Because the more time you iterate and waste on bad ideas that you don't know if they're bad yet, that they're going to be, the sooner you can get to no, the better off you are.   Naviere Walkewicz  12:59 I really like that, just because it's so different. I mean, it's a different perspective on being thoughtful. on resources and time and how you actually utilize all that as a leader and when you're making decisions that impact others. I just thought that was really insightful. What'd you get from it?   Wyatt Hornsby  13:16 I agree, and what I hear from that is integrity and discipline. No one likes to admit that they’re wrong. It’s not the most fun thing in the world, but what I heard Emma say was, “If we got something wrong, just admit it. Get there as quickly as possible, learn and move on.” So I love that leadership insight.   Naviere Walkewicz  13:33 Yes, and when you look through history and you think about, those greats, those innovators — but you know, over time, they failed because they failed to actually move forward or stop something that was no longer working. They just held on so tight. I think as a leader, it's important to recognize that. And her, as you know, such, I think, a young and enthusiastic and, you know, impactful leader realizing that it’s an important lesson I think we can all take.   Wyatt Hornsby  13:56 It’s easy to see, you know, when we hear Emma talk about leadership, it's easy to see how far she's come in life, and, you know, what she's been able to do.   Naviere Walkewicz  14:05 Yes, so make sure you listen to that. While she does talk about that outside of uniform, she does share some incredible stories while she was in the special operations community. I think our listeners will really enjoy learning some of that too.   Wyatt Hornsby  14:16 All right, Naviere, our next guest, Dr. John Torres, Class of 1982 — and that's a name that many of our listeners and viewers may be familiar with. Chief medical correspondent for NBC News. And I love this conversation. Dr. Torres was able to take time from his schedule and visit with us here in Wecker Hall. And really what he talked about, what I took away from this was that leaders earn respect and loyalty. They take care of their people, and they put their people really before themselves. So let's listen to this clip.   Dr. John Torres  14:47 Watching leaders and how they did things, both when I was here at the Academy and when I was in the Air Force and even through medical school, the doctors that were good and talked to people appropriately. The leaders that were good and they had the men and women following them because they wanted to follow them, versus following them because they had to follow them. And as you know, there's a huge difference there. And I tried to model myself after the ones who had people who followed them because they wanted to follow — they respected them. They earned that respect. They earned that loyalty. And to me, that was always an important thing. And so when I transitioned over to medicine, especially being a flight doc, I wanted them to do the things that medically were important for them because they wanted to, because they trusted me, and they understood that I was looking out for them and not just their career or not just their flying, but looking out for them and their families.   Naviere Walkewicz  15:32 I remember that conversation.   Wyatt Hornsby  15:35 Caring deeply about the person, and not necessarily what they — putting that before what they do.   Naviere Walkewicz  15:41 Exactly. That conversation went on because it was referencing the fact that, as a medical doctor in the service, you know, you had those that really wanted to fly like that was their calling. And when they had a medical issue arise, you know, Dr. Torres, because he led in the way that he did. He created that relationship and that trust, to be able to say, “This is what we're up against,” and, you know, to be able to make a leadership and a professional recommendation, and then that, you know, “I care about you as a person, so I'm gonna ask you to consider this,” even if it might be the hard decision that they'd have to make. And I think that that goes a long way for leaders, because sometimes we have to give bad news to our people.   Wyatt Hornsby  16:21 That's right, and really caring about those who were charged with leading and taking care of their best interests, sometimes having those tough conversations. But when we do that, when we authentically care about our people, they will respect us. They will trust and that's really what he was talking about. Powerful.   Naviere Walkewicz  16:43 I think we could probably both think about examples of leaders in our lives that maybe we didn't get the best news, but we always knew they had our best interests, and we would walk through fire for them.   Wyatt Hornsby  That's right.   Naviere Walkewicz  Yes, what a great conversation with an amazing speaker. You'll have to take a listen to the entire conversation with Dr. Torres, because his was really incredible. And the fact that he actually almost left the Academy, but stayed because of survival training. So you make sure you listen to that. All right. Well, this last clip we're going to visit is, gosh, I still just got goose bumps thinking about the conversation with him. It's a recent conversation with Maj. Gen. Tom P. Sherman, Class of 1995, the current vice superintendent of the Air Force Academy. And I could go on and on about, you know, the way he inspires through his words, but this particular clip, Wyatt, was one where he talks about courage, right? And when he recognized a moment in time. This is from a conversation with his AOC, back when he was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, and he had a moment of clarity.   Wyatt Hornsby  17:45 We've both had the opportunity to see Gen. Sherman speak, and just an incredible speaker and presenter — really gets to know his audience. So let's listen.   Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Sherman  17:57 But I think really where the Foundation came in is where we started to talk about leadership. And you know, what I was asking him to do was to pull my rated recommendation form. So we had just submitted them, and I was asking him to pull my rated recommendation form. I didn't want to compete for it anymore. And so we started to talk about leadership. And he says, “You know, hey, Cadet Sherman, you need to understand that, you know, leadership in this Air Force is being the lead F-16 pilot on a bombing run. You know, putting iron on target.” And that's true. It's a very important part of leadership. It is a very important part of tactical operational leadership in this Air Force. So he's not wrong in that space, but I was looking at it from a different lens, and I was looking at it, I think, on a larger level. And what I don't think he realized is that 30 seconds before I walked into his office, he set me up for success. I just happened to be waiting outside the office, and all of a sudden I looked on his cork board, and somebody, and I don't know who it was, had pinned a note that was written to Airman Magazine by an airman first class. And this airman first class titled this, “I need a leader.” And this A1C felt so strongly about what they were feeling, and I have no idea who this person was, felt so strongly about it that they put pen to paper — and this would have been the fall of 1994 — and sent this into Airman Magazine, and it says, “I need a leader. Commissioning sources: Send us lieutenants that we can look up to that will hold us accountable when we do wrong, that will encourage us when we do well, that will be an example that we can look up to, that will care about us as human beings, because you are not sending them to us now. Air Force: I need a leader.” Like that 30 seconds just before I walked into his office, that changed my life. And it changed my life, because for me, at that moment, what I was getting ready to go ask my AOC to do what I was looking at inside myself like that became my charge.   Wyatt Hornsby  19:57 Naviere, I mean, as a graduate, how does that land with you?   Naviere Walkewicz  20:01 I have chill bumps right now, and it's not because it's cold in here, because it's not. I think you nailed it when you said he's someone who can really kind of inspire through his words. But you know, when I hear him say that, it makes me want to go back through the Academy all over again. I want to do it again to see if I can do it better. Because I want to be a leader for that airman and for anyone else that is serving alongside me, under me, etc. That's what I felt hearing that again.   Wyatt Hornsby  20:33 Yeah, and just from the whole conversation, I mean, that's really, I think that's the essence of Gen. Sherman's career, in my eyes, is that he has done everything he can to deliver or to develop as a leader and to be able to bring out the best in everyone who he has had the opportunity to lead and work with.   Naviere Walkewicz  20:51 One of my favorite moments in that conversation was about, you know, “What do you want your legacy to be?” You know, I think that was some kind of — that was maybe a way that I asked the question, and his answer was so unique, because he said, “You know, I don't really think about legacy, like, down the road.” He says — it's almost like he thinks about it in real time, and I'm paraphrasing, so you'll have to listen to the conversation. But he talked about, like, his legacy is when he makes an impact in every moment. So, like, this, you and I together, if I'm able to make an impact through our conversation, like, that's his legacy. And in off the screen, I didn't get to share this in our conversation, but my son, Arden, he's a cadet now, and when I told him I was going to be doing this podcast with Gen. Sherman, he had nothing but amazing — “Mom, I would walk through fire for him. He's so amazing. He's so inspiring.” And I shared that with Gen. Sherman, I said, “Well, you should know, sir, that you created a legacy with my son,” and it actually brought some emotion to him, and that that's who he is. I think that's who we want to be.   Wyatt Hornsby  21:52 Absolutely a remarkable leader and just an amazing episode. And hope that you all take the time to listen to it.   Naviere Walkewicz  22:00 Yes. So those were our highlights from Season 3. And like I said, we could go on about every one of our guests, because they're so impactful and amazing. And just — we take something from each of them.   Wyatt Hornsby  22:12 We did Naviere, and I want to just take a moment too, just to thank you for doing such a great job in Season 3. And just not asking questions, but just having conversations. And it's just easy to see that this just is kind of like a conversation over coffee, where you're just talking about leadership and really getting a sense of what their journey has been, whether it's been the good or the not so good, but just really finding out who they are authentically. So thank you, Naviere, just for leading those conversations.   Naviere Walkewicz  22:43 It's my great pleasure. I think some of the best work behind the scenes comes from this place of wanting to help share their story in a way that our listeners may not have ever heard before, and almost unlocking within them something that surprises themselves, about themselves, you know what I mean? Where they're actually like, “Wow, I'm sharing this,” and it's almost unlocking this new portal on leadership, on themselves. And so that's kind of how I always approach preparation for a conversation. And my goal is just to leave someone with something that really resonates with them.   Wyatt Hornsby  23:18 Well done, Naviere. And while we're at it, we're going to put Ted, our producer, our amazing producer, on the spot here. Ted, congratulations again on a great Season 3. And what are you — just any reflections that you want to share?   Ted Robertson  23:33 Loving watching Naviere grow and glow as a host — she's just my favorite person ever to work with, and thank all of you. This doesn't happen without a whole team committing time and resources and effort, eyes, ears, ideas. It doesn't happen without this group effort. It's a wonderful, wonderful place to be in. Speaking of places to be, you're going to talk about this a little later. Some listener feedback coming up next that Wyatt is going to tell you about. But we have the gift of a new studio that you're some of you are seeing for the first time inside of our new building that we can't wait for many of you to see. So thank you both for everything you do, your support, your encouragement and giving me this couple of minutes to share my thoughts with all of you.   Naviere Walkewicz  Thanks, Ted.   Wyatt Hornsby  24:23 Yeah. Thank you, Ted, again, great work, and we're just we're very grateful for all the heart and soul you put into Long Blue Leadership.   Naviere Walkewicz  24:31 Well, up next, Wyatt has some listener feedback to share with you, but before we do that, I'd like to take a moment and thank you for listening to Long Blue Leadership. This podcast publishes the first and third Tuesdays of the month in both audio and video, and is available on all your favorite podcast apps. Be sure to watch or listen to all episodes of Long Blue Leadership at longblueleadership.org. Once more, that's longblueleadership.org   Wyatt Hornsby  24:58 And a note I saw from Allison D. in reference to Naviere’s conversation, particularly with Emma Przybyslawski. And this highlights how hard Naviere has worked and how well she has done as host of Long Blue Leadership. And I'll start with Allison's note to Naviere, and then I'd like to add some thoughts of my own. From Allison: “Just wanted to do a quick shout out to let you know that I've been listening to your interview with Emma P. and I thought you did a phenomenal job. Emma's willingness to share her perspective in experiences in such an authentic way was a testament to her. But I also wanted you to know that while I was actively listening to her responses, I was also blown away by your ability to follow up with each response with an insightful and natural follow up question. My brain was still digesting her last response, and I don't know how you were able to digest and formulate such an interesting follow up question in such a short amount of time. Well done, Naviere.”   Naviere Walkewicz  25:58 I remember that comment. What a special moment to get that from Allison. Thanks for sharing that, Wyatt.   Wyatt Hornsby  26:05 Our pleasure, and thank you again, Naviere, for doing such a great job as our host.   Naviere Walkewicz  26:10 Well, Wyatt, let's talk about Season 4. It's coming out. Yes, some new things. Do you want to talk about kind of where we're in right now? What to expect?   Wyatt Hornsby  26:17 We're going to be having 13 episodes. Ten are going to be Long Blue Leadership, and then two are going to be really developmental focus, special presentations. Can't wait for that. And then, of course, we'll wrap up Season 4 with a retrospective, Naviere.   Naviere Walkewicz  26:31 Oh gosh, it's going to be amazing. I think what we've learned from the past seasons are people really enjoy hearing the stories from graduates that they can connect with — some transformational moments in their lives. But really excited. We kicked it off here at the end of Season 3 will be coming from our new studio here in Wecker Hall, so they'll get to see the studio and really hear the stories from our graduates. Those are really influential and key leaders in their fields.   Wyatt Hornsby  26:56 I can't wait. And some of our guests — they’ll include academics, warfighters, general officers, business leaders, scholars, diplomats, entrepreneurs, policymakers and others.   Naviere Walkewicz  27:08 Yes, and you mentioned it, that kind of leadership. Those two special episodes on leadership, this focus on leadership, we're actually going to go to experts in a field. Maybe they're published authors, but they are going to be some real experts that help our graduates and our listeners hone in on their leadership development. So it's really going to give them some tactical and tangible things that they can do to improve on their own leadership.   Wyatt Hornsby  27:30 I can't wait Naviere, an exciting new feature on leadership as we just continue to elevate our game. It's going to be really great.   Naviere Walkewicz  27:37 It's going to be great. It's going to — that focus on leadership will kick off in October with our second one in December. Wyatt and I want to thank you for joining us today. We can't wait to share the fourth season of Long Blue Leadership with you. Starting this September, you can expect more compelling stories from outstanding Air Force Academy graduates. We like to keep the podcast conversations thoughtful and aimed at telling our guests stories as we explore their personal leadership journeys, their philosophies and their styles. Season 4 promises to engage, inspire and empower. Whether you're an aspiring, emerging or seasoned leader, visit longblueleadership.org for more episodes and past seasons, or nominate a guest or send us your feedback at socialmedia@usafa.org. Long Blue Leadership is available on all your favorites podcast apps.   Wyatt Hornsby  28:30 And Naviere, this was such a great conversation, and I want to encourage you, if you've listened to these episodes or you've watched and you were particularly inspired, please share across your social media channels, share with your friends and colleagues and family members, because we really want these conversations to be for anyone who's interested in developing as a leader, regardless of what career pursuit they've taken.   Naviere Walkewicz  28:54 We like to say “like, subscribe and share.” There you go. Well, I'm Naviere Walkewicz.   Wyatt Hornsby  And I'm Wyatt Hornsby.   Naviere Walkewicz  Until next time.   KEYWORDS Leadership, Air Force Academy, mentorship, personal growth, teamwork, perseverance, service, identity, respect, legacy.       The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation

What does it take to lead at every level and shape the leaders of tomorrow? SUMMARY Long Blue Line podcast host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz ’99 sat with Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Sherman ’95, the U.S. Air Force Academy’s vice superintendent, for a deep dive into leadership, humanity and building a world-class service academy. This episode is packed with wisdom for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned leaders alike.   SHARE LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/leadership-from-a-global-perspective-maj-gen-thomas-p-sherman-95/?token=98c1600cda62b3172c36dbe0011ffa33]  |  FACEBOOK [https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/leadership-from-a-global-perspective-maj-gen-thomas-p-sherman-95/?token=98c1600cda62b3172c36dbe0011ffa33]   GEN. SHERMAN'S TOP 10 LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS  - Leadership is a human experience - focus on connecting with and caring about people.  - Love what you do and love the people you lead; passion inspires others to follow you.  - Embrace failures and challenges as opportunities for personal growth and development.  - Set the right culture and values within your team to build trust and mutual support.  - Be present and engaged with your team, understanding their motivations and experiences.  - Leadership is about more than rank or position - it's about earning genuine trust and respect.  - Invest time in understanding different generations, cultural nuances, and individual perspectives.  - Balance professional excellence with personal growth and life experiences.  - Support your team's development by providing encouragement and holding them accountable.  - Your legacy is built through individual interactions and the positive impact you have on people's lives.   CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Major General Thomas P. Sherman 01:29 Choosing Leadership Over Flying 07:23 The Impact of Mentorship and Values 12:46 Heritage and Evolution of Security Forces 17:43 Personal Growth in Aviano, Italy 24:17 The Importance of Work-Life Balance 29:50 Culminating Command Experience at Bagram 42:25 The Role of Family in Leadership 51:29 Continuous Self-Improvement as a Leader 56:27 Embracing Failure as a Growth Opportunity 01:00:06 Legacy and the Impact of Leadership   ABOUT GEN. SHERMAN BIO Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Sherman is the Vice Superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. He is serving as the chief operations officer to the Superintendent and overseeing the Academy’s blend of military training, academics, athletics, and character development for cadets. Gen. Sherman commissioned in 1995 from the Academy with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science. He built a distinguished career as a security forces officer. He’s held command at nearly every level. His key assignments include leadership of the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson AFB and critical staff positions at the Pentagon. In May 2024, Gen. Sherman was tapped to serve as the Academy's Vice Superintendent   CONNECT WITH GEN. SHERMAN LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-%E2%80%9Ctank%E2%80%9D-sherman-22227a133/]     ALL PAST LBL EPISODES [https://www.longblueleadership.org/]  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS [https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/longbluelinepodcast] AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS       TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS Guest, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Sherman ’95  |  Host, Lt. Col. (ret.) Naviere Walkewicz ’99   Naviere Walkewicz  00:00 Welcome to Long Blue Leadership, the podcast where we share insights on leadership through the lives and experiences of Air Force Academy graduates. I'm Naviere Walkewicz, Class of ’99 today. I'm joined by a leader whose career has taken him from the flight line to the halls of Congress and now back to the very institution that launched it all. Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Sherman currently serves as vice superintendent of the Air Force Academy, where he plays a critical role in guiding the development of our future officers and ensuring the Academy remains a world class institution for leadership, character and Day 1 readiness to win the future fight. A 1995 Academy graduate, Gen. Sherman has spent nearly three decades serving in key operational, strategic and command roles. He's led at every level, from squadron to wing command, and his assignments have included everything from nuclear security enterprise to homeland defense, policy development at the Pentagon, and legislative affairs at the highest levels of the Department of the Air Force. Prior to his role as vice superintendent, Gen. Sherman served in the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, where he was a principal military assistant leading policy integration across joint staff, interagency services and combatant commands. He's perhaps best known in command circles for leading the 88th Air Base wing at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, one of the largest and most complex wings in the Air Force, with a focus on people first, leadership and mission excellence. Gen. Sherman, welcome to Long Blue Leadership. We're so glad you're here too.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  01:32 It is great to be here. Thank you.   Naviere Walkewicz  01:33 We're excited and we're going to dive right in, because I think what is so special for our listeners is really hearing these moments that have changed your life. I'd like to start at the Academy. You turned down a pilot slot. You were rated, but said no.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  01:48 Well, actually it was a little bit before that. You know, it's kind of interesting, because that was the draw that brought me here, is I just had this incredible passion to want to fly, and I love flying, and I truly enjoyed it, especially through all the different airmanship programs and things like and things like that we had here. The experiences were fantastic. But, you know, as I was starting to learn more about myself going through the Academy, I was starting to feel my heart getting pulled in a direction of wanting to really lead people and really spend a lot of time working with the enlisted. And I think that came from a couple different areas. I think it was some really unique exposure that I got during my ops Air Force time, which I went to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, during ops, and just had our action officer that worked this, I think just did a phenomenal job. And I really started getting pulled to what was then called security police. That is actually when Laurie and I got together and started dating, because Laurie is here in Colorado Springs, but she grew up as an Air Force brat. My father-in-law is a retired Chief Master Sgt., and so there was a lot of mentorship that was taking place around dining room table when I was a young cadet. And I think one of the things that her parents really taught me was just the value of the enlisted force, and so I was feeling my heart really getting pulled. And so obviously, there's a conundrum. There's a conundrum on what were the root desires that brought me here — what were the things that I was learning as a cadet, my joy of flying, and also, particularly the culture at that time, was that that was really the job that you needed to aspire to be, that was the expectation of cadets. And so then to really kind of run counter to that strong current was really kind of a unique, you know, almost unnavigated area, right? And so to really kind of take the story out to its next level is that I'd really gotten to a point where talking with people there — we hadn't had the AMT program, but there were these NCOs that were kind of tangentially attached to cadet squadrons. And so I got a chance to talk to one of the master sergeants that was there who was a maintainer by background. And I was kind of pouring my heart out to him on, you know, what had I been talking to him with my now in-laws, about where was my heart pulling me? And so he said, ‘Give me just a second.’ And he picked up the phone, and he called my AOC and he goes, ‘Hey, you're gonna be there for a little while.’ And this was a Friday afternoon. He said, ‘I got a cadet that needs to come talk to you.’ And he hangs up the phone and he goes, ‘Now you go tell your AOC what you just told me.’ And so I ended up going to my AOCs office that day, and we had about a two-hour conversation about this. I sat down and really, kind of took the time to explain to him what was I feeling, And obviously, I really try to see the best in people. And so I think from a noble place, he was doing his best to convince me that I was making a grave mistake. And went on to talk to me about what his concerns were, the career field that I was looking at, things along those lines. And we can save that conversation for another time, but I think really where the foundation came in is where we started to talk about leadership. And you know, what I was asking him to do was to pull my rated recommendation form, so we had just submitted them, and I was asking him to pull my rated recommendation form. I didn't want to compete for it anymore. And so we started to talk about leadership. And he says, ‘Hey, Cadet Sherman, you need to understand that leadership in this Air Force is being the lead F-16 pilot on a bombing run, you know, putting iron on target.’ And that's true. It's a very important part of leadership. It is a very important part of tactical operational leadership in this Air Force. So he's not wrong in that space. But I was looking at it from a different lens, and I was looking at it, I think, on a larger level. And what I don't think he realized is that 30 seconds before I walked into his office, he set me up for success. I just happened to be waiting outside the office, and all of a sudden, I looked on his cork board, and somebody, and I don't know who it was, had pinned a note that was written to Airman Magazineby an airman first class. And this airman first class titled this, “I need a leader.” And this A1C felt so strongly about what they were feeling — and I have no idea who this person was — felt so strongly about it that they put pen to paper, and this would have been the fall of 1994, and sent this into Airman Magazine, and it says, “I need a leader.” Commissioning sources. ‘Send us lieutenants that we can look up to that will hold us accountable when we do wrong, that will encourage us when we do well, that will be an example that we can look up to, that will care about us as human beings, because you are not sending them to us now. Air Force, I need a leader.’ Like that 30 seconds just before I walked into his office — that changed my life, and it changed my life, because for me, at that moment, what I was getting ready to go ask my AOC to do, what I was looking at inside myself, that became my charge. And so as we spoke, you know, 20-year-old Cadet First Class Sherman — I might have been a 21-year-old at the time — Cadet First Class Sherman pushed back on my AOC, and I said, ‘Sir, I disagree.’ I said, ‘I want to be that guy. I want to be that guy that that A1c is asking for on your cork board outside, because that's leadership in this Air Force.’ And so, to his credit, he said, ‘Hey, I want you to go think about this over the weekend. You know, think about what you're doing. Come back to me on Monday. No questions asked. I'll pull it if you want me to.’ And I left there, and I remember feeling like, not like a weight had been lifted off my shoulder, but I almost felt like this sense of like, ‘Now I've got my purpose,’ because that little article has shaped me my entire career, and I mean to this day, and at a scale. You know, as a lieutenant, my scale is this big on what I'm affecting to help do and be what that A1C needs to a wing commander. I always keep it in the back of my head, and after all of these years, I am still thinking about, Am I doing right by that A1C that 31 years ago, felt so strongly about something that they wrote a note to Airman Magazine, and that became my charge.   Naviere Walkewicz  08:09 That is incredibly powerful. I'm a little bit without words, because I'm thinking about, first off, being brave enough to disagree with an AOC. I mean, I think that takes courage in showing your leadership there. Were you always like that? Have you always been someone that is steadfast in a decision and being able to kind of speak out?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  08:30 So I get that from my parents. And, you know, I grew up in Corona, California. My mom and dad are amazing people. And we didn't grow up with a lot of money, and we grew up from a pretty meager background, and my mom and dad had made a decision early on in their marriage, when they had my sister and I, that my mom was going to focus to make sure that Nancy and I got an education, and my dad was going to work as many jobs as he had to to put food on the table. And sometimes my dad was holding down three jobs to make sure that we had nutritious food to eat, and my mom was working miracles to make sure that we were fed well, but that also that she was dedicated and had the time to volunteer for things like PTA, being involved as a class volunteer, making sure that we were involved in things and had exposure to things that what they did was they also instilled in me this really strong blue collar work ethic. And it was this aspect of, if I just roll up my sleeves and put in the work, anything is possible. And so on that line, this young kid growing up with a West Coast father and an East Coast mother, and just this, really neat family background that things for me, that I believed in I would go after with all of my heart and soul. And so I found out about the Academy when I was 12 years old. And so, you know, when I at 12 years — we were going to a community event there in Corona, and there was an officer recruiter — Capt. Craig. was her name — and we started talking. She says, ‘Hey, did anybody talk to you about the Air Force Academy?’ And I said, ‘No, this sounds great.’ So from there, I just made this decision as a 12-year-old, and I worked all the way through junior high and high school to get here, because to go to your point like, ‘I made a decision, I'm gonna see this thing through.’   Naviere Walkewicz  10:30 Whoa. OK, so you knew you were going to the Academy before you graduated high school.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  10:35 Yes, in my mind, there was no other option.   Naviere Walkewicz  10:39 And so anyone in your family serve, or were you the first one in your family to serve?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  10:43 So I am the first officer and career member of the family. My dad was drafted and went to Vietnam in 1967 and stayed through Tet of 1968. I had an uncle, Harry Lee Schmidt, who was a C-47 loadmaster in World War II and Korea, and my grandfather was actually a part of the initial kind of what was the foundation of the OSS and the Navy doing beach recon on beaches in the South Pacific, prior to island hopping campaign and island landings. And so there was this real heritage of service, right? Just not career service. But even then, as a kid, I always had in my mind, ‘OK, one way or another, I'm going to serve, and if I do an enlistment and then go to college afterwards —' but I had this idea that, ‘OK, I'm going to serve,’ and then all of a sudden, this became this amazing conduit that got me here, right?   Naviere Walkewicz  11:38 And they also had ties to aviation. How did they feel about your decision, your family?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  11:43 It was interesting, because they knew how passionate I was about aviation growing up. I mean, we did not miss an air show at March Air Force Base, the Chino air show, which was planes of fame, which was all historic aircraft. I volunteered as a high school student to work there, and we helped restore airplanes with me and my friends. You know, it was interesting, because my parents were very supportive in ‘OK, where's your heart leading you? And, what makes you feel so strongly about this?’ Because when I first talked to him on the phone, I called him from Ramstein Air Base and said, ‘Hey, I think I know what I want to do in the Air Force. I want to go to security police. And my mom was like, ‘What's that? And, so, as time went by and I explained it, I think my parents probably all along knew that that was probably going to be a very good fit. And then after commissioning and at my first assignment, I think that they were certain of it, right? Yeah, they were absolutely certain.   Naviere Walkewicz  12:37 That is amazing. Well, I want to dive into this profession a bit, because it's interesting. You know, you've mentioned, when you came in, it was security police, and, security forces and you hear people saying defenders and peacekeepers. So there's this lineage and this heritage. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that and then maybe lead us into that next transformational moment that you might have had in this role?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  12:58 OK, I'm very proud of the fact that, you know, I am part of an ever decreasing group of folks that came in when we were still security police, and that was really still the peacekeeper days, because this was all kind of the follow on on the Cold War. The peacekeepers were our cold warriors and that was a huge part. Our defenders came in and really, that name started to really grow in 1997 when the name changed from security police to security forces, and we were actually going back to some of our heritage that was in Operation Safeside, which was the combat security police squadrons in Vietnam. So when you think about the courage that was displayed during the Tet Offensive at places like Tan Son Nhat that those were safe side warriors that were a part of these combat security police squadrons. And so the very — part of the lineage of the very beret, and flash that we have is actually a tip of the hat to the lighter blue berets, and that flash with the Falcon and the crossed runways that goes back, actually, to our Safeside heritage days. The beret goes back even farther than that. It goes back to Strategic Air Command, Elite Guard back in the 1950s. So it's this great lineage. And so, you know, for me, part of it was like when I got my first beret, wow, that meant something to me. And then, you know, as we then kind of transformed along the way, and this amazing career field grew, and the aspects of this air based ground defense, which was really, I would say, was kind of the draw that got me into wanting to go into security police, was I really liked this idea of, ‘How do we do base defense?’ The law enforcement side was intriguing to me, but it was based defense that just had me just had me captivated.   Naviere Walkewicz  14:44 And was that something that you found out early in your career? After you graduate the Academy, you're now in security police. Is that when you kind of realized, ‘This is where I want to go in, air, base, ground defense.’?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  14:54 It even happened at ops. So as we were spending time with the security police squadron, I ended up spending time with a captain who was heading up the Elite Guard, and there was an interaction we had as I was doing a ride along. He's like, ‘Hey, you need to come see me.’ And so I went and met up with him, and he took me around and introduced me to all of his airmen that were part of the guard. He knew something all about them. And then we went to his office and talked, and he had gone to Ranger School and Airborne and things like that, and said, ‘Hey, like, the future of the career field is actually us looking to the past.’ And really kind of got me fired up on what we call back then, air base ground defense. So when I got to McChord — McChord Air Force Base was my first duty station. And the great thing about going to AMC first is it AMC is a mobility — I mean, it is all about mobility and the operations associated with it. And so the first thing that that my task was as the second lieutenant in that squadron was, I was the air base ground defense flight commander. So that was, I mean — we would go out to Fort Lewis, and we would bivouac for days. And I had, you know, a 44 person team that was a base defense sector. I had specialized K-9 units heavy weapons. And back in those days, we had 81mm mortar teams and fire direction centers that we would set up. So I just got completely on board with the air base defense piece. And so that was that was very passionate for me, which then made the next step to Korea an absolutely logical next location, going to the wolf pack at Kunsan, not only getting a chance to then stand up Gwangju as a part of the first Air Expeditionary Unit to go back to Korea since the Korean War, but then doing the mobile reserve aspect of it. And it was just a great assignment.   Naviere Walkewicz  16:40 Wow. So you were right in from the very beginning. You got kind of just into it all.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  16:45 So when we go back, when you were talking to me about, ‘Hey, when you make your mind up...’ So I had this five-year plan built out. And, you know, my five-year plan was ‘OK, I'm gonna do my first assignment at the first opportunity to PCS. I need to go remote. I need to go to Korea. And then, OK, how can I get another overseas assignment after that? And then what do I need?’ So the thought was, “Let me get to as many match comms as I can, as fast as I can in my career, and use that as a place — OK, because I want to build my experience base out. Because even as a lieutenant and young captain, I didn't want to come across as a one-trick pony. So my thought was, “Let me just get as much as I could under my belt early on.’ And so after I left Kunsan, I ended up going to Aviano Air Base in Italy, which, for me, when you look at like those moments in life that are transformational, this was transformational on a different level. You know, some assignments you go to are very much professional growth assignments. This assignment, for me, was very much a personal growth assignment.   Naviere Walkewicz  17:52 OK, so tell me more.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  17:55 I mean, when you think about it, four years at USAFA, very uniquely focused on a plate that is overflowing with things that you need to get done. So you are, you're focused on, you know, everything from grades to military training to all of those things. And then I get to my first base, and I am just working, and I'm volunteering for everything, and we have got a heavy ops tempo of exercises and things like that. And my leadership was fantastic, because they were throwing me into every opportunity I could. And then, boom, I go to Korea, and that is a unique warfighting focused — and at Kunsan especially was heavily warfighting focused. So now all of a sudden I am spending really, when you think about it, the last almost seven years being uniquely focused on mission, right? And so I get to Aviano Air Base, Italy, and the first thing that happens is Operation Allied Force kicks off. So I get there in January, boom. Allied Force kicks off. I think it was in end of February, beginning of March. And wow, what? Again, what an amazing, mission focused experience. And then after we finished up Allied Force and the base returned back to more of its steady-state standpoint, it was the Italians that took me under their wings, that because I made a specific choice, because I grew up — my mom's side of the family are all Italian immigrants — and I was always at my Nonnie and Papa's house, and there was just a lot of that growing up, which is that whole, like, you know, West Coast dad, East Coast mom thing, but I didn't know, you know, my mom and her brothers never spoke Italian. And there was a lot of that, that thought back in those days that, you know, ‘Hey, we're here to be American, so we're going to learn English, and we're not going to speak, you know, the language that we came from,’ right? And so my mom and her brothers really never learned to speak Italian. And so my thought was, ‘Gosh, I grew up with this as such a strong part of my childhood that I need to put myself in a position where I can learn the language and start to kind of get an appreciation on the culture. Together.’ And so I specifically — and really lucked out on a location, but I was about 20 kilometers away from Aviano. I was in an amazing town. I was the only American living in the complex that I was in. So I was like, ‘If I'm going to learn, I need to just dive in the way that you do, in the way that I do, and just start learning.’ And so I ended up kind of building this support group of Italian families that all kind of took me under their wings.   Naviere Walkewicz  20:27 Wait, I have to ask you a question, because back when you're at the Academy, you said you spoke to your now in-laws. So was Laurie not a part of this?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  20:35 So Laurie and I, right. So that's an important part of the story. Laurie and I dated for two years while I was a cadet, and when I was in tech school, her and I made the very difficult decision — and as painful it was — to part ways, so her and I actually parted ways for a few years. I was single at the time. Laurie was still here in Colorado Springs, and I was getting a lot of assignments under my belt, which, to be honest with you, you know, in retrospect, it was very fortunate, because I may not have made the same assignment choices had I been married at the time. And because I wasn't married, there were no other variables that I needed to factor in, other than personal experience goals, right, that I wanted to play into, and so I could just put down whatever assignment I wanted, and that allowed me the opportunity to just focus on job. And while Laurie and I stayed in touch, and I stayed in touch with her parents over the years, I was in Aviano, and her and I were not together at that point,   Naviere Walkewicz  21:39 That makes sense. I was like, why were you alone in Italy?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  21:43 It's a fair question. But I also think that being single in that environment allowed me — and that's where I think it helped me develop as a person. And so there are a lot of, I think, really wonderful things that happened during that time, and that was because I was so uniquely mission focused. It was these, this amazing group of Italian friends together, that really kind of taught me about there, there's a time to relax, you know, there's a time to work, there's a time to relax, and there's also a real human need to enjoy life and enjoy time together, which is quintessentially Italian. And so, as my pool of this, these amazing people — that  by the way, for the last 25 years, we've been going to visit. It’s the same families that took me under their wings when I was a lieutenant, are the same families that were all tuning in as we were doing a live stream of me pinning on my second star. And so I've never been stationed anywhere else in my career where I felt more at home. And so I think this sense of like, ‘Wow. This like independently as my own person, this feels like home.’ And as time went by and I started to get an appreciation for actually things that were a part of my childhood. Because, you know, we would have these long, huge meals, we would spend four or five hours at the table as a family. And for me, this was all normal. Well, that was also a part of kind of normal Italian life and normal Italian culture. You're not going out to dinner with your friends unless you're investing at least three hours at the restaurant. But for me, this was all — this felt normal to me. And so it was about, you know, you don't need to eat your food in five minutes.   Naviere Walkewicz  So contrary to USAFA, by the way.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN You know, you don't need to chew no more than seven times and swallow. So it was about experiencing that, and learning even just some things that became personal passions. Like, you know, how wine is made and why wine pairing matters, and how is this process? And so all of a sudden, this personal experience — and I think growing as a human being was taking place there, and I was maturing as a human being because I had gotten all of this phenomenal job experience under my belt, but this was where I was growing as a human being. And you know what's interesting, as time has gone by, I have noticed just how impactful that time was, because there are things that I've noticed, even as a senior officer, that I feel very strongly about, that I don't think I felt as strongly about as a junior officer, and it was because of that experience, and it was the aspect of when people are on leave, let's let them take leave. There is a part of the human experience that you need to enjoy time with people that you care about, because what it does is you're not slacking off from work. You're not leaving everybody hanging. What's happening is that, because you're taking some time to just enjoy life with people you care about, when you come back, the restorative effects that have taken place because you simply breathe and you enjoyed what it was that you were doing and whatever your passion was, you know, unencumbered, you could enjoy that. And we all realize that there are times, especially as you get into positions of authority, that, hey, they're going to need to call you periodically. But what was interesting is that, especially, I mean, I'll give an example as a wing commander. As a wing commander, despite realizing how important that mission is and how big Wright-Patt was, we, Laurie and I took leave, and we took two weeks of leave, and we went back to Italia and visited our friends and enjoyed life, because the culture helps us to slow down. But what it also did is I gave my staff some parameters. ‘Hey, here are the things that I think are important, like on a scale of one to 10. Here are the things that I think are an eight. So an eight or higher, call me. Don't text me.’ I said, ‘Physically call me, because I will answer the phone knowing it's for — and then you have my undivided attention.’ But what it also does is it means that my vice wing commander who is there, that I am empowering my vice wing commander and showing to everybody else I trust this leader to lead this wing in my absence. And if it's something that really needs my involvement, they'll get a hold of me. But I think our junior leaders need to see that at the senior most levels, that I can physically trust and emotionally trust my vice, my deputy, to hold things down while I'm gone, and that I'm not irreplaceable, and that if I did my job as a leader, I set the conditions that allowed the wing to thrive in my absence, and didn't mean that the wing had to hang on every decision I made or every word that I said, that I set the conditions that allowed them to be successful and fostered the leadership that allowed them to lead in my absence. And I felt great while I was gone, because I knew the people that we had there, and I knew the investment that we made in them. So that was kind of a long, you know, trip around this…   Naviere Walkewicz  27:26 I mean, I think it was so powerful that you kind of learned that about yourself in Italy. And then would you say that there was anyone that you saw emulating that? Or was it just something over time, you developed this realization that you need to enjoy life and you need to allow people the space to do so.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  27:43 So I would say the people that I was emulating in that aspect were a lot of the families that were there. I have been fortunate that I have worked for some commanders who, at different times in their life felt the same way. Conversely, I also worked for commanders that did not feel the same way. And, you know, an interesting case in point on something that on an experience I had in a command bill and after I had left Aviano — this is when Laurie and I were back together; we were married at this point. I had a group commander that was frustrated about me taking leave and called me every day at 1500; every day at 1500 I got a telephone call. And you know what that does is now all of a sudden, you're eating lunch, and the clock is getting closer to 1500 and you start to get that knot in your stomach and you're like, ‘OK, what are we going to talk about today?’ And so, unfortunately you don't see some of the same appreciation for that across the board. So how do we deal with it? The best thing that we deal with it is that that's where the buck stops. We don't pass it down to our people. So after I got the call from him, I didn't call back to the squadron. I got the call from him. We went through the call, we answered the questions, and I didn't then immediately turn around and call back to my ops officer who was running the Squadron at the time, and say, XYZ. And we just left it there, because at that point in time, the bucks got to stop it at that point. So I think that that's kind of the, you know, the alpha and the omega of learning and then also having your own personal resilience and courage to say, ‘I accept that the buck stops here, and I'm not going to let this roll downhill to my people.’   Naviere Walkewicz  29:41 That's an excellent leadership lesson, because I was going to ask you, ‘What does that look like, and how would you how would you handle that?’ And so you went right into that. Thank you so much for that. So what has it been like leading security forces — defenders? What's it been like? Has there been a moment in time where — a particular assignment or something's really stuck into your mind or into your heart, because it's just really affected you?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  30:05 Absolutely. I will tell you, as we go back, as we were kind of talking about decisions that you make in your youth, and that critical decision that I made in the fall of ’94 I mean, I have worked with some of the most amazing people I've worked in my life. I have gotten a chance to go to places I never thought that I would see. And so, when you kind of roll up, I would say it was my final squadron command, and I would say that that was a real culminating squadron command. So I commanded four squadrons, and we command early, and we command often, and there's a lot of responsibility that that's placed on us as young officers to command as a young officer. And so having the opportunity to command two times as a captain, or one time, you know, as a major-select, then as a major, then as a lieutenant colonel. So that culminating command would have been Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan in May of 2012 to May of 2013 and you know, it was interesting because all of my previous squadron commands had all been vested in either the contingency response or the kind of combat contingency environments. And it was almost like all of those were leading me to this moment. So let me just kind of set the conditions on what Bagram was like at that point in time. We had grown the squadron to about a 1,200-person squadron, huge squadron. And what we were also responsible for is we had taken over battle space ownership from the Army. So the Air Force was controlling 220 square miles of battle space throughout Parwan province, which is a huge. I mean, it's twice the size of Washington, D.C., if you want to try to give a comparison, more or less is fair to look at that level as just a huge amount of terrain in which our airmen were responsible from everything from humanitarian operations and goodwill outreach to engagements to literal kinetic action and combat in the battle space. And so a part of this culmination was, was an environment where as the defense force commander — as that squadron commander to them as a lieutenant colonel at that point — I mean how we are weaving ourselves into their lives, and how we are working with their section commanders, and how we're working and managing the value of our perimeter defenses with our teams that were going outside of the wire doing legitimate patrolling and engagement and things along those lines, was huge. And I think that that is an example. And when you look in the rearview mirror to say, ‘Gosh, now this, a lot of this makes sense, like all of these assignments, whether by design or whether by fate, somehow gave me an experience that at this moment, I needed it most.’ And I think, as I talk, we've really enjoyed being here with the cadets and talking to them about, how does a leader really develop trust, and how does trust really manifest itself? And so, through the time that we were there, and the engagement as their leader — not just the leader who's just simply circulating, because that's important, but they also need to see your decision making and your strategic thought. And how do you react under pressure? How are you reacting as we've got incoming in, and what do you do being the person in the joint defense operations center, helping to manage that, and how are you both taking care of people, and how are you managing mission? And they see that. And so I would say that the development of that level of trust, especially in an environment where you are literally dealing with high costs, is huge. And so I think there was one, situation that really rests on my heart that and I don't talk about this to give validation, but I think I talk about it on it's about how people connect, and why do I feel so strongly that leadership is a human experience, like this is a what we are doing as a human experience. And so I was retiring my chief. So I was asked by my chief at Bagram — this was some years later. He's out of the 105th Base Defense Squadron out of the New York Air National Guard, and him and I were a phenomenal team there. Dave Pritchard and I just made a great team. And so he was retiring, and asked me to come back and do his retirement. So we had done the retirement ceremony. We were at the VFW afterwards, having his after-party and so forth. And so I had gone into the bathroom for a comfort break and washed my hands and things like that. And I noticed, as I was kind of moving towards the bathroom, there was kind of a young man who was kind of floating. You know, floating around. And so I came out of the restroom as I was finished, and he was waiting there at the exit of the restroom for me, and kind of, you know, got in front of me, and he stood there, and he looked at me, and he goes, ‘Hey, sir, I just, I needed to let you know this, that I was one of the airmen in one of your patrols that got hit by an IED, and he said, your investment in us, and the words that you used and when you came to talk to us, and the faith that you had in us gave me the courage to go back outside of the wire when you asked us to go back outside.’ And so why that rests so heavy is when you think about what, what is the what is the con? The consequence there is that somebody believed in you so much that when you spoke to them and said the word, they were going to go back out and do it again, in spite of what had just happened to you. And I don't think there is any stronger level of trust that you can ask from somebody than to have one of those moments. And so that moment just resides very, very heavy on my soul, because I think it puts into real, tangible context, what is the responsibility of leadership? What is your responsibility of leadership?   Naviere Walkewicz  36:42 I'm letting that sit a little bit, because I can't even imagine the amount of feeling that you had first for him, the courage to share that with you. Because I'm sure that he really wanted to share that. I'm curious if you can remember perhaps, what he might have been referring to, like what you were sharing with the men and women there.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  37:02 So, you know, it was also a part of things that, in times after Bagram have really been used for me as a senior leader on why I reinforced the importance of values. And, this was one particular incident there that really comes to mind is, and I use this when I when I talk to people, because I again, it's the consequence, and it's why our responsibility as leaders to set the right conditions and culture and all of that is so incredibly valuable. And so I talked to people about a story about we had had a situation where we had some real destabilization in the battle space. There was a particular village that we were having some unique challenges with, and we were doing a lot of kind of battlefield shaping, and we were doing some particular village engagement, and the engagement just wasn't happening. And so we were now kind of starting to escalate our interaction with the village a little bit more and as we were doing that, we were now going to start doing more shaping operations. So it just so happens that one of these nights —this was in the late fall, early winter of 2012 — and we were sending one of our patrols outside to do some shaping and engagement operation there. But this was in the evening. This was a different aspect that we were working for this particular mission. And so mounted up that the airmen are ready to go. They're pushing outside, they're right on time, and everything is going according to plan, and they are getting close to what we call the objective rally point. So that was where they were going to rally up before they actually moved into the village after that. And so everything was going according to plan. And the only thing they needed to do before they got to the objective rally point was really kind of go down a small gully over a rise, and then they meet at their objective rally point at that point. And so teams are moving out. First truck over the rise, getting to the point. Second truck over, everything's going fine. Third truck over, fourth truck after that, BOOM, off goes the IED. And what had happened is, they were waiting for this opportunity, and they knew exactly what to do. And that is, if you hit the last truck in the movement, you've got three trucks that are gone ahead of time, and now we've got folks in a very precarious situation. And so what I talk to people about, when we talk about conditions and the real impact that a leader has, is I'll talk to them about who was in that truck, who was in that MRAP that we were sending down at that point in time. And inside that MRAP was the face of America. And the explosion was significant, and it did some considerable damage. It threw the engine out of it, penetrated the hole, ripped one of the doors off the side in the front. And so, you know, the truck commander was National Guard from, actually from Tennessee, and he had gotten injured, broken an arm because that door had peeled back. And as the door peeled back, his arm got caught and broke his arm. The driver, Asian American coming out of the state of California, active duty. He had injuries to his legs because of the penetration of the hole. We had a gunner up in the turret, African American female from the New York Air National Guard. She had a broken pelvis at the time, and she just stayed on the gun the entire time despite her injuries. We had our radio operator. European American female coming from the Midwest. She was actually Air Force Reserve. She had a case of TBI from the explosion, and she was still making calls on the radio. We had two of our riflemen in the back, both came from Hispanic heritage, one of them from Puerto Rican heritage, one of them from Mexican heritage. They were very fortunate that while they got tossed around the back and had some minor TBI issues, they were more or less bumps and bruises, and they were all by themselves. Yeah, because they were all alone, they were in the middle of Afghanistan, they had just gotten hit. And so for me, what's so important about that story is that if we did not set the right culture and the right values and the right expectations and be in a leader by example, and they were harassing each other on Bagram, and they were assaulting each other on Bagram, and they weren't respecting each other on Bagram, and they didn't care about each other on Bagram, they would have died out there that night. But they treated each other like a family, and they cared about each other like a family, and they took care of each other like a family that night, and they lived and they all came home. So for me, if we're going to talk about what is the true consequence of leadership — and I use consequence deliberately, because oftentimes that's used in a pejorative manner — but this is the true result of your actions, that if you don't set those conditions, then you are legitimately putting your people at risk. And so that whole experience at Bagram, and in so many ways that we all carry our scars and our bruises and things like that. I wouldn't trade that experience for the world, but that was tough. And I often describe it as a tale of two cities. You know, it was the best of times. It was the worst of times.   Naviere Walkewicz  42:34 I think a lot of times, when leaders go through experiences like that, they have some more fortunate than others, but a support network. And I would guess it would be your family. How has your family played a role in these moments in your life, in helping you as a leader?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  42:54 So I will say it's primarily my wife. I have got this wonderful support of parents and my in-laws and so forth. And what's been truly fortunate is how close I am with my in-laws. Because when Laurie and I were dating while I was a cadet, anytime I had an overnight or weekend pass, I was over at her mom and dad's house and so I think that being married to somebody that has truly known you from the beginning, you know, where, whether we got a training weekend going on, or something like that, or I'm working first BCT or whatnot, that Laurie was a unique part of all of these things. And I would say that it has been incredibly heartwarming to watch her interact with the cadets here, because it's fun, because her and I do everything together. And so as we're going to events, I'll have a group of cadets that I'm talking to, and then I'll look over and Laurie's surrounded by a group of cadets who are asking her just very insightful questions about our experiences together, and ‘Was it tough sending them away on deployments?’ Or how, you know, in those tough times, ‘How do you how do you keep your marriage together?’ Just really insightful questions to ask, but she has just been so central to everything that I do. And so going back a little bit and talking about, like the strength of our relationship and how much that helps, we actually needed to have that breakup period as horribly painful as that was, and wow, was I carrying a torch for her all of those years. I mean, I remember, you know, as time was going by, I would talk to my mom, and I'd be like, ‘Mom, I just wish that Laurie could see the man that I become.’ But we needed that time because oftentimes, and what we found in ourselves, we didn't know it at the time, because you're living in your environment and you can't see it, right? Is that in youth, things are often absolutes. And you often will get to a place where you're starting your marriage, your relationship is growing. And if you start to talk about marriage, there are things that we have found were absolutes for us. You know, certain things that we did, how we practiced our faith. Did we open up presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but the expectation was somebody was going to have to give up their particular tradition to conform to the tradition of one of the spouses. And in your youth, that seems reasonable, and I think we needed that time to be apart, having had that time together at such an important time in each of our lives here. But we needed that time apart, because I think we needed that frame of reference as we grew as people into adults. Grew as young adults. And now all of a sudden here I'm getting multiple assignments, and now being thrust into leadership positions with accountability and authority, and then coming back to that, all of a sudden, you're realizing, ‘Gosh, the world just isn't always in absolutes. And maybe a marriage doesn't have to be zero sum, but maybe a marriage can be positive sum.’ And do we really have to make somebody give up something that is important to them, that is a part of their identity? Because somehow you feel like you have to conform your marriage into one side or the other. And so, I think for us that was that was so incredibly important. So to kind of get to that story is that, you know, I left Aviano and I went to Al Dhafra. I was in Al Dhafra actually for September 11. It was my first squadron command, but it was a squadron command I wasn't expecting, because I came there as a chief of security forces for about a 70-person security forces flight as a part of the 763rd Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron at Al Dhafra. And then all of a sudden, 9/11 happens, and we went from about 400 people on Al Dhafra to about 4,000. And you know, U-2s came in, ISR platforms came in. Everything changed. And all of a sudden, this 70-person security forces flight that I had grew into about a 350-person security forces squadron. And AFSET said, ‘Hey, Sherman, you built it, you keep it, and we'll replace you with a major when you leave.’ And I was a six-year captain, and so then finishing up that assignment, and I got picked up for — there was a point to that story — but it was about coming back, is that, hey, I got these new, unique experiences that grew me under my belt. And then I came back to do an AFIT program at Cal State San Bernardino. And that was the moment that brought Laurie and I back together.   Naviere Walkewicz  In what way?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN And so, I had a health scare. Nobody knows what it was. We never figured it out. Doctors never figured it out. But it was one of those things, like, all of a sudden, I shotgun something out to everybody I knew. I said, ‘Hey, doctors are a little bit concerned, you know, keep me in your thoughts.’ And so Laurie, Laurie is like, ‘Holy cow, you can't just send a one liner and leave it at that.’ So she called my mom and dad and said, ‘What's his phone number?’ And so it started to turn into ‘Hey, give me all of your test results after you get it back.’ Then pretty soon we're talking a couple times a week, and then pretty soon we're talking every other day, and then we are talking every day. And the beauty of this was that we already knew each other, so we already knew what everybody's favorite color was — by the way, Laurie's is purple. We knew what music each other liked. We knew things about each other. And some of the things that actually drew us together when we were dating here was, you know, we had things like some common family traditions, like, you know, Italian fish on Christmas Eve and sitting around the table for hours and stuff like that were all things that we had in common. So we already knew that about each other. Now, her and I on the phone, we're getting into some real, like substantive discussions, children, faith. How do you how you raise children? How do you know, what are we going to do for different traditions? What happens if I have to take a remote; what does that mean? And so we were getting into these really, deep conversations. And, you know, I would come back from either class or then when I PCs to the security forces center out at Lackland, you know, I would come home from work, and this was in the old flip phone days where you had a battery that came off the back. So I would have one battery in the charger, and then I would have an earbud in, and I'd have the phone in my pocket. Yeah, and I'd come home and to call her, and we would just go throughout the evening. So I'm ironing BDUs at the time, shining my boots and stuff like that, and so, and we were just talking. And then we were just kind of like living life together. And, after that point, it became very clear that those two young people who sincerely cared about each other, now, each of us grew up and had experiences in a place that allowed us to really appreciate each other and really love each other. And you know, we were married just a little over a year after that. And it has been phenomenal, her support. And I think one of the great testaments to that was, 10 days after we got married, I went to Baghdad, but she's like, ‘I grew up in the Air Force. I know how this works. We're gonna move the house. I'll get the house put together.’ And she's also a professional in her own right, which is great. So she was working in a legal office here as a paralegal and legal assistant here in Colorado Springs, and has been a GS employee for the last 18-plus years. So what's great is she, too has her own aspect of service. What I love about it is that in the jobs that she's in and then the jobs that I'm in, we can talk shop, and then we cannot talk shop, right? And so she's the first person I go to if I have to ask a question, she's the first person that I'll go to say, ‘Hey, did I do that right? Or do I need to backtrack on that a little bit?’ Because she knows me, and she knows me completely, and that level of trust and love and faith that we have for each other has truly enabled me to be able to serve our airmen on a level that I don't think would have been possible without her.   Naviere Walkewicz  51:59 Would you say that she's had a role in your development as a leader, in the way that you lead.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  52:05 Oh, absolutely, absolutely, because, and I love it, because her experience as a brat and her dad as a chief gives her a very unique lens to look through. And so the advice that she gives me she can give me from her teenage self in some way, you know, from that experience, watching how her dad interacted with something or knowing her aspect about this. And then as she's developed professionally, working on the E-Ring at the Pentagon a couple different times, working for very senior leaders, knows how to navigate that space. So then I'll go to her for advice, like, ‘Hey, how did your boss handle something like this?’ ‘Well, let me tell you what, how we work through this...’ And so I would absolutely say that that Laurie has uniquely influenced and helped me to become the best version of myself that I can be.   Naviere Walkewicz  53:03 Wow. Well, I want to ask you a little bit about developing yourself as well, because one of the questions we like to ask is, what are you doing every day to make yourself a better leader? Can you share what that might be?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  53:17 I've said it a couple times during this: I truly believe that leadership is a human experience, so for me, it's about the interaction. And so oftentimes, advice that I've given to people — like there are amazing resources abound that can help people, give people leadership perspectives, and we can either learn it from history, or we can learn it through study. We can learn it through analysis. We can learn it through books. And I've always talked to people about use the external tools that help to grow you, but make sure that you're using it to influence the personality that you already have. Because oftentimes what happens is, is that people will have this really strong desire to say, “OK, I want to make sure that I do this right. And so in doing this right, let me make sure I've got my checklist, and so I'm going to greet them, I'm going to ask them how their family is, I'm going to ask them if the kid did all right in the baseball game. And I'm going to go through my checklist, and if I do that, I fulfill my leadership obligation.’ Now not everybody does, and I'm making generalities on but, but I think that there can oftentimes be the allure that when you are focusing on what may be the theory or the principle of the day, and not using it to supplement and grow and mature your personality, that there is a strong allure to want to wholesale replicate what it was that you learned, and you're doing it in a noble place. It's not nefarious. It's being done in a noble, genuine place. But there's that allure to say, ‘OK, good, I really like what I've learned. I'm going to do these things and step through.’ And so why I talk so much about the experience, and why I talk so much about the interaction, is that the more that you know the people that you may be influencing by just simply being there and understanding what that means. It means you're eternalizing the value of your presence. You're listening to their stories, and you're understanding for them, what are the things that are motivating them? What are the things that they value? Because each generation, each environment, each condition is going to require something a little bit different from you, and if you don't take the time to understand your environment or generation or cultural nuances or things like that on where you're at, then you are missing that opportunity to develop trust, where they start to believe in you as a person, and not just the rank and position that you hold, because they'll do the right thing for the rank and position that you hold. That's the caliber of people that we have in this Air Force of ours. They'll do the right thing. But if you transcend that in the fact that they believe in you wholeheartedly and trust you, oftentimes with their own lives, it means that you've invested something into them, where they truly know that you care. And that goes back to that A1C on the cork board that said, ‘I need somebody who cares about me as a person.’   Naviere Walkewicz  56:41 You know, as I think about what you've experienced through your career and the lessons you've learned, both professionally and personally, what would you say to yourself back then that you should be doing back then to get to where you're at now? Because we have listeners that are like, ‘What can I start planting today, that will bloom down the road?’   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  57:03 Absolutely. And so I think if I was to go back and put my arm around Cadet First Class Sherman, I think what I would do is — because it is, it is oftentimes easy to look in the crystal clear mirror of hindsight, right? But I think instead, what I would do is I would put my arm around him and say, ‘Keep following your heart and let the failures happen, because the failures are going to grow and let the stumbles happen and enjoy the triumphs with people and be appreciative for what got you there.’ And I think it would be more of the encouragement of like, ‘You have laid out a path for you take the path wherever it goes, the joy, the pain, the triumph, the failure, all of those things, because all of that helps to develop the leader.’ And oftentimes you want to go back and say, gosh, if I was going to talk to my previous self, then I would say, ‘Ah, don't do that one thing,’ right? But I'm looking at it saying that if I didn't do that one thing, then I'm not sure that I would be where I'm at at a time to make sure I didn't do that thing at a moment that was incredibly catastrophic. And so while we have this desire to want to prevent ourselves from the failure, I think that what we have to do is say you're going to fail and you need to fail, and it's going to sound — relish in the failure, because it is often emotionally troubling, especially those of us that come here because we are Type A perfectionist, and that's part of the draw of coming to this amazing place. Is there a certain personality traits that help us to be successful here, but not all of those personality traits make us uniquely successful in all situations outside, and so you've got to have that failure at some point in time. And the failure that you can get up and say, ‘OK, I did this. This happened. My soul is bruised. My ego is bruised. I may have to take a little bit of accountability for this. OK, now I need to have the courage to take the next step forward again.’ Because I could easily retreat back to a safe place, and I could become risk averse, and all that does is hurt the people around you. OK. I have to have the courage to breathe and take the step again and get back in there. So I would tell my — I don't think I would want to prevent myself from doing anything. I think even the growth that took place while Laurie and I were apart — and, like I said, that torch that I carried for her — I think if I had whispered in my ear and said, ‘Hey, just relax, you're gonna marry her.’ I think I needed that torch, because that in my own mind and my own emotion was me needing to become a better man, and so I think I needed to go through — like, sometimes you need the struggle, and sometimes the things that are most valuable are the things that you had to go through the struggle for, right? And I think that's where my blue collar ethics background comes in. It's like, I'm just going to roll up my sleeves and I'm going to work through the struggle.   Naviere Walkewicz  1:00:36 Wow. Well, we took a look back. I just want to ask you a question forward. So do you think about legacy? And what do you want your legacy to be? Is that something that plays in your mind as you wake up each morning or go to lead people?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  1:00:50 I think the way that I look at it is, I look at it in a in a different aspect, and the way that I look at it is in a very confined point to point. It's not about what is going to be Tom Sherman's legacy when he retires someday, but was that interaction that I had with somebody to give them some encouraging words when they fell down, did that matter to them at that moment? Because there are people for me in my failures that were commanders, that were leaders, that were mentors, that were senior enlisted, that, you know, grabbed that lieutenant by the arm and helped to lift me up. And their memories are etched in my fabric. And so I think that it's about that individual event that your legacy will live in the people in which you made a difference to them.   Naviere Walkewicz  1:01:49 Well, I'll share with you, I was telling my son — he's a cadet, a third-class cadet, actually, now he’s about to be a C2C — that I was doing this podcast with you, and he said, ‘What an incredible leader, Mom, he motivates me. He's so inspiring.’ So your legacy is already through my son—   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  1:02:05 Thank you! That means — thank you so much for sharing.   Naviere Walkewicz  1:02:10 —that you really made an impact. So we're going to get to your final thoughts here in a little bit. But before we do, I want to make sure that you know our podcasts publish on every second Tuesday of the month, and you can certainly listen to Gen. Sherman in any of our other podcasts on longblueleadership.org. So Gen. Sherman, what would you like to leave our listeners with today? This has been incredible, by the way. Thank you.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  1:02:32 I have truly enjoyed this, and it's just been — it was just wonderful having the conversation with you, and it's in real honor to be a part of this. I truly believe in what you're doing here.   Naviere Walkewicz  1:02:43 Thank you. It's my pleasure to help share your story and help inspire others. And is there anything we might leave with our listeners that that they can part with tonight?   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  1:02:51 I think, for me, you need to love what you do and love I think, is one of the most powerful words in language. And I don't just say the English language. I say in language because of the strength behind the meaning and how wide the meaning can be impactful. If you love what you do, people will feel that your very presence will make a difference. They'll feel that if you love what you do, then you're being, you know, internally, inspired by the love that you have for what you're being a part of, right? If you love and care about your people, they will follow you to the ends of the Earth, because they know the passion that you have and the belief that you have in them. So I think that as we go back to these things, we oftentimes look at the terms of courage and love may seem diametrically opposed, and I would attest that you can be most courageous and that your courage will be most effective only when it's buttressed by the love that you have in what you do and who you do it with.   Naviere Walkewicz  1:04:08 Thank you, sir, for that. Thank you for being on Long Blue Leadership.   MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN  1:04:11 Absolutely. Thank you. This was a wonderful time. It was a real honor.   Naviere Walkewicz  1:04:14 Thank you. Well, until next time, I'm Naviere Walkewicz. We'll see you on Long Blue Leadership.     KEYWORDS Leadership, Air Force Academy, Major General Thomas P. Sherman, mentorship, personal growth, security forces, work-life balance, family support, continuous improvement, legacy       The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation

In this episode of Long Blue Leadership, Dr. John Torres shares his inspiring journey from being the first in his family to attend college to becoming NBC's senior medical correspondent. SUMMARY Dr. Torres discusses the challenges he faced at the Air Force Academy, the pivotal moments that shaped his leadership skills, and the influence of his family values. He reflects on his unconventional experiences, including survival training and falconry, and how these experiences prepared him for a successful career in medicine and media. His story is a testament to resilience, curiosity, and the importance of mentorship in leadership. In this conversation, he shares his journey from dealing with hantavirus outbreaks in New Mexico to becoming a prominent medical correspondent during the pandemic. Dr. Torres discuss the challenges of communicating complex medical information to the public, the importance of empathy when delivering bad news, and the role of family support in his career. Finally, he emphasizes the need for continuous improvement in leadership and the value of instilling positive values in the next generation.   SHARE THIS EPISODE LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/survival-training-a-catalyst-for-leadership-dr-john-torres-82/?token=87baae78601101b48bd0b5724f8936a7] | FACEBOOK [https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/survival-training-a-catalyst-for-leadership-dr-john-torres-82/?token=87baae78601101b48bd0b5724f8936a7]   DR. TORRES' TOP 10 LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS  - Lead with empathy: Understand where people are coming from, recognizing that anger often stems from fear and underlying concerns.  - Communicate clearly: Break down complex information into understandable terms, whether speaking to patients, soldiers, or the public.  - Be willing to admit mistakes: True leadership means having the courage to acknowledge when you're wrong and take responsibility.  - Develop a "no excuse" mentality: Take ownership of situations, even when they're not entirely your fault.  - Build trust through peer-to-peer interactions: Treat people as equals rather than using an authoritarian approach.  - Continuously learn and adapt: Stay current in your field and be open to new experiences and perspectives.  - Support your team's individual growth: Encourage people to pursue their passions and provide guidance without pressure.  - Match your emotional delivery to your message: Ensure your communication is authentic and appropriate to the content.  - Lead by example: Demonstrate the values and work ethic you expect from others through your own actions.  - Focus on purpose over position: Leadership is about making a positive impact and helping others grow, not about title or status.   CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Dr. John Torres 02:01 Overcoming Challenges at the Academy 05:03 Discovering Leadership Through Survival Training 08:33 Influence of Family Values on Leadership 10:42 Unconventional Experiences at the Academy 13:41 Transitioning from Pilot to Medical Doctor 20:06 Lessons Learned as a Flight Doc 23:58 Becoming an NBC Correspondent 24:37 Hantavirus and Early Medical Experiences 26:00 Transitioning to Media: From ER to TV 27:23 The Pandemic: A Super Bowl for Medicine 29:05 Communicating Medical Information Effectively 32:29 Delivering Bad News with Compassion 34:41 Teaching NATO Special Forces Medics 37:02 Family Support and Legacy 39:58 Instilling Values in the Next Generation 41:56 Continuous Improvement as a Leader 45:52 Final Thoughts and Future Aspirations   ABOUT DR. TORRES BIO Dr. John Torres ’82 is currently Senior Medical Correspondent for NBC News and a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. With a career spanning more than 30 years in emergency medicine, military service, and national media, Dr. Torres brings a rare blend of clinical expertise, crisis leadership, and public communication to every role he takes on. Before joining NBC, he served in the Air Force, deploying to combat zones and responding to humanitarian crises around the globe. After retiring from the military, Dr. Torres transitioned to civilian emergency medicine and later began sharing trusted medical insights with millions of viewers through his work in broadcast journalism. On camera and off, he is known for making complex medical issues accessible and relevant, especially during moments of national concern like the COVID-19 pandemic. A seasoned leader shaped by experience in the field, the ER, and the newsroom, Dr. Torres exemplifies the values of service, clarity under pressure, and lifelong learning—principles he credits in large part to his upbringing in rural New Mexico, foundational Academy education and military experiences.   CONNECT WITH DR. TORRES LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-torres-797bb160/]       ALL PAST LBL EPISODES [https://www.longblueleadership.org/]  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS [https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/longbluelinepodcast] AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS     TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS:  Guest, Dr. John Torres ’82 | Host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz ’99   Naviere Walkewicz  00:11 Welcome to Long Blue Leadership, the podcast where we share insights on leadership through the lives and experiences of Air Force Academy graduates. I'm Naviere Walkewicz, Class of ’99. In this edition of Long Blue Leadership, we're joined by someone whose journey is as inspiring as it is unconventional — Dr. John Torres, USAFA Class of ’82. You might know him as NBC’s senior medical correspondent, but long before he was delivering public health insights to millions of viewers on national television, he started military life as a young cadet at our Air Force Academy, navigating his own path of purpose and transformation. Dr. Torres story begins with life in a tight-knit Latino family with roots in northern New Mexico extending back to the 1500s, where he became the first in his family to go to college. He entered the Academy from a high school where gangs and drugs were common, but it was a structure at USAFA and one pivotal summer of survival training that lit a fire in him as a pilot. Dr. Torres discovered a calling beyond the cockpit, thanks in part to a chance conversation on a three-hour flight, leading him to medicine, where he would serve as a flight doc for more than two decades. Dr. Torres’ leadership story extends beyond the emergency room, whether mentoring NATO's special forces medics, stepping in front of a camera to deliver critical public health guidance, or reflecting on 43 years of marriage, he is fueled by his relentless curiosity about all things possible. I'm honored to welcome Dr. John Torres to Long Blue Leadership. His is a path that reminds us that leadership is a series of grounded values and bold steps. Dr. Torres, welcome to Long Blue Leadership.   Dr. John Torres  Thanks for having me here.   Naviere Walkewicz  Absolutely. We're really excited to jump in. And I want to go back to something we talked about. You were the first in your family to go to college. However, there was a period of time where you might have left the Academy. Can we jump right in there.   Dr. John Torres  02:01 It's actually pretty interesting, because intuitively, it doesn't make sense for anybody that went through it, but it was my first year as a doolie year, as anybody who's gone through the doolie year, it's a tough year to go through, especially— you come out of high school. I remember I had hair down to my shoulders, and you come in here, they shave it off right away, and your parents leave, and you're sad, and everybody's sitting there going through the same stuff, but at same time, you know, it's just a tough thing to go through. And so I went through that. I went through basic training, and I was kind of like, “I don't know if this is really where I want to be.” I started the Academy. I went to school, like you mentioned, a high school— it wasn't one of the best high schools in the country by any stretch of imagination. So when I came here, it was kind of an eye-opener, because I had— I was here with people who had gone to very good high schools, and so I was a step behind academically, so I had to catch up as well through that. And so that made it a little bit tougher. So not just physically, not just mentally, academically, everything was kind of, you know, just tough that year and something as a 18-year-old, you're not used to a 19-year-old. And so I started looking at other schools, thinking I want to leave. And I talked to my dad, and he was an amazing person. He's always been one of my heroes in my life. And my dad, surprisingly, didn't say anything. He didn't say, like, “You need to stay there.” You know, he was an Air Force— he retired Air Force, and you know, he really was proud that I was here, but at the same time, thankfully, he just said, “You know, you need to do what you need to do, and I'll back you regardless. I think you should stay there back regardless. But do me a favor, go through survival training. Go through SERE, because that will always stick with you for the rest of your life, whether you stay in the at the Academy or not.” And I felt like I owed him at least. I'm like, “Let me go through SERE.” Well, I went through SERE. I was the sixth, the second iteration of summer, and—   Naviere Walkewicz  03:39 And just a reminder, SERE is survival, evasion, resistance and escape.   Dr. John Torres  03:42 So I was the second iteration during the summer. You know, you have three weeks, three weeks, three weeks. It was the second three weeks. And so I went through SERE, and it's not fun, it's certainly not. And I grew up in the outdoors. My dad was a big hunter. We used to go hunting together, a lot of camping, you know. So I was used to outdoor things, but SERE is just a little bit different from that. Surprising though, I really enjoyed it.   Naviere Walkewicz  You enjoyed SERE?   Dr. John Torres  I enjoyed SERE, which is kind of bizarre. And when I went through it gave me that sense of accomplishment, that I had really done something. And I looked back and I said, “You know, I am in a lot different place than I would be even in this year I've been here — a little over a year. I think I'm gonna stay.” And so I ended up staying here at the Academy, and that just kind of set the trend for the rest of my life.   Naviere Walkewicz  04:27 I can't imagine anyone saying that they wanted to stay because of SERE, because of survival training versus, you know —that is unique in itself.   Dr. John Torres  04:35 It was just one of those things when you got through— and the Academy did this time and time again. And this led into other things in my life, where you push hard through these adverse situations, and it gives you that sense of accomplishment. “I can do these things.” And it taught me that I could pretty much do anything in life I want, and I did a lot of things that, like you mentioned, are a little less than traditional, and were not always easy on myself or the family, but with the backing of, in this case, of my parents, throughout the life of my family, you can do anything.   Naviere Walkewicz  05:03 Well, we're going to dig into that, but I want to ask you, was there a moment during survival training that you learned something about yourself? Because obviously it made you want to stay at the Academy and continue that journey. But was there anything you learned?   Dr. John Torres  05:14 You know, what I did learn— because you don't learn this in high school. You know, there were a few things. I was in different clubs and stuff, because even though the school I went to wasn't the best, we still had the different clubs and Honor Society and those kind of things. But I wasn't really a leader in any of those. I was just a participant in all those. Well, when I went through survival training, I found out that I was actually a leader in a lot of things. It just popped up. And, you know, I guess I could use the words “natural leader.” And part of it was, if you remember, during survival training, one of the things we had to do is, we had a rabbit, you end up having to kill the rabbit to eat the rabbit, to show you that you need to survive on these things, and it's OK to kill these animals to eat if you're trying to survive. Again, I grew up hunting, and so I'm used to hunting animals and cleaning the animals and butchering them down and those things. And so when we had the rabbit, I was with other people, and nobody wanted to do anything with a rabbit. And we even gave it a name,   Naviere Walkewicz  What was the name?!   Dr. John Torres  I can't remember— Oh, no, the name was Stu, for obvious reasons. Rabbit stew. So people were petting the rabbit, and then when it came time, they're like, “OK, now somebody needs to kill a rabbit.” They're all sitting there. So I said, “OK, fine, I'll do it, you know, give it to me.” I did that. And then, “OK, now somebody needs to skin the rabbit,” and they're all looking— I'm like, “Give it to me.”So I ended up gutting, skinning, killing the whole rabbit and all those things. And then when we did the hiking part of survival training, the evasion part, it was the same thing where I ended up leading the group we were with through a lot of the situations we were in, and so it just showed me that I had that leadership potential that I didn't know was there. And that was one of the things, I think, that clicked during that survival training.   Naviere Walkewicz  06:49 That's amazing. And you'd mentioned that your dad also served in the military. So talk a little bit about how he was a hero for you, I guess, in your journey as well.   Dr. John Torres  06:58 So he came— like you mentioned, I was the first one to go to any kind of college or university. He actually dropped out of high school when he was 15 because his mother had died earlier. His father died at that point. He had eight siblings, and he was trying to raise all this… no, I'm sorry, he had 10 siblings or 11 children. He was trying to raise all the children, so he became essentially their surrogate father. And the best way he could do that, that he thought, was to go into the military and then send a lot of his money back to help out the family. Very, very poor childhood. Very, very poor family. And so he was doing that and then he had us as a family. And so he was taking care of two families, working extra jobs, doing all these things. And yet he was super dedicated as far as the military went. And if you look — I ended up getting his military records to look at him a few years ago. And, you know, two Bronze Stars, recommendations everywhere. Everybody loved him. He took care of an orphanage when we were in Greece, and that's where I was born, when he was stationed there. And there's letters from the orphanage thanking him for taking care of them. I mean, this man did amazing amounts of things, and he did that. He grew up in a very adverse situation, a very harsh situation, and he overcame that. Never was bitter about anything. Always was looking at other things he could do, and always really encouraging. And us, his children, “You can do anything you want to do. You can be anybody you want to be. You just have to really put your put your nose to the grindstone and really do it.” And he was adamant about that, as far as, “You're not just— can you do anything you want to do, but you have to earn that ability to do what you want to do. You have to figure out a way to do that.”   Naviere Walkewicz  08:33 Wow. So his value is really aligned with the Air Force Academy and kind of the values that we are brought up through. Talk about your time at the Academy, because I like it. You use the word “unconventional.” Let's talk about a little bit of unconventionality at the Air Force Academy.   Dr. John Torres  08:48 So I went to the Air Force Academy. I was in 27th Squadron my first, my doolie year, and ended up going to 39th, the Jedi Knights the other years. And bizarrely— so, my roommates of the my doolie year ended up, one of them ended up being my roommate all four years, which is really unique. That doesn't happen. We ended up staying together, best friends. This guy is fantastic. And so, you know, we helped each other get through the whole thing, and you sit there the whole time, especially your doolie year, learning certain things about yourself. And one of the things that I learned, and I talked about here at the Academy a few months ago, is what I call the “no excuse” saying. And it's tough, because when you're growing up as a teenager, you're always like, you know, giving excuses for everything. You know, “Why'd this happen?” “Well, my sister did it and I didn't.” It wasn’t my fault.” And if you remember, at the Air Force Academy, anytime they would ask you a question, you know, “Why did this happen? Why did you do this? Why was that wrong?” Your only answer could be, “No excuse, sir” or “no excuse, ma'am.” You couldn't give an excuse. And at the time, I was like, “That's dumb, because I didn't even do it. My roommate did it. So I should tell them, my roommate did it,” and all that stuff. And then over time, I realized, especially when I became an upperclassman. But what that is doing is that is instilling in you the fact that, “Hey, I have to take responsibility for this. It might have been my roommate that did it, but I'm part of this room too. I'm part of this team. I need to take responsibility.” And so that just started the whole program of going through then when I was a freshman, you do intramurals and you look at other things you can do. I went and looked at Honor Society, and I did that for a little bit, and that wasn't really my cup of tea. Wasn't really something I wanted to do. And then I ended up— somebody told me about being a falconer, and I never really heard about the falcons. And so I went down there,   Naviere Walkewicz  And you knew not to hunt this one.   Dr. John Torres  I knew not to hunt. Exactly. So I went down there and I started working with them, and just fell in love with it. So I became a falconer while I was here as well.   Naviere Walkewicz  It's really competitive.   Dr. John Torres  That is very competitive, yeah, I forgot; I think there were 20 or 30 of us that started out, and they picked four of us. Yeah. And so in the first year, you're just taking care of the chickens they eat. You're cleaning up falcon poop. I mean, you're just doing the things that nobody wants to do. And every now and then you get to hold a falcon and learn about them, and then they pick the ones who are going to stay. And then you start working with falcons for the next few years. Fantastic. And that helped throughout my life as well.   Naviere Walkewicz  11:02 How would you say that that's helped throughout your life? I mean, what a unique experience. Would you say that that's guided you to kind of try new things, or has it guided you in other ways?   Dr. John Torres  11:11 Well, both. One, to try new things. Because, again, this falls into that thought of, “If I really want to do this, I can do it again.” There were so many people competing for it, that you just really have to make that extra effort. You really have to be consistent with what you're doing. You really have to commit and so I did all those things. Obviously, they saw that I was somebody who would do that, and they picked me. But the other thing it did, and like you mentioned, I've been a huge communicator the last 10, 15 years on TV, upwards of 10 million, 15 million people watching me, and it's a public health message I'm getting out there. So I have to be very accurate in what I say. I have to be very— you also have to be slightly entertaining, because people won't listen to you if you're dull, right? So you have to be a little bit entertaining, but you have to get the information across in a very timely fashion, and that's what falconeering taught me at the Academy. Because being a falconer, when you talk to people, you have to be able to elaborate on the falcon. And I distinctly remember this: Col. Schott, he was our AOC, and this is back in the ’80s. He— ’70s and ’80s. He— one time I was with the peregrine falcon that we had, which is an endangered species. And we had one of them, and the government let us have that one just to take care of it and raise it. And I was at a game with a peregrine falcon, and somebody came up to me, and I was a third-year, somebody came up to me and they said, “What kind of Falcon is that? And I said, “Well, it's a peregrine falcon.” They're like— we kind of stared at each other, like, oh, it was a family with kids. And they're like, “Oh, thanks.” And then they turned and walked away. And Col. Schott was with me. He came over, he's like, “You completely missed the boat.” I'm like, “What are you talking about?” He said, “You need to use that as an opening because they need to understand these falcons are endangered and all that stuff.” He said, “So let me show you how to do this and try it yourself.” And so what he eventually taught me is to use that as opening lines, but then to go ahead and get into, essentially, my spiel of things that are important for them to understand. And so somebody came up and said, “What kind of falcon is that?” You know, “This is a peregrine falcon, here's something you might not know. This is the fastest animal on Earth. They can dive at 180 miles an hour. But they're also an endangered species, so something we really need to take care of, you know, blah, blah, blah.” And just keep that dialog going as long as you can or as long as you need to, and not just answering the question with a simple answer. And so when I got into television, and especially since I give across medical information — which can be confusing and can be, even in some places, controversial — you learn, I learned from there how to adjust the answer to the question, but also getting in the information I think needed to be got in.   Naviere Walkewicz  13:41 Well, I certainly hope that the peregrine falcon details were not in Contrails. I didn't remember that. I learned something.   Dr. John Torres  13:48 Yeah, it's very fast. They're amazing.   Naviere Walkewicz  13:50 That's incredible. And that's— what a neat story to how that's actually led into the way you communicate. But let's talk about a day in the life now. So you're an NBC correspondent, you're a medical doctor. What's a day in the life like?   Dr. John Torres  14:01 So it changes depending on the situation. So if we go back a couple years during the pandemic, that was kind of, as somebody put it, that was kind of my Super Bowl of the pandemic. Because I was on every day. I think in the three years of the pandemic, I had a total of five days off because it was just a Monday-through-Monday-through-Monday kind of thing where you're just constantly on. My claim to fame is one day I was on 27 times, to the point where my producer, thankfully for my wife, she was there helping. She was part camera person, part, you know, helping me out with other things. And my producer would call my wife and say, “Get him a peanut butter sandwich. He looks like he's hungry.” You know, we have a minute and a half between hits. And so, you know, the pandemic, if you remember, things were happening fast and furious, and so I was always having to keep on top of the information, get that information out as accurately as possible. So that was the pandemic. Well, now it's gotten more relaxed, and so now the main thing I do is get on air. I have a studio in my house here in Colorado, and I'll get on air probably five or six times a week and talk about various medical things that are happening. Like, you know, recently with former president, Biden, and his prostate cancer. You know, get on and discuss why the PSA test might not have caught it. What does that mean? What does that mean for— and then I use that like I talked about with the falcon. I use that to give other people— “Well, here's what men need to understand, and the women in their lives need to understand about signs they could look at that might preclude them to going to, you know, might urge them to go to the doctor,” right? And so you learn these things as you go along. And right now, that's what I'm doing. I'm mainly focusing on whatever the news of the day is, and going ahead and getting on air and describing what that means for people, but describing kind of both sides of the story, because we found out during the pandemic that people want to hear both sides. They don't want to just hear me as a doctor telling them what to do. They want to hear the pros and cons to certain things, and then help them make a decision.   Naviere Walkewicz  15:55 Well, it's interesting how you became a doctor, because I mentioned in the opening that you were a pilot. So maybe we can visit that correlation, how that happened. Because, you know, you are unconventional. How did this come about?   Dr. John Torres  16:07 So I went to the Air Force Academy. And actually, it's interesting, when I went to the Academy, I wanted to be an architect, as bizarre as that can be. And mainly because when I was in high school, I had taken a drafting course, and I was like, “This is really fun. I really enjoy this kind of stuff.” And so when I got here, I'm like, “I want to be an architect.” And they're like— this is how little I knew about the Academy. They're like, we don't have—   Naviere Walkewicz  16:28 I was gonna say—   Dr. John Torres  16:30 We don't have architects here. So I was like, “OK, let me see what else I can do.” And then it was one of those things, “Well, everybody's gonna be a pilot, so I might as well be a pilot.” But I got my degree in engineering mechanics, and so I thought, “That's as close as I can get, and I'll go ahead and do the pilot thing.” So I did the pilot thing. I was flying C-130s at the time, and one of my fellow pilots, we were on the plane together. We're heading to the plane. He's got his helmet bag, and inside, I look at his helmet bag, and he's got a chemistry book in there. I'm like, “Dude, what are you doing with chemistry book?” He's like, “Oh, I'm studying for the MCATs.” And I'm like— this is how little I knew. I'm like, “What are the MCATs?” He goes, “It's the Medical College Admission Test.” I'm like, “What does that mean?” He goes, “I want to go to medical school and be a doctor.” I'm like, “What? You can do that?” He's like, “Oh, yeah, I'm just studying for it. I'll take the MCATs in another year or two.” And so we had a three-hour flight, and I just picked his brain about it and said, “Why are you doing this?” And then afterwards, over the next couple days, I'm like, “I'm as smart as this guy. I could go to medical school.” And so I started looking into it too. And then I made the huge step, which was talking to my wife about it. Because she was like, you know, “Are you going to go in the airlines? What are you going to do?” And she was 100% not even questioning. “If that's what you want to do, let's do it.” I said, “It's not going to be easy.” And you find out in med school that — for anybody out there who might think about going to med school or your kids are — it has to be a calling, because it's not easy. And my friends are all flying for the airlines, are making good money. They're having great vacations, raising family. I'm raising a family, but we're living in a, you know, 500-square-foot apartment. There's four of us, and barely living off loans. And so it's definitely a calling and I think the Academy helped me with that as well, of going again, that, “If I really want it, I really have to earn it.” But it's that three-hour flight with that fellow copilot that started the process.   Naviere Walkewicz  18:22 I'm curious. You said it really needs to be a calling. What was it about it to you? You hadn't thought about it before that flight.   Dr. John Torres  18:27 So the only thing— going back in my life, when I was in high school, again, this is at the high school you were talking about, I had a biology teacher that came up to me one day, and he said, “You're pretty smart. You should think about becoming a doctor.” And he's the only person ever to have told me that, and I had no idea what that really meant. And I was like, “Yeah, whatever.” When I graduated from medical school, I actually invited him to my graduation, and he came, and I honored him with the graduation. And so it was really neat, because he was the first one — a guy named Mr. Grabard — he was the first one to do that, to say anything to me, the first one to mention it. And so when I was— after the flight, I was talking to my wife, and it started going, “Wait, I remember him saying this. So he must have seen something in me. Maybe…” You know, I wasn't the best academic person at the Air Force Academy, but you know, then you come to find out that, hey, not being, you know, being kind of middle of the road at the Air Force Academy puts you at a pretty high status across the country compared to other colleges, and then when I went to apply for the Academy, I was surprised, and this is the first time I'd seen anything outside of the military that I was surprised at how well received having gone through the Academy was both the fact that academically, I'd gotten through it, but also the fact that they knew that that meant that, yes— because I would get through medical school, I would get through residency, and I'd be able to do what it takes to be a doctor. Because the last thing they want to do is bring somebody on board who, two years later, is going to quit, because that's a spot that somebody else could have taken.   Naviere Walkewicz  19:52 Right. Well, gosh, I mean being a flight doc, I mean you had some high-pressure moments. I can't even imagine some of the things you’ve experienced and seen. But, maybe talk about what you've learned about yourself in that period, or, you know, maybe the leadership journey in that space.   Dr. John Torres  20:07 Being a flight doc was fantastic, especially the fact that I had been a pilot before. And so, for those pilots that are out there, we used to always have a saying as a pilot, that when you go to the flight doc, the best you can do is break even, meaning the best you can do is come out the same way you went in. Otherwise, they're going to find something, and you're going to be grounded, and all these other things. And so I remember that, and when I was a flight doc, that pilots coming in, they tend to be a bit nervous, and they tend to be a bit skeptical, and they tend to hold back information, because, you know, they want to make sure they break even, they want to make sure they go back to flying. And so I would always talk to them about, “Hey, I was in your shoes. I fully understand. So let's talk about these things that we can talk about and freely. And if there's things you're holding back, as long as it's not endangering you, or you're flying, you know, I understand.” You know, at the same time, the hardest thing was to deliver news to a pilot that like, “Hey, we're going to have to, you know, ground you for a while, and this might be permanent because of some medical condition that came up. I fully understand, because I was in the same boat. But look also, at the same time, you can do other things in your life. You know, you don't necessarily—“ You know, like most pilots being, not being a pilot isn't the end of things, right? Even though you think it might be. And so it gave me that ability to discuss that as well.   Naviere Walkewicz  21:18 So would you say at that juncture— you're obviously a leader. Would you say that there's some of them are almost peers, or you're always kind of in a in a supervisor kind of role in that?   Dr. John Torres  21:29 As a flight doc— so I think you're in a peer position, and you should treat it as a peer position. Because if you treat it as a leadership supervisory position, then you're coming down. And it's the same thing now with medicine in 2025 versus medicine in 1960 or ’70. In 1960 or ’70, the doc was the authority figure. It was very uncommon for anybody to talk back to a doctor and say, “I don't agree with that.” What we've learned over the years that people want a discussion, they want a dialog. They want to make their own medical decisions which they should make. And it's the same thing here with being a flight doctor. Last thing I want to be is the authority figure that says, “Here's what you're going to do.” I want to be the figure that sits there with him as a peer and say, “Here's what medicine is saying. If we go down this avenue, this will happen. If we go down Avenue B, this will happen. If we go down Avenue C, this will happen. Which avenue do you think we should go down? You know, based on you and your life and your and where you are right now.” Because everybody's an individual; you don't know where they are in their life, and you want to make sure that you don't assume where they are in their life.   Naviere Walkewicz  22:27 Did you come into the role with that mentality and that way of communicating and working with them? Or was that something that you learned over time? Did you see that from another leader?   Dr. John Torres  22:37 No, I think it was a combination of the two. I think part of it was growing up, and again, with my father, always encouraging me to do things, and always encouraging me to make sure that— “There can be things that are going to be hard, but you can get through that, and you can earn that. And don't ever let anybody tell you you're not good enough, because you are, and you need to show them that. But you're also on— you're also taking on a bit of a different step than other people, because there are some racial components to things. And being Latino, you know, you tend— oftentimes you're a step back, and so you want to make sure that you're putting the best step forward.” And so going through life kind of learning that, but also watching leaders and how they did things, both when I was here at the Academy and when I was in the Air Force, and even through medical school, the doctors that were good and talk to people appropriately, the leaders that were good, and they had the men and women following them because they wanted to follow them, versus following them because they had to follow them. And, as you know, there's a huge difference there. And I tried to model myself after the ones who had people that followed them because they wanted to follow — they respected them. They earned that respect. They earned that that loyalty. And to me, that was always an important thing. And so when I transitioned over to medicine, especially being a flight doc, I wanted them to do the things that medically were important for them because they wanted to, because they trusted me, and they understood that I was looking out for them, and not just their career or not just their flying, but looking out for them and their families and their health in particular.   Naviere Walkewicz  23:58 Wow, you certainly led with compassion. So how did you get into becoming an NBC correspondent? Because, I mean, again, I'm just  trying to follow this road, and I have to, like, hop onto another track.   Dr. John Torres  24:08 Yeah, it's a very, very bizarre road. So when I was in the emergency room, I was working down in Pueblo, an emergency room there. This is in 2000 or 2001 and we had a hantavirus outbreak. And for those who don't know what Hantavirus is, it's a mouse-borne virus. The time when it was first discovered in the ’90s, had a 70% mortality rate. Now it's down to about 40%, so still pretty deadly. And so for those that recently remember the news, Gene Hackman’s wife, she ended up dying from hantavirus in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So it's very common. It's not common, but it happens in New Mexico. When I went to med school and residency, that's when they discovered the first cases. And at the time, we had no idea what it was. So, you know, being a resident, being a student, you're involved in a lot that's going on, especially being a resident. Ended up taking care of a lot of hantavirus patients. Well, when I was in Pueblo, again, 2000, 2001, we had hantavirus outbreaks, and you would get five a season, eight a season kind of thing. And we had a cluster of five, which obviously made the news. And so they kept coming to the emergency room, talking to us, and they wanted to talk to a doctor, and I was on shift, and all the other doctors, number one didn't want to be on camera. Number two didn't know anything about hantavirus, so they kept putting me in front of the camera. And again, doing the full circle. I would think back to my falconer days of like, “OK, how do I get this conversation across eloquently with good information and not just the answer, a yes or no answer?” And so I channeled that, and after about the fifth time, I said, “You know, I'm really busy here in ER, don't you have your own doctor that you can use?” And they’re like, “No, do you want to do it?” And I'm like, “OK, I'll try.” I was absolutely horrible.   Naviere Walkewicz  Oh my gosh. I can’t imagine you being horrible.   Dr. John Torres Unbelievably horrible. I would stumble, I would stop, I would freeze up at the camera. And then you learn over time that, hey, you know what they say: Just pretend like you're talking to a person. Don't pretend like you're talking to a camera. Pretend like you're talking to a person, and my thing is always, always, I would always sit there going, “OK, if I had somebody in my room, in the clinic room, and I was talking to him as a patient, how would I talk to them?” And so that's what I do on TV. I just talk like that. And so that started very sporadically, a station here in Colorado, and then it moved to a station in Denver, and then NBC saw me in 2015 they said, “Hey, why don't you come over here and try out, you know, just give us an audition.” So I went over there, did an audition. They're like, “We want you.” And I was like, “I don't know what that means.” And so it was full time. And then obviously, 2020, the pandemic broke out. And then that was super-full time.   Naviere Walkewicz  26:38 So going back to an earlier comment, you said it was like the Super Bowl for you at that that time during the pandemic. So oftentimes, and you know, in sports, the Super Bowl is like the highest and you strive to get back there. So what does that look like for you now? I mean, I don't think we want to go back to the pandemic. So what would the Super Bowl look like for you?   Dr. John Torres  26:57 Would never strive to go back there, but it was a Super Bowl, and the fact that it was it one, it brought a lot of attention to medical issues and medical concerns. Because up until then, we were kind of like a peripheral service for the media. If there was a big medical story, they would hit it every now and then, you know, this was happening every now and then, and I would go weeks without being on TV because not much was happening. Well, what happened is then— and again I'm using the Super Bowl analogy as more of the attention that it got; medicine became the focus. And so for two years of the three years, medicine was a sole focus. And we were, you know, the tip of the spear for media every day. Something medicine came out every day and every— the way it works, especially at the national channels, is they have different— they have, like, a biz, tech unit, a climate unit, a health unit, all these different units. And every unit would want some information about what the what medicine meant, like tech would want to know, “OK, what's happening with the vaccine, because it could affect the prices of the stock?” You know? The climate would want to know, is climate affecting the way that's spreading?” You know? And what does that mean? And so we were feeding in all this information and going on air and talking about it. And so after the pandemic, medicine still stayed in the frontier, in the forefront here. And so now it's one of those things, when you look at it, it's probably one of the— at least the top three, if not top two, of you know, they always want to know something about medicine, about health, and because people are very interested in their health. But it did switch things a little bit, because again, before it was more an authoritarian, “Here's what you need to know afterwards, during and afterwards.” It became more of a conversation of, “Here's the information — pros and cons — you're going to need to make a a decision. But the decision is based on information, accurate information, and for you, it might be different than it would be for me.   Naviere Walkewicz  28:43 So I'm thinking about you delivering this information to millions of viewers. I mean, just the thought of being the voice of information, and you know, the pressure — you're really focused on accuracy, but also helping them understand it, because medical terms can be very confusing. What is that like for you? Is that challenging? Or do you just kind of think about it as a one-person conversation?   Dr. John Torres  29:06 It's interesting, because you always go back in life to things that were turning moments in life. And like I mentioned, the turning moment was the copilot I was with, you know, being a falconer with that peregrine falcon. You know, these different ones that the high school biology teacher that was like, “You should be a doctor.” All these different things. Well, the turning point here is, essentially, you know, how do you end up looking at these things, and how do you end up talking about these things? And when I was in medical school or residency, I can't remember which I had an attending physician one time that would basically every four or five days during our— you do rounds. And so in the morning, you go in there and you do rounds, and you present to the attending— so you're just either the student or the resident, and you have this, you know, well-seasoned attending doctor who's been there on whatever round it is, and you tell them about the patient, the condition, here's the test you ran, here's the test you want to run, and here's what you think that we should be doing over the next 24 hours. And they critique you on it. And we can get back to this because it was interesting, because people were like, “You can tell you went to an Academy because of the way you handle this.” But one attending I had in particular used to say, “Today, pretend like I'm your 85-year-old grandfather. So explain to me like I'm 85 years old.” And you'd say something like— you know, like in medicine, if somebody has a fever, we said they're febrile. And we go, you know, “This patient is febrile, huh? Oh, I'm sorry, they have a fever.” “Oh, OK, you know, yeah, we're going to do this.” And so we'd have to— so I learned to explain to people on terms that they would understand, and not using medical terms, because it's its own dialog. It's its own language, yes. And so he was fantastic, because again, every time you used anything medical, he would just, “What? Huh? I don't understand.” And so you'd have to bring it to a level that they understood, meaning you had to talk to them, unlike physicians talk to each other. And so I channel that on air of like, “Let me explain to you…” And I try very hard not to use statistics or medical terms that somebody might not understand. Or if I do, I try to explain them as best as possible.   Naviere Walkewicz  30:59 What an incredible lesson. I mean, that's fantastic. I think listeners, in general, it can be across any kind of, you know, function or specialty, really, just think about how someone needs to receive the information, understand.   Dr. John Torres  31:13 Interesting side note is, when I was going through— so when you're going through rounds every night, oftentimes you get a physician who isn't the nicest person on Earth, and they'll yell at you, or they're yelling at you for right reasons, you did something wrong, and yell at you, and you do it right. Awesome. And there's usually four other either students or residents, on rounds with you, and they would yell at all of us. And one day, my fellow residents, or students, I can't remember where we were, they said— you know, I think it was med students. They're sitting there going, “You know, it's really interesting.” They said, “When the attending yells at us, you're the only one— it doesn't seem like it affects you at all. Everybody else is sitting there quaking in their boots, and you don't seem to— it doesn't seem to bother you.” And I said, “OK, here's the deal.” I said, “I went to the Air Force Academy.” I said, “I was yelled at by the best.” And so after a year, you know, a good, almost full year of getting yelled at, you get kind of used to it. And so this is nothing.   Naviere Walkewicz  32:06 That’s fantastic, that would indicate— that's great. Wow. So that's a really unique story. And how you share information, I'm really curious. How have you dealt with having to give sometimes negative or bad news, and still— you talk about being energetic and sharing information, but if it's not good news.   Dr. John Torres  32:29 So one of the things I learned a long time ago is you have to match how you're feeling to how you're looking. And so if I'm talking about a subject that's the death rate from breast cancer, I have to make— so one time somebody told me that they were… This is early on; this is back when I first started, you know, 15 years ago. They said, “You were talking about death rates from breast cancer, and you were smiling, and it was kind of creepy.” And so I learned at that point, I'm like, “You know that's true, because this is an audio-visual thing, and so the audio and the visual have to match.” And not that you're being fake, not just you're being incorrect, but just that you're being honest with yourself, and how do you feel inside? And so I try to get that emotion behind what I'm talking about as well, and make sure that if I'm talking about something that is not happy, that I'm not smiling and joking around. Definitely never try to be clownish. I might joke around a little bit, and I like, I love dad jokes, and so I'll joke around. I'll tell dad jokes. I'll tell those kinds of things. We do a program for kids, and I'll be with kids. I'm always joking around and keeping things as lighthearted— especially during the pandemic, because they were scared about a lot of things and trying to bring it to a level where, you know, like, the big question, you know, they said old people are gonna die. “Is my grandma and grandpa gonna die?” I'm like, “That does not mean your grandma and grandpa are gonna die. That just means that, typically, older people are the ones that are more likely to have issues from this.” So you just want to be careful around them, you know, that kind of thing. So you learn how to do that. And I also learned from medicine when I was doing the emergency room — because oftentimes you had to deliver bad news to patients’ families, you know, that the patient had passed away — and so I was always, at least in my mind, very cognizant of the fact that when I went in there, they're looking at everything. They're looking at me, they're listening to me. And this is going to be something that's going to be imprinted in their mind for the rest of their life. I want to make sure that I handle it emotionally correctly.   Naviere Walkewicz  34:26 Wow, the gravity of that for sure, you know. So talking about what you've had to do as an NBC correspondent, and then also we talked about, you're doing some training right now as well.   Dr. John Torres  34:37 I am. It's the other facet of my life I’m doing as well.   Naviere Walkewicz  34:40 And so the like a diamond, we just turn it, and let's talk about this side now.   Dr. John Torres  34:44 Now, my wife calls me the chameleon. “You're going out there, you're doing this.” So I teach NATO special forces medics and supporters of the medics. And so we go out there and we teach a lot of different classes. One of the biggest ones I teach right now is what we call an instructor development course, where I teach TCCC, which is tactical combat casualty care, how to survive on the battlefield. But I also teach them how to teach other people. So train the trainer method, but it's a trainer method for special forces, which is a bit unique. And the way they train people, in the way they get trained, because their hierarchy is a bit different, and the way you approach things are a bit different, and the things they care about, and more particularly things they don't care about, vastly different, because these are the ones that— these are folks, especially in NATO, and we're talking across all the countries of NATO that are out there — you know that nobody really knows about — are doing things that nobody really knows about, that are very dangerous, right? And so the these guys are very serious about what they do and how they do it, and they just want to know the information they need. They don't want to know the information they don't need, and they want to know how to use that to keep themselves and their fellow soldiers alive.   Naviere Walkewicz  35:52 Dare I ask how that came about?   Dr. John Torres  35:54 Oh, that came about, actually, at an Academy football game. So I was at an Academy football game — this is years ago — and I met this fellow doc, a friend of mine, and we were talking, and he said, “You know, I'm starting up this program teaching NATO special forces medics. I think you’d be a great teacher, especially being an ER doc. Do you want to do that?” And I was like, “Well, let's talk more about it.” And so we talked more and went out there, and we started this program back in 2010, 2011, and then just work this program through. And now we have a variety of courses we teach. I go out probably four or five times a year and teach different courses. And these guys, again, are phenomenal, because we teach medical planning, we teach tactical combat casualty care and how to instruct tactical combat casualty care. And the guys we're teaching are just amazing.   Naviere Walkewicz  36:42 So yeah, one of the things you said earlier, I think it was during your 27 appearances in one day, your wife was bringing you peanut butter sandwiches. I would love to talk about the role of your family in all of these different experiences you've had in leadership and your impact. What's that been like for them?   Dr. John Torres  37:02 You know, one, it's been great, because they love the ride. They love going along. My wife's always like, “I'm just curious what's gonna happen next,” because I always take her everywhere with me. We always go together, and she's, you know, obviously, very, very integral part of my life. We got married right at the Academy, right after graduation. I met her at the Academy, and she went to the University of Colorado, and we met actually, in Monument when I was a junior, when I was a second-year. And then we got married after graduation, been married ever since. She went through all the pilot training with me, all the different assignments, you know, some good, some not as good as, you know, in the military, the deployments and everything. And then when I sat down and said, “You know, I'm thinking of going to med school.” She was like, 100% behind us. “Do it. Do what we need to do.” And it was huge sacrifice on her part. We opened up a couple clinics, and she was the business manager behind those, which is phenomenal. And the kids were behind us. They worked in there, and they did stuff. And the kids have never really been complaining about it. They've always looked forward to it. And now I see them as adults going through a variety of things themselves, where they keep looking for different adventures, basically. And I think that's part of, the way they grew up. And so now they're looking at it going, “Hey, I could do this.” And the mindset I always try to put in them and my wife and I together is, “If you want to do something, do it.” You know, the last thing you want to do is be 80 years old and going, “I wish I'd really done that one thing.” And so just do it. Life is short. Just make sure you do it. But could not have done it without the family. And can't overstate that. They are definitely the driving factor behind all this. And then when I went from medicine to NBC again, sat down with them and going, “They want me,” and my wife is actually the one like, “You're doing this.” And I'm like, “Well, I don't know if…” “No, you're doing this. You've been you've been talking about this for a while. You're gonna go.” And so, yeah, the rest is history.   Naviere Walkewicz  38:46 Wow. Well, we've seen the values passed on. Well, 300 years of your family, right? Extended family, through your dad into you. What would you say that the legacy, or maybe the traits beyond adventure have you shared with your children and that you're seeing through them now?   Dr. John Torres  39:04 You know, I think the biggest things are the one we just talked about. If you think you want to do something, you really want to do it, then go ahead and do it. Both my children are physicians now, and so they both— it was interesting, because neither one of them wanted to be physicians. And I think they didn't want to be physicians because they didn't want to be like dad, right? They wanted to do their own thing. And then partway through college, they both came to me individually and said, “You know, I think I want to do this.” I'm like, “Hey, if you do, like I mentioned, you really got to want to do— you really want to have to want to do this. You can't do it just on a whim, because it's going to take a lot of effort and a lot of work.” And they've seen that, but they're all happy where they are right now, which is great. The other thing I think I instilled in them is to, you know, essentially just be a good person. Be kind to other people. Always think about other people and where they are in life, and always realize that, one, as a physician, but also as just a person, especially as a father or husband or wife, that if somebody is coming at you angrily, or somebody is coming at you awkwardly, you think about where they might be right now. And my wife has a great quote I always attribute to her, because she used to always tell our staff this when we were had had a couple clinics, is people would come in, patients would come in angry and shouting and screaming. She was an elementary school counselor, and so one of the big things she learned, that she always instilled in us and me and the children is the outward expression of fear is anger. And so they're angry probably because they're afraid of something. And it could be they're afraid of the medical condition they have. The medical condition you might be telling them they have. The finances they have in their life, if it's not medicine, if you just meet somebody that you know, outside, you know, there's something in their life that's driving that fear, which is driving that anger, and so basically, give them a break. You know, it's easy to take a step back. And the other thing I've always tried to instill in them is, you know, two things. One is always, just take a breath. Don't knee-jerk react. Always just take a breath and take a step back and think about the things you're going to do. And the other one is realizing that tomorrow's another day, and tomorrow you can really think about what happened today and put it in a different perspective.   Naviere Walkewicz  41:11 That's fantastic advice. And I'm going to take that quote. I think that's wonderful. I really like your wife.   Dr. John Torres  41:16 Oh, she's fantastic.   Naviere Walkewicz  41:17 Yes. So one of the things we like to ask our guests is basically how you get better each day to be a better leader. So what are some of the things you're doing on a daily basis to be better?   Dr. John Torres  41:26 So one thing for medicine in particular, the one thing I do is, as you saw when I came in here, I'm on the phone. I'm looking because there's some committee meetings right now, medical committee meetings that might be important, might not, but I always keep on trying to keep in touch, or keep in touch with the latest news and the latest developments, especially at the higher levels of what's going on in the country, in research in the scientific field, because I want to make sure I get that information across as best as possible. And then just on a daily basis, just kind of look at where I am and what I've done, what I've talked to other people about, and where I want to go from here. And it's, you know— one of the big questions I get from people all the time is, “When are you going to retire?” And I'm 65 right now, and my answer to them is that, you know, I never want to be and, you know, some people can do this, and fantastic for them, they can do this, but I never want to be the person that's on my deck, in their chair, just staring out at the landscape and just sitting there going, “This is life.” For some people, fantastic. For me, I always want to be essentially paying it forward, giving it back, and talking to other people and trying to give them some information I might know, or at least help them get the information that I think they should know or might need to know.   Naviere Walkewicz  42:42 That’s fantastic advice. What might you share then that others can do as they're trying to aspire to become better leaders? What's something that they can do to get there?   Dr. John Torres  42:51 So a couple things. One is look at the leaders you have right now and see which ones you like and which ones you don't really want to model yourself after, because oftentimes it's pretty obvious. And the ones you like, just start looking at that and experimenting with a little bit and saying, “OK, in this case, you know this happened, let me tweak my answer a little bit. Let me tweak my approach a little bit.” And then one of the things that always— the other thing I always instill in my children is, and I got this from my father too, and my mother was— I call it the “Does this make sense?” rule. And so when things are happening, especially if you get some information that you're going to pass on to your subordinates, or you're going to pass on, in my case, patients or the public— always look, always take a step back, take that breath and go, “Does this make sense?” You know, does it make sense? For lack of anything else to say, you know, back when there were the theories about chips in the vaccines, you know, it doesn't make sense that they would put chips into vaccines. From an overall perspective, probably not. And so start looking at things like that and just taking a step back and saying, “You know what I'm about to do? Does that make sense, the information I got? Does that make sense on a basic level?” And if it I think it doesn't make sense, dig into it a little bit more, because it might but it might not, right? But at the same time, it gives you that step to go forward with it. And then, as a leader, always be willing to say, “I was wrong.” That's one of the toughest things. As a doctor on TV, I've had to do it a couple times. Always be willing to go, “Yeah, I was wrong. What I told you, what I said, was not accurate.” Or, you know, “I shouldn't have yelled at you guys yesterday for whatever I yelled at you for. That was incorrect; that was inappropriate.” But if the decision you made was wrong, if the information you got was wrong, just being able to say that and basically step up and go, “This one's on me.”   Naviere Walkewicz  44:44 Was that something you saw in someone, or you just learned that things went a little bit better when you kind of accepted that?   Dr. John Torres  44:50 So it was a combination of both. And this goes back to medical school too. The doctors that you really aspired to be like were the ones that were willing to sit there and go, “You know, I was wrong about what I thought you have. And here's what we're going to do now. Here's what I think.” And you sit there really going, “Wow, this is a tough thing to say,” especially as a doctor, because you're supposed to be this figure, like, you know, everything. And then I extended that into both television and my military issues as well, of going, you know, you see those leaders that are willing to go, “Hey, you know, I was wrong about the decision. Let's move on and do something correctly now.”   Naviere Walkewicz  45:24 That's fantastic advice. Well, we're going to get to your final thoughts here shortly, but before we do, I want to invite you to watch Long Blue Leadership on Tuesdays every month in both video and audio, and it's available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Be sure to watch, listen and subscribe to all episodes of Long Blue Leadership at longblueleadership.org. So Dr. Torres, we've had an amazing time together, but I want to get some final thoughts from you. What might you want to share with our listeners that we didn't cover today?   Dr. John Torres  45:51 You know, I think the big thing is kind of summarizing what we did cover is that essentially, if you want to do something, then do it. The Academy— oftentimes, while you're at the Academy, you often question why you're there. After the Academy, you sometimes question, “Why did I go through that? All my friends went through fun stuff, and I didn't.” You know, that kind of thing. But I think you need to realize that that gives you that leg up in life. It gives you a different approach, a different thing you've done in life that other people don't do, and it gives you that confidence of like, “I can do these things. I can do anything I want to do, because look what I went through already.” You know, these other people that I'm a bit jealous of because they went to a regular university and they had a blast for four years and all that fun — they didn't have to go through these strenuous things I went through. They didn't have to jump through these hoops I went through. They didn't have to accomplish these things I accomplished. And so, you know, not that I'm a better person than them, but I've already proven that I can do these things and I can do the things I want to do. And I think that's probably the biggest thing. And then when you're out there and you're leading other people — because at some point in life, you will lead other people — remember the leaders that you really looked at and you really appreciate it, and use them as mentors, even if they're not here for how they dealt with things. And then just experiment around, experiment around a little bit, and if you have to pull back and say, “That's probably not the route to go,” then go somewhere else.   Naviere Walkewicz  47:11 Wonderful. Well, I'm not going to ask you when you're going to retire, but I'll ask you: What's next for you?   Dr. John Torres  47:16 So next for me is essentially just keeping up with this, you know, the NATO special forces training. We're actually accelerating that a little bit. TV, continuing to do that as well, and then hopefully read more books and just enjoy life a little bit more. Which, number one, I enjoy it phenomenally, but just take a little bit of a breather.   Naviere Walkewicz  47:35 Wonderful. Well, we appreciate you so much. Thank you for being on Long Blue Leadership. I'm Naviere Walkewicz, thanks for joining us and until next time.   Thank you for joining us for this edition of Long Blue Leadership. The podcast drops every two weeks on Tuesdays and is available on all your favorite podcast apps. Send your thoughts, comments and guest ideas to us at socialmedia@usafa.org, and listen to past episodes at longblueleadership.org.     KEYWORDS Leadership, Air Force Academy, Dr. John Torres, survival training, medical correspondent, family values, unconventional journey, overcoming challenges, mentorship, public health, Hantavirus, medical communication, pandemic, media, family legacy, leadership, teaching, NATO, bad news delivery, continuous improvement       The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation

In this edition of Long Blue Leadership, we’re exploring the evolution and elevation of leadership with a leader who knows what it means to build champions in every sense of the word. SUMMARY Jemal Singleton ’99 is a mentor, a motivator and has mastered the grind. From the military to NFL locker rooms, he has forged a path rooted in service, strength and success. Learn more about masterful game planning and get ready to be inspired!    SHARE THIS EPISODE LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/jemal-singleton-99-gridiron-battlefield-or-boardroom-the-evolution-of-leadership/?token=13353f8370393646b1afdf7a8b932d68] | FACEBOOK [https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/jemal-singleton-99-gridiron-battlefield-or-boardroom-the-evolution-of-leadership/?token=13353f8370393646b1afdf7a8b932d68]   COACH SINGLETON'S LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS  - Coach Singleton emphasizes the importance of leading with conviction.  - He learned to connect with people through immersive cultural experiences.  - The Super Bowl victory was a culmination of focus and teamwork.  - Growing up as a military brat shaped his adaptability and leadership.  - Family dynamics played a crucial role in his development as a leader.  - Discovering the Air Force Academy was a pivotal moment in his life.  - Basic training taught him valuable lessons about overcoming fear.  - His leadership style evolved through experiences at the Academy.  - Transitioning from military to coaching was a significant decision.  - Failures in his career have provided the greatest learning opportunities.  - Success and failure are both essential for growth.  - Belief in others can significantly impact their performance.  - Understanding individual motivations is key to effective leadership.  - Mentorship plays a crucial role in shaping leaders.  - Building relationships is foundational to leadership success.  - Balancing family and work is vital for personal fulfillment.  - Grit and resilience are important traits in leadership.  - Investing in personal growth enhances leadership effectiveness.  - Daily routines help maintain focus and discipline.  - Leadership can be demonstrated from any position.    EPISODE CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Leadership Insights 04:30 Jamal's Early Life and Military Influence 08:00 Family Dynamics and Leadership Development 11:35 Basic Training and Leadership Challenges 14:52 Growth at the Air Force Academy 18:58 Transitioning from Military to Coaching 21:34 Navigating Career Decisions 22:57 Facing Failures and Learning from Them 26:18 Navigating Success and Failure 27:38 The Power of Belief in Leadership 29:58 Understanding Individual Motivations 32:40 Influences and Inspirations in Leadership 34:05 Building Relationships as a Leadership Foundation 36:02 Balancing Family and Professional Life 38:23 Lessons in Grit from Home 40:38 Investing in Personal Growth 42:41 Daily Routines for Effective Leadership 44:36 Striving for Continuous Improvement 47:27 Leading from Any Position 49:14 Final Thoughts on Leadership and the Academy   ABOUT JEMAL BIO Jemal Singleton ’99, is a veteran coach with over 20 years of experience at the collegiate and professional levels. He is currently the Philadelphia Eagles' running backs/assistant head coach. Under his leadership, the Eagles have made four consecutive playoff runs, capturing two conference titles and the Super Bowl LIX Championship. From 2021–24, Philadelphia led the NFL in rushing touchdowns (108) and ranked among the top three in rushing yards per game (153.9) and yards per carry (4.7). Singleton helped three different running backs earn Pro Bowl honors during this span. In 2024, Singleton coached a historic ground game led by Saquon Barkley, who rushed for 2,005 yards in the regular season and 2,504 total, earning AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year and first-team All-Pro honors. The Eagles set a league record with 3,866 team rushing yards. Previously, Singleton helped guide D’Andre Swift (2023) and Miles Sanders (2022) to their first Pro Bowls, with both ranking in the top five in rushing yards. In 2021, Philadelphia led the league in both rushing yards and touchdowns. Before joining the Eagles, Singleton coached running backs for the Bengals (2019–20), Raiders (2018), and Colts (2016–17), mentoring talents like Joe Mixon, Jalen Richard, and Frank Gore. His collegiate experience includes Arkansas (2015) and Oklahoma State (2011–14), where he coached standout backs such as Alex Collins and Joseph Randle. Singleton began his coaching career at the Air Force Academy, his alma mater, spending nine years in various roles and helping the Falcons consistently rank among the top rushing teams in the nation. A former team captain and honorable mention All-WAC running back, Singleton led Air Force to consecutive 10-win seasons and a conference title. A San Antonio native and son of a retired Air Force Sergeant, Singleton holds a degree in social sciences and lives with his wife, Jennifer. He has two daughters, Morgan and Mallory.  - Bio excerpted from philadelphiaeagles.com   - Image credit:  Mr. Ryan Hall     CONNECT WITH JEMAL LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemal-singleton-39636035a/] | PA EAGLES [https://www.philadelphiaeagles.com/team/coaches/jemal-singleton]     WITH OUR SPECIAL APPRECIATION TO THE EAGLES' PRODUCTION TEAM Eagles Team (Center L-R):  JohnPaul Beattie | Wes Lauria | Kelleher |  Haley Mccullough | Alex Barson (L) LBL Host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz ’99 | (R) Guest, Jemal Singleton ’99  - Image credit:  Mr. Ryan Hall     ALL PAST LBL EPISODES [https://www.longblueleadership.org/]  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS [https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/longbluelinepodcast] AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS       TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS GUEST:  Jemal Singleton ’99 | HOST:  Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz ’99   Naviere Walkewicz 00:12 Welcome to Long Blue Leadership, the podcast where we share insights on leadership through the lives and experiences of Air Force Academy graduates. I’m Naviere Walkowicz, Class of ’99. I’m honored to join you from the NovaCare Complex, the training facility for the Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles, here in Pennsylvania. But I’m especially excited to bring you a conversation with my Air Force Academy classmate and friend, Jemal Singleton, the Eagles running backs and assistant head coach. Both on and off the field. Coach Singleton brings a wealth of leadership experience gleaned from his time in the U.S. Air Force and the NFL. This unique blend has made him a builder of high-performance teams, as well as a standout mentor and motivator. Jemal and I will dive into what it means to lead with conviction, to earn trust in high-pressure environments and to acquire the mindset needed to bring out the best in people, whether you’re on the gridiron, battlefield or in the boardroom. We’ll talk about how Coach Singleton learned to connect with people through immersive cultural experiences. We’ll talk about the coaches in his life who helped him see players for the people they’re becoming first. And we’ll discuss how a rocky start in professional football ultimately taught him patience and perseverance. So get ready to be inspired. Let’s talk leadership, game planning and more with Coach Jemal Singleton. Jemal, welcome to Long Blue Leadership, my friend.   Jemal Singleton Oh, thank you so much for having me. I can’t tell you how awesome this is, to have the opportunity to be on this show that in the past couple years, some of the people that have sat in this chair have been unbelievable. I mean, yeah, Lt. Henderson, or, excuse me, Captain America, on the show, which was awesome. There’s two men that that I have great respect for with Gen. Gould and Gen. Clark. They were also on this show. So to have little old me sitting up here is really an amazing thing. I kind of feel like, with us, we’re like, the meme, the Paul Rudd meme. So this is a definite joy and honor for me to be here.   Naviere Walkewicz Well, thank you so much for that. I feel like we blinked and 25 years went by, but here we are together again. So I’d like to take us right to the moment. I mean, most recently, Super Bowl champions. It was kind of a two-season road, right? Let’s talk about the moment maybe on the field where you knew you guys were about to win. Can you talk us through what that moment was like?   Jemal Singleton I tell you, it’s one of those highs in life that I’ll obviously always remember. The greatest thing was really how the game played out. Not very often in the NFL, are you up, are you kind of having some backups in the game because of the parity in the league. So for us to be on the world’s biggest stage, the world’s biggest game for us in football, and to have a little bit of a moment, to just take a deep breath, look around the stands, look at the sidelines, and just take it all in, was unbelievable. So just to come away with that victory and have that opportunity, you don’t get that to sit back and look and say, “Oh my gosh, we just won.” You know, the game hadn’t ended, but it was kind of done at that point. So such an amazing feeling, such an amazing vibe, and just so many different storylines that led to that great finish. So just an unbelievable day.   Naviere Walkewicz What was the leadership, coaching words that you shared with the team before the start of the game? Because you had come from a season where you got to that spot and you lost. What would you share with the team before this game?   Jemal Singleton You know, I think— part of it is you had so many guys that had been to the previous Super Bowl with us and lost. So we had experienced getting to the pinnacle and not finishing. And really there wasn’t a whole lot that had to be said. You know, my role, I talk about ball security and protection, so I have a lot of presentations during the week that I give. But that week leading up, when we’re in New Orleans, there was a level of focus in the men’s eyes that was awesome, as a coach, to see. “Oh, they don't need to be hyped up. They don't need to be pushed. This team is exactly where it needs to be.” It was an amazing moment. So again, to have the Super Bowl win and that feeling— also to have kind of a coaching moment, to see a team so motivated and so dialed in, made it even more special.   Naviere Walkewicz So you talk about it being a journey and coming to that moment of focus. Let’s talk about your journey. Let’s go back in time a little bit. Jemal. Who are you? What were you like as a kid? Jemal Singleton You know, I really had an interesting background growing up, and part of it was the military. My dad was in the Air Force, enlisted. He actually retired after 20 years, but met my mom when he was stationed in England. They moved to Turkey, and there’s where I enter the picture. Being born in Turkey, my mother wanted me to have a Turkish name. Wanted me to take the spelling of it, and it wasn’t Jemal originally. I think she had Ahmet Mustafa, was the name. And my father was like, “No, we’re not doing that.” So thanks to my dad for helping me. We stuck with Jemal. So Jemal David is my first names and really took the Turkish spelling, so J, E, M, A, L, that in Arabic, it is referred to as “the good looking one.” So hopefully I’m living up to my name a little bit. But that was the start. That was kind of the start and from there, just the journeys and the travels that we did through the military. So as a military brat, and I know there’s quite a few out there in this world, but moved a lot, jumped around. We went back to England. So that’s really my first memories. I don’t remember anything of Turkey, just know I was born there, but we went to England, and those were my first memories started. And that was kind of like home. My mom, being from there, had a lot of family and relatives over there, and that just kind of started to shape the rest of my life. And coaching kind of was very military, like we were moving. I was going to different places, and I think I was prepared for a lot of that movement stuff when I was a kid.   Naviere Walkewicz 05:54 Wow. So you were moving a lot. You talked about how that kind of parallels, and we’ll talk about this probably later in coaching — what that looks like — but as a military dependent, as a kid in the military, what was that like? How did that form you as maybe someone who adopts or adapts to things, and did you start to earn like early on, shape your leadership ways as a kid?   Jemal Singleton 06:15 I think so. I think for some brats, the lifestyle is not great. You know, you struggle. You’re moving every three years; you’re making new friends. But really, for me, I think it really shaped me. It allowed me to build a personality that I could be engaging, to build a personality and an athletic ability to play sports. And that’s usually how walking as the new kid in the room, I was able to build friendships, was through sports and through teams and all that. And like I said, every three years there was— we were moving and doing it, so I got to rehash that every three years of “OK, how do I make new friends? How do I compete in sports again?” But it really did help me, I think, to be able to exist in those environments and build those relationships as a kid. And I think it’s allowed the same thing even as an adult. I go back to some of those same ways of how I connected with people when I was a young man.   Naviere Walkewicz 07:03 I love that. And so was your family very active in your athletic pursuits when you were a child, or that kind of happened later in life?   Jemal Singleton 07:10 Absolutely. So I had an older brother that was living with us that also he was very active in sports. So He’s eight years older than me, so there’s a good separation, so I kind of got to see some things kind of play out before I ever got to them. But yeah, sports was always a part of our family, from everything from golf to football to track to basketball, all the things you could play. I mean, when you grow up overseas, on bases, you have to play all the sports if in order to put together a full team, there’s not that many people there. You need all hands on deck to be able to do that. So played a lot of sports growing up in Europe. So people, “Oh, when did you get into football?” I’ve been playing football my whole. Football my whole life, and it didn’t stop in Germany. It didn’t stop in England. It didn’t stop in the other places that we were able to live.   Naviere Walkewicz 07:47 So you talk about athletics being a big part of who you are. You mentioned that your mom and dad, like your dad gave her some feedback on the name she initially, initially wanted talk about that dynamic a little bit. How have your parents shaped you as who you are and as a leader?   Jemal Singleton 08:00 It’s just as unique as my upbringing, where we lived and where he moved, I think, is really the house that I lived in, you know, my mother being a very posh British lady, and then my dad from Louisiana down Baton Rouge, kind of coming from the south. It was very unique, not only culturally, just personality wise, you know. So I think I’d really took things from both of them. You know, I do kind of laugh. My mother was big on etiquette, so at the Academy, the etiquette training wasn’t a big deal for me. I already knew it. I’ve had my knuckles smacked with a spoon a couple times, but, uh, so just that— it was a really dynamic and even living in England and growing up, went to plays at these amazing theaters, and got to see kind of the art side. And then I really know the way to put it, but more the street sense of my father and just, you know, growing up, just kind of how he grew up, maybe rough neighborhood, and, you know, the military changed his life trajectory. And I think just having the most combinations of things is kind of who I am.   Naviere Walkewicz 08:54 So was it your father who then helped you see the Academy as the potential next step for you?   Jemal Singleton 08:59 Um, you know, you would think so, but it’s funny. My Academy story is a little bit different. It was when I got a recruiting letter from Air Force when I was playing high school ball. This is bad. I didn’t know the Academy existed. My dad was in the military travel, but I didn’t know. I definitely didn’t know that they played Division I college football and had a football team. So that was the first and I just remember my mom, like, oh. She was like, “Oh, the Air Force Academy.” Like, it was a big thing. And as crazy as my dad was always like, you know, if you go to the military, “I’d really like you to get your education and be an officer.” So both of my parents were kind of happy. And it wasn’t right away. I was like, “Yeah, this is definitely something I’m going to do.” It just kind of a process that went and the more I learned about I was like, what’s not to like? I’m going to have an opportunity to play Division I college football, which is something that’s big for me. I’m going to have a great career, be able to get be in the military when I graduate. I’m going to have a chance to get a great education while I’m at school. I was like, “OK, What’s the catch? What’s going on?” And it was something. That really kind of opened my eyes to that. And really was the main school that was recruiting me at the time. I had some Ivy Leagues because of grades, but, you know, I wanted to play, play at Air Force and put the bolts on my helmet.   Naviere Walkewicz 10:11 So what was it about— you said, you know, the fact that both your parents were really supportive, but was there a moment where you just knew, besides the fact that they were heavily recruiting you, was there something that intrinsically you just knew, like, I want to go here?   Jemal Singleton 10:22 You know, it’s funny. I’ve always been, ‘Hey, I’m going to make a decision and I’m going to go all in.’ And that was it. When I decided, hey, Air Force is where I'm going to school, that was it. And I wasn’t really highly recruited. I didn’t take a recruiting trip or anything. The first time I showed up at the Air Force Academy for Prep School was inprocessing. I didn’t need to see it. I had made up my mind. That’s where I was going, and that’s what I was doing. So it wasn’t anything that was going to hold me back from that. And gosh, I just look back and how thankful I am that as an 18-year-old kid, I was able to make a decision that was going to impact my life so greatly. And I just so thankful every day when I think about it.   Naviere Walkewicz 10:57 Gosh, I mean, I’m going back in time a little bit, and I’m picturing you now arriving at the Academy for the first time, and you went to the Prep School, right?   Jemal Singleton Yes, ma’am.   Naviere Walkewicz So let’s talk about that experience. I imagine it was a little bit of shell shock then having not actually stepped foot there before. What was that experience like for you?   Jemal Singleton 11:13 It was great, and I felt like I was prepared for the reason my dad and my brother had actually served in the Air Force as well. So he did a stint, enlisted as well. And I just remember it was almost like we’re sitting at the table talking football-type stuff. But they’re like, yeah, when you get to basic training, you have to do this. So they’re like, hyping me up for how hard and how tough basic training is going to be and what I got to do. And so part of me is like, “Well, take this challenge. I’m gonna go.” I’ve had these same conversations after football game. So I had two coaches, really, but it really felt I was somewhat prepared. I was prepared for the physical nature of it, the military lifestyle wasn’t something I wasn’t afraid of wearing a uniform or those type of thing. And it was, was a great it was a great opportunity for me. I was surrounded by some great people, both, you know, cadet candidates and you know, some of the officers and military training officers we had there, plus some of the prior enlisted members that go there. You know, the chance to learn from them. They’ve been in the Air Force, they’ve done it, and now they’re taking this new trail. So it was great. It was a great opportunity for me to kind of start my journey in the military and through leadership.   Naviere Walkewicz 12:15 Well, and early on, you’re identified as a leader. You were the Bravo Squadron commander for the Prep School. What was it like leading your peers, right? So you had, you just mentioned, you know, whether they came in as cadet candidates, through athletics, through prior enlisted members, they were your peers. How did you do that?   Jemal Singleton 12:30 Yeah, you know, I’ve kind of been like— the leadership stuff I’d always had surrounding football, you know, I’d been a team captain and those type and kind of knew how to lead in my voice in that realm. This was a total departure of that because really nobody in that building cared that I played football. And being the squadron commander at that point is like, “OK, well, how do I lead people that are really my peers?” As you mentioned, same age, same group. And then not only that, I’m leading some guys that have already done the Air Force. They have been in the Air Force for multiple years, are older. How do I do it? And that’s, I think that’s the first place that I really learned that, hey, you have to be able to lead people from where they’re at. You know, it’s becoming a part of who they are, connecting with them, because then that they’re not going to care how your leadership style is if they don’t feel that you care about them. And I really felt that, OK, I was going to lead by example, and then I was going to try and connect with as many people in the building as I possibly could, in a way beyond what I’ve done before in my lifetime. And so it was a great experience for me. It was tough, you know, some hard times, and spent some late nights, doing some things, preparing for inspections. But honestly, that being able to lead in a totally different environment than what I was used to, and for my peers was tremendous in my growth.   Naviere Walkewicz 13:43 Can you share an example of how that came about? Because, was it something you just adopted on the fly? Was it something you saw from another leader, perhaps your parent or a coach? But what helped you realize I can approach this the way I’ve always approached it on the field?   Jemal Singleton 13:57 Well, I just— right from the get go, like I could lead by example, on a football field, relatively easy. I just work hard. That’s it. Work hard and do some things. And I was fortunate enough to be a relatively good player that allowed me to make plays. So there’s, there’s that piece. Well, how can I make that conversion in a military environment, in a squadron with some non-athletes? And really there were some similarities. But as I go back to is like, OK, I was going to make friends on a football team because we work together. We’re doing the exact same experience. Well, I’m not going through the exact same experience as everybody in that building, a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different thought processes and all that. So it really kind of hit me in the face. It’s like, you can’t lead the same and it that has helped me tremendously when it comes to coaching players, is, you know, I can’t coach every player the exact same way. And I’ve always felt I can stand in room and say, “This is my way. This is how I do it,” and I’m going to lose half of my room, whereas when I can learn to connect and learn, OK, what motivates this person? What gets them to reach their full potential? What do I have to do? And it’s individual for everyone, it helps. And I really kind of try to take that mode way back then. And I think there was some success. People didn’t hate me that I know of, but it was, it was just an unbelievable time of just learning a different type of leadership that allowed me to kind of grow and do some better things as I move forward   Naviere Walkewicz 15:21 That’s fascinating. So then you went on to the Air Force Academy, you did four years there, and talk about a little bit your own personal growth journey there as a leader, because you had some very quick wins, I think in the Prep School. Were there moments where you further grew at the Academy?   Jemal Singleton 15:37 Yeah. I mean, I think the Academy can test you. It truly can. And I think it’s sometimes in a very positive way that sets you up for success, but other ways where you’re going to fail. And I think part of the curriculum, part of that is you have to experience some of that failure in order to grow potentially. I mean. I bring up a story, and it does affect me. As a kid, when I was coming through there, first time you go to basic training, and I was like, “Yeah, I’m athletic. I’m a football player. I can do all this stuff.” Well, I get stuck in a tunnel, and it's basic training. You’re in there, and I’m in this tunnel with dirt, and I’m stuck. And I literally think “I’m about to die.” I’m stuck. My arms are caved in. I’ve got the rubber ducky yard, rubber M-16, and I’m holding my helmet, falling on my face and all. And I went through some life moments in that tunnel of dirt. And it’s funny to tell you, I was like, I was gonna die, and I had to really adjust my mindset. I had to get all the panic out of me. I had to breathe and then continue on. And it’s like an obstacle like that seems simple, seems very strong. I always looked at like— I’ve done tough things in my life, right. And some of it was set up by the Air Force Academy. But being able to overcome those things by taking a deep breath, assessing exactly what’s going on. “Let’s evaluate this issue, and let’s find the best way to do this.” And I think that has just set the stage for that. And it’s funny. Like said, a funny story as a cadet, funny now, I can laugh now, but it was— and but those little steps, those little situations, showed up all the time where the Academy— you truly get extended. You get pushed beyond your limits to see what your limits truly are, and whether that’s in water survival, whether that’s—   Naviere Walkewicz 17:28 Let’s go back to water survival for a moment, because I remember jumping off the 10-meter, having to swim underwater, just preparing, “Well, this might be it for me.” Let’s talk about that experience for you.   Jemal Singleton 17:39 I don’t know why all these great stories are where I think I’m gonna die, but there are multiple. So, I’m in the water. I’m not a great swimmer. Never been a great swimmer. I started out in basic swimming, all that good stuff. Well, I’m a little bit stocky, a little thick, so I don’t float well either. Part of the training was, we were learning how to get BTUs on, take my pants off, do the flip, get the flotation device. Well, jump in the deep end. And I start to remove my pants to be able to do that, not realizing I’ve sunk to the bottom of this pool. And I start to swim. I don’t have enough breath. I’m not going to make it to the top of this water. So I’m doing everything I possibly can. I’m like, the instructor sees me struggling. I finally get stopped, yanks me up and pulls me up there. And I’m like, “What am I doing? This is crazy.” But again, it’s basically facing a big fear. And it’s then I learned to swim better, and then I got a little bit better working, and I jumped off of the big 10-meter, 5-meter? 10-meter. We had to jump off of and all those things. But it’s funny: When  I look back, and it’s really this conversation is bringing out a lot of these memories of, you know, the little things, the little notches in time, of me doing something at the Academy that I would have never done anywhere else, being in basic training, going through a tunnel, almost drowning in water, survival in soaring, flying in a glider. My thought jumping out of an airplane when I took the jump program, all those little things are, like, just pile up and like, build your strength, your power, your stamina, all these amazing things that are— And then you throw in the fact of college football and athletics and bunch of the things that had to go on there. Man, pretty cool time.   Naviere Walkewicz 19:19 Well, I don’t know if my time was as fun, I’m just kidding. I think it’s pretty remarkable. And you talked about and then going into athletics, because your path is not very common, and we usually have a five-year commitment or 10 if you go on to pilot training. What was that like for you when we graduated then? And how did you get into this space?   Jemal Singleton 19:35 You know, I was one of those guys. I was pilot qualified when I got to the Academy, passed all the medical stuff and, somebody was like, “Hey, I want to fly. I'm going to be a pilot. Since I was up knee high to a grasshopper I’ve wanted to fly.” It wasn’t for me. It was something— it was an opportunity that presented itself again at the Academy. And I was like, “Oh man.” And so that became what I was going to do. I was going to fly. I was going to be a pilot. I fell in love with the A-10. I thought it was like me. It was built like me. Tank killer, and I was like those. And I remember, I’ll never forget I watched a show on it and there was a clip about it getting shot. And this A-10 had gotten its wing shot, all that, and still was capable to fly and land. I was like, “That's what I'm flying.” And that was it, and that was the plan. So I was going to be a pilot. Started introductory to flight training at the academy after I graduated, while I was also at the Prep School, went back there, and I was able to be one of the military training officers down there and coach with the football team. I fell in love with coaching. I did. I just, I fell head over heels for it, and I enjoyed flying. But there was just, there was a different feeling when I was on the field coaching. And I didn’t know that I had missed football as much until I was around it again. And I’ve always— I’ve told my daughter this: Find what you’re passionate about and do that, and if you do, you won’t work a day in your life. And so I had some tough, tough, tough decisions to make. You know, am I going to give up a pilot slot? Do you know how many people would die for this opportunity? They want to fly and probably can’t. So it was a hard process for me to make that decision. OK, you know what? I’m not flying, and part of was, there’s a 10-year commitment for it. I knew that probably wouldn’t get be able to coach at that point, and I just I couldn’t see myself without being a part of football. So took that jump, ended up giving up my pilot slot, got into public affairs, which was a great career, did some really cool things during my time in military, and was fortunate enough to get back to the Academy and get into the coaching world. So tough decision I had to make at that time to do it, but it kind of worked out for me, I think. Can’t complain too much, but yeah, just definitely a tough situation, a tough spot, and had to make a tough decision, kind of like what the Academy had trained me to do the whole time like, “Hey, there's going to be times where you're going to have to make a decision and jump all in.” And so I did.   Naviere Walkewicz 21:53 It sounds like it was a very important and monumental decision, and those are ones we don’t take lightly. How did you come to that decision? I’m sure you weren’t alone in getting to that point. So who did you lean into? Why did you lean into them? And ultimately, know that you had made the right decision?   Jemal Singleton 22:10 It started with my wife. I mean, obviously we had kind of had this roadmap planned forever of what life as a pilot and as a pilot’s wife was going to look like, and what things we were going to do. So it started there, and we had conversations after conversations after conversations. You know, I talked with Coach DeBerry, you know, Fisher DeBerry is an amazing man in my life, mentor of mine that I called and kind of talked about some of the things of, “OK, well, what if I do this?” Like, what if I don’t get back into coaching and just, you know, being able to have him as a sounding board there as well. But it was those people that were close to me just having those discussions of, “OK, is this something that I really want to do?” And at the end of the day, just with advice and prayer, I came to the thought that, “Hey, yeah, this is what I got to do.”   Naviere Walkewicz 22:57 I think that’s important to share that. You know, you did it in a way where you leaned into your network, your family, your foundation. I think that’s really important.   Jemal Singleton 23:06 Yeah, we can’t do these things alone. Sometimes we try, but these life decisions, you need help.   Naviere Walkewicz 23:10 Absolutely. So you got into coaching, and it seems like everything has kind of always been on an up for you, an up trajectory. Have you ever had failures other than almost dying in a tunnel?   Jemal Singleton 23:21 Yeah, I know those— the real stuff. This is what’s interesting about the coaching profession. And it’s— you’re going to move. And really, there’s two types of coaches, coaches that are fired, or coaches that are going to get fired. So it’s just part of the business. And not many people know this, but my first coaching job was with Fisher DeBerry in 2006 I separated from the Air Force in July. Well, Coach DeBerry retired that December. So was I basically— that was my first because had it not been for Coach Calhoun as he came in to retain me on staff, I would have been looking for work six months after I had just given up my military— you know, that lifestyle that I loved. And that was a thing too, is, you know, we were going to stay in the military forever. It’s just that, I love the lifestyle, but then an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up, coaching football, my alma mater came about, and so six months after, and what’s going on, I don’t have a job. That one was a scare. Kind of worked out. But then my first two years in the NFL, after my second year in the NFL, we’re fired fired. Like the staff is gone, “Find work, find a job, go somewhere else,” and you just start to realize that, “OK, this is part of it. This is what I have to do.” I'd kind of gone a pretty good streak where I'd have either avoided getting fired or did well enough to not get fired. But this hit me square in the face, and I was, “I’m in the NFL. Think this is kind of the epitome of what I'm trying to do.” And I’m told, “No, it’s over now.” So didn’t know where to go from that. Thought about going back to college. You know, same if I get into that world. But I was fortunate to stay in the NFL and keep grinding, as they say, and keep working. But there’s successes and there’s failures. And, I mean, I’ve had some ultimate highs and ultimate lows in this profession, and it’s—I’m just glad I’ve been equipped to kind of deal with it with my time at the Academy.   Naviere Walkewicz 25:14 Well, they say that in those moments, I think of great failure, there’s some forging of ourselves that happens. Can you talk through a little bit and whether it’s about being fired or any other time when you’ve experienced failure that has truly— you felt it was a part of how you’ve been shaped. How did you navigate that as a leader? Did it kind of shake you as a leader, questioning things about yourself? Or can you just talk about that?   Jemal Singleton 25:38 Yeah, I think as a leader, there’s got to be some sort of foundation that you have and what you build on. And that’s the main thing for me. You know, being a person of faith is something that I’ve always used as a foundation for me to rely on that when those times of trouble kind of arise. And I think as leaders, you understand that, you know, there’s wins and losses. I mean, I coach a profession that you’re basically judged by the scoreboard; that determines kind of your success or your failure. So it’s really, you know right up front, did we win or did we lose? Boom, it’s black and white. And those things happen all the time. But I do think some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned have been in the down times. You know, I’ve talked about been to two Super Bowls. I lost one, though, and that feeling after that game was unlike any other, and you kind of got to have some time to deal with it, you know, personally, and then you got to find a way. “OK, well, what do I got to do to move forward? How do I step—.” You can’t spend all day in that mindset not being positive. The success and failures that I’ve had in the NFL has allowed me, ultimately, to be at the point that I am, and I think also able to handle victory, just like you handle defeat, and that’s it’s been a pretty neat ride.   Naviere Walkewicz 26:51 For some of our leaders, when they are helping others navigate personal failures and loss, how do you coach them through that? What are some of the things you can help others in their navigation of that kind of time period.   Jemal Singleton 27:03 It really kind of leads me to this year. So Saquon Barkley, we know that he’s a phenomenal running back that I get the pleasure to coach. You know, just come from New York, his time at New York, and how it ended, there were some things and, you know, there was a part of me that was like, “OK, if I had been through what he had just went through, where would my mindset be?” Like, “What would I be thinking?” You know, first round draft pick, number two, second pick in the draft, all this stuff, had success, but not really, you know, major success. And it’s like, “So how are you feeling?” And so we had a meeting, and I remember telling him I wanted him to know exactly what I thought about him and his skills and his ability, and I let him know right off the bat that he's the best running back I’ve ever evaluated. Boom, that was a conversation, just us, and really didn’t know the impact that had whatsoever until he’s on a podcast, and it’s months later and all that. And he made the comment that, you know, when he came to Philly, you know, “My running back coach believed in me more than I believed in myself.” And I knew at that moment, you never know the one thing that you can say to a person, and it may be socially, it may be something— just some sort of inspiration, some sort of trust that can help them gain. And you just don’t know. And sometimes it’s a word, sometimes it’s a simple action. But I think when you can invest in people and invest in what they are truly about, and invest in them, that’s the first part. That’s the biggest hurdle of leadership there is because they know you care. They know that you’re doing things that’s in the best interest for them. And I think in leadership, that connection point is extremely important.   Naviere Walkewicz 28:42 So that’s an amazing story, and it was one on your team, such a critical player and component to, I think, the success of this team. But how do you do that for all of them that you come into contact with? I mean, it reminds me of the Academy, right? The best of the best going there, and how do you motivate the best of the best to that level of an individual investment.   Jemal Singleton 29:03 You have to know them. Like, you have to learn their personalities. Because what I did to motivate Saquon may not be the same thing to motivate my rookie or the next guy that’s coming up. It’s all different. And I go back to, I have to formulate leadership plans for me of how I’m going to address these players. Yeah, there's an ability thing, there's a football thing. It’s, “Hey, we can help you get better on this run or this path or these different things, fundamentally.” But it’s the other— it’s the mental part of the game that’s as big as anything. And the only way I can tap into that is to sometimes bare my soul, bare who I am, like, have honest and upfront conversations, to be able to show myself being vulnerable at times, because it allows them to know, “OK, this is a safe space. I can be vulnerable in here.” And that gives me insight to who they are, how they’re thinking. And when you have that, I think you can lean— they’ll do anything for you, and you’ll do anything for them. But that’s the biggest piece of leadership that I keep going back to. And it’s funny, and kind of not to segue a little bit, you know, one of the things in— I don’t know if you remember, so we were freshmen at the Air Force Academy. And Stephen R. Covey is talking to us, and it's the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So that’s Covey, and it’s this whole thing and the whole process. Now we’re just freshmen, you know, four-degrees. Well, fast forward. We’re talking 2023 we sign an undrafted free agent player by the name of Britain Covey. So Britain Covey is the grandson of Stephen Covey that wrote that book, and Britain's dad, also Steve, is also a leader in leadership, writes books, all those things. So full circle, I listened to his grandfather speak. Had to work with him on the football field and got to meet his dad, and his dad actually gave me a copy of his book that he’d written, with a nice note inside from that. But it’s like this leadership— and I bring all that up just to say because, you know and Trust and Inspire is a book that I lean on heavily, because it really fits my coaching style and my leadership style, and it talks about, hey, the transition from command-and-control leadership to trust-and-inspire leadership. And that book impacted me crazy. But it’s his father I heard speak, met through his son, boom, and now that same connection is helping me and coach. The values of trust and inspire and that type of leadership is me. Like, that’s the piece that I try to do. And you mentioned it, whether you’re in the field, the boardroom, whatever, I do think that we are in a world now where being able to trust your employees, being able to trust your players, be able to trust who’s working for you, and finding ways to inspire them allows them to reach their ultimate goal. And at the end of the day, I’m trying to help a person reach their full potential. So crazy.   Naviere Walkewicz 32:01 That is crazy. I’m still just gonna wrap my head around how it literally came full circle. Who else— are there other influencers in your life that have shaped you as a leader? I mean, that’s an incredible story and book to lean on. Obviously, talked about Fisher DeBerry, but anyone else that has really shaped you?   Jemal Singleton 32:16 Coaches have been a big part of my life, you know. And I go back to my high school coaches, my high school position coach, Glenn McClay, was a man of faith, strong and just unbelievable. With just that, I was a knucklehead as a young kid, being honest, I had this crazy haircut, all kind of— just coming from England show up in the San Antonio, like, “Who is this guy?” And he really taught me discipline, and he taught me how to work, and he taught me the importance of being a leader and how to lead and how you should respond if you are a leader. Was great. My defensive coordinator in high school, Don Lloyd, is actually— he was up just this past season, came up to a couple of games, so I keep in close contact with them, but those are probably two of the guys that started my change, my transition as a young high school, naive knucklehead, into maybe a mature young man. And then just to go from that program and be able to fall in Coach DeBerry’s lap and let him mold me and take me, and he’s just unbelievable that the way that he coached and he truly cared about me as a person, more than just a football player. That’s something I will never forget. And I was like, “You know, what if I could be half of the coach that Coach DeBerry was and with his players?” I mean, the number of lives that he impacted at the Academy during his tenure is unbelievable. But, you know, set me on an amazing path from that and just those guys, I mean, those guys— that pivotal parts of my life and my growth were there and showed me the way, and I’m just so thankful.   Naviere Walkewicz 33:51 Wow. I mean, everything that you’ve shared, it seems like we keep coming to this. You have really close relationships with the people that you connect with. It seems like with your coaches, with your players, is that the secret sauce to your leadership?   Jemal Singleton 34:05 It’s the foundation. I mean, there’s definitely that piece of “How do I connect out of those relationships?” And it's an old saying, you know. I mean, being an Academy guy, you know, I got quotes and phrases, you know, but, uh, but it is that my, my whole is— they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And I’ve used that my entire coaching career, and I’ve make it a like, “Hey, I’ve got to connect on the level with this.” Does it always work? No, I mean, not batting 1,000 but it’s worked a bunch, and I think that allows me to coach guys maybe harder sometimes, because they do know that I’ve kind of have their best interest in heart, but I gain that by showing my genuineness like, “This is not a farce. This is not something fake. I care about you. I want to know what's going on with your family. I want to get to know your family. I want to get to know you as a person.” And I just think that’s important. We’re all going through this journey of life together. Why wouldn’t we want to do it with close relationships to those that are near us? So that it is I’m trying to connect in any way possible. And also, going back to my I think because I’ve got interest in a lot of various things in different areas, I can usually find something. “OK, boom, we can click here. Let's start here, and we'll be able to build from that point from anything.” “Hey, he likes to play golf. Oh, I like—,” just a bunch of different things. Like, it’s been amazing to be able to try and find those points with a player to build on that. And it’s important. It really is.   Naviere Walkewicz 35:40 I mean, it sounds like you are certainly investing in the players. And it shows, right? I think you can see it in the translation on the field. Talk about what it's like outside of the building here, when you go home, what’s Jemal like at home? What’s home life? And how do you, I mean, lead as a father and a husband?   Jemal Singleton 36:01 I’ve had a great little saying I’ve been using recently. My daughter rodeos. So she rides horses, and she used to call it— “tough as bull” is the phrase. But my wife also grew up small-town Texas rodeo and riding horses, doing all that stuff, so she's part of that. But she used to compete professionally. She’s kind of given up that to help our daughter, like she’s training her. So I’m not even the best coach in my house. You know, my wife has got me beat. She’s working with this 11-year-old that’s killing it right now. But no, when I get home, I think that’s, there’s a leadership level there. I think being a father comes with responsibilities. Being a husband comes with the responsibilities. And I think that at the end of the day, I’m always going to try and be where my feet are, like be totally invested and committed into that. We talk at times, and it showed up. I think my wife— anything my wife posts out there. She’s got a post of me shoveling manure after the Super Bowl. So I was like— you want to know what humbles me? Horse manure humbles me. So we do have this farm. We do have horses, and do ride. And it’s a total departure from what I do day to day. So when I go home, and literally, my drive, I’m 30 minutes from the office, I get a time to decompress. When I’m going home, I get a time to get revved up when I’m coming in, but when I hit the gravel road that leads up to my house, like, that's my switch. “OK, I'm not in coach mode.” Now, you rarely turn that off, but I’m going into dad mode, I’m going into husband mode. I’m going in— that I have to try and be the best father and best husband I can possibly be. And my family deserves the same type of work ethic and hard work that I’m giving to my players at work, to the coaches at work. They deserve those same characteristics when I get home. So that’s a big part of trying to be home. And that means, you know, you can win a Super Bowl if you want, but you’re going to shovel, you’re going to get out there and you’re going to work. And I always joke that the honey-do list hits different when your wife’s country. So whether it’s loading up hay, whether it’s grooming the arena, whether it’s shoveling horse manure, that’s it. I wouldn’t say it humbles me, but it keeps me humble. I think it’s probably the best thing.   Naviere Walkewicz 38:17 I enjoy that so much. What have you learned as a leader from your wife?   Jemal Singleton 38:22 Oh man, you know just— I gotta talk about grit, like, my wife is a tough cookie. And I told you she’s a saint. She married an Air Force officer turned football coach, so she’s glutton for punishment. One way or the other it was gonna be hard. But no she is such a tough, strong, independent woman, but at the same time, is just an amazing, caring mother, amazing wife, just the things that she does. I joke, she my wife. She drives an F-450 dually. She drives a big Ford truck. She hauls about a 37-foot horse trailer, and she does that, but that ain’t me, that’s her, and she's— Oh, she got a flat on the trailer, pulled on the side of row, put it up, change the tire, boom, and she’s back rolling. So I just love how she has this grit to her, but there’s this amazing, soft and caring side as well, like it’s— and I really, for me, that’s the part that I’m like, I kind of can be like, I can be this tough, physical, strong person. But you know what? I also need to have this other side. I need to have this other piece that I think also helps me allow people in so that those relationships that we talk about happening more. You can’t, you know, like, it can’t be just give, give, give, give, give for them. And I don’t know it’s, it allows me to say, “Hey, I’m hard, I’m strong,” but you know what, I’m also there’s times when I’m weak, sometimes where I can handle those and it’s OK to live in both of those worlds. And that she shows me that every day, just at work, she gets up earlier than me. She’s out there doing the barn chores. She’s feeding the animals. She’s doing all that. We have a petting zoo, so just make sure we understand that I’ve got too many donkeys. I’ve got four goats. We’ve got five horses on our property. And that young lady goes out there and she does all that stuff. And it’s amazing, because she’s building Mallory too— their time at that with her out there and her working and her understanding work ethic and having to go out and do some of those things, clean water tanks, shovel manure, all that stuff. And I love it. Like, I’m blessed to have married the woman that I’ve married, and we’ve been going strong since right after, really right after graduation, until now. So it’s been a really cool ride. And to have a rock at home like that is huge with what I do.   Naviere Walkewicz 40:37 Especially since you’re investing in your team. You’re investing in your family. How do you invest in you?   Jemal Singleton 40:45 You know, hobbies like other there’s some things I don’t get to do a lot of them, a whole lot, but I do get it to do it every now and then. And for me, one of the great things that clears my mind is fly fishing. You know, getting out on a river, being in a mountain stream and just taking deep breaths and just being thankful to God, of all the blessings that I have, and all the things good and bad that have happened in my life. But it’s those moments, you know, it’s that— and, you know, even my drive home like I use those 30 minutes to transition from kind of my mindset, tough day at work, bad, some things didn't go well, or a loss, driving home after the end of the game, after a loss, it’s like, OK, use that time to just relax, just recover. And you walk into an 11-year-old and all she wants to do is see her dad. It’s like, that stuff kind of goes away pretty quick. So that’s it, you know, family. And maybe getting on a stream every now and then, is the way to do it.   Naviere Walkewicz 41:42 I love that. And in those moments of kind of just— is it music? Is it silence?   Jemal Singleton 41:48 No, I’m a music guy. There’s not there. I don’t do anything without music. I do barn chores with music. I do it is that what’s on your plate? And, you know, I’ve gotten really big.   Naviere Walkewicz What’s on your playlist?   Jemal Singleton I mean, obviously Christian music is big, gospel. There’s Christian hip hop that I’m a really big fan of,  because I still get the beat — I’m kind of a hip hop child when I was born — but with a positive message. So it’s, you know, I try to feed my soul, you know, just the same way I feed my body with positive music and that. And it helps. Great film watching it. I’ve either got my ear pods in or I’ve got music playing, no matter where I’m at, what I'm doing. So it’s, it is. It is being able to do that and kind of connect in those moments?   Naviere Walkewicz 42:30 Well, I wonder if this might be the answer based off of what you just shared about kind of investing in yourself. But what is something you do every day to be a better leader?   Jemal Singleton 42:41 So I have a process. And I think everybody needs to have a daily process. So for me, it’s wake up. The first thing I do is I always do a 365-day Bible reading. So it’s just boom, that gives me something just to start the day. And it’s that. And so usually, boom, I read that, and then I’ll get in the car, and I’m listening to worship music as I’m going to work, I’m prepping myself for work. And then my workout. So I’m going to work out, I’m going to lift, I’m going to do whatever can just physically for that, and kind of do some self-help, and I do that in the morning, and then it’s locking time for work. But I think those little consistent behaviors— and it’s always that it’s the things that you can do consistently over time, not, hey, bunch this out and don’t do it. It’s consistently. So I have no excuse. Every single day I can wake up read the Word and that sets me into the path of my habits that I’ve established. So for me, that’s the piece I have. Something consistent. Is it flexible? Yes. Can I take my phone and be on the road and still read? Yes. Can I be in the car and listen to it on the radio? Yes, I can do all that stuff. But I think as leaderships us, having our self-routines for ourselves allows us to be prepared. And I think the just physical nature of it being healthy, trying to, you know, eat right, all the little things, just to be the best that you can be. I have an active job, so I want to try and move around at least a little bit. There is a coaching rule, don’t ever demonstrate anything full speed, because you’re old and you’re going to hurt something. But I want to be in a position to where I can, at least, you know, get out there, move around and run, and that’s part of it, you know, the leadership. See, I’m sweating this practice as much, not as much as players, but like the players, so they at least see that I'm invested. And I think that just having that daily routine is something I think when you listen to most leaders speak, they say that all the time, there's a common theme, and I’ve stolen that from some of the leaders I’ve read about and watched as well.   Naviere Walkewicz 44:36 So when you think about yourself and your growth as a leader, I mean, you’ve hit the pinnacle of leading the Super Bowl-winning team. What’s next for you?   Jemal Singleton 44:48 Well, just as losing a Super Bowl is one of the worst things I think I’ve ever felt in my profession, winning a Super Bowl is the greatest thing I’ve ever felt in my profession. And unbelievable, and it’s all what it’s cracked up to be. We had a parade here in Philly. You want to talk about unbelievable? I still— I’ve never seen that many people in one place. And you’re— it was five and a half hours of just the most amazing celebration. People all over— we go to the Rocky steps, and you’re looking, I can’t see where the people end, like there’s a sea of people, and it’s like, I kind of want that every year for the rest of my life. That’s what I want. And it’s like, you get that experience, and it’s like, OK, this is what OK in my profession, with the role I’m playing right now, that's success, and it feels good and it’s awesome, and you see what it does to players and how their involvement and their winning, and you understand how hard that is to do. I mean, there’s guys that have spent their entire careers and never even gone to a Super Bowl, so the fact that I’ve been able to go to two and the fact that I was part of a winning team, one is unbelievable, but that’s what I don’t want the other years, like every other year that I’ve ever coached football, I don’t want those. I want last year and I want it to start over. So it’s really— that mindset is “OK, well, what do I have to do better? What did we do that we can get better at?” And it’s really that attention to detail, nonstop, because you know what it takes. You’ve done it. You know what it takes to get to that point. Well, the problem is, what it took last year is not the same as what it’s going to take this year. So it’s the motivation of, I want to strive for that. And you look at some of the greats, you know, put Belichick in that with his wins, you know, Lombardi, you know, just those guys— even Saban in college that have won multiple national championships. I get it now I get where the drive comes. Because it’s what you want every like I want to every off season. I want to be walking around, hey, Super Bowl winning team, yeah, for sure. And but that’s it, like, that’s once you get a taste of that, it’s addictive. It truly is. It’s, it’s that success piece of going about it, but there’s some foundational things that you have to do in order to do that. And you know, hopefully we can go again, and hopefully we can work, but it’s going to take a whole new effort, a whole new game plan, a whole new everything, because what we did last year doesn’t matter anymore.   Naviere Walkewicz 47:17 Wow. So what advice would you give to leaders for what they should do today so that they might achieve something greater tomorrow or down the road?   Jemal Singleton 47:27 I think. And even for me, because it’s I’m in a kind of a position coach. I’m not the head coach, those types of things. I think the biggest thing that you can do is lead where you’re at, and it doesn't matter where you’re at. “Oh, well, I’m not the CEO,” or “Oh, I'm not the head coach,” or “Oh, I'm not the commander.” So? The leadership comes in a million different ways, and I truly believe that you know kind of what you do with the little things, is how you do everything. And if, in your position, whatever it may be — maybe nobody even works for you — you can still lead from that position. You can lead from that spot. And I think that’s it. Don't be afraid to step out. Don’t be afraid to be a leader in your own mind. It’s got to start there at some point. You keep honing those skills and then maybe you are going to grow. And then, hey, now you have three people working for you, but then now be a leader at that point. And it’s kind of like what I mentioned earlier about be where your feet are. Well, lead where your feet are at. You know, when I go home, lead, and that comes in a different way than when I’m at work, lead. Well, whatever position you’re in, lead. And there’s by example, lead by work, lead by motivation, however it is, there’s no excuse. You can you can lead from any position, any spot that you’re in. So start, if you haven’t start, it’s getting reps. You’re getting leadership reps every time you step out there, and those reps are only going to build the leader that you'll be later down the road.   Naviere Walkewicz 48:51 Amazing. Well, we're going to ask Jemal for his final thoughts here next but before we do, I’d like to take a moment and thank you for listening to Long Blue Leadership. The podcast publishes Tuesdays in both video and audio, and is available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Be sure to watch, listen and subscribe to all episodes of Long Blue Leadership at longbluleadership.org. So Jemal, this is such an important moment for us, because I think everyone’s hanging on to you know, what are the final things you want to share with our listeners? Is there anything else that you want to make want to make sure that they kind of ingest and take back from our time together today?   Jemal Singleton 49:27 You know, I think you could probably hear in my voice just what the Academy means to me. I mean, the Air Force Academy is, honestly, to this day, why I’m able to sit here. It’s why I was part of a Super Bowl-winning team. It’s why I coach in the NFL. It’s why I have a good family life. It’s what— I mean, there’s so many things that that really relate back to what I did at the Air Force Academy, and that was really the main start, and then even in the military afterwards, some of the lessons that I learned there, and I do think for the Academy, I think just intercollegiate, the athletic programs, like those things are huge. And I think when we’re trying to build these leaders that are going to fight our wars, that are going to be part of that and go, the leadership that they can learn on an athletic field is huge. And just those— the closest thing, I think anybody— for me, closest thing in the battle I had ever gotten to was on a field. I mean, just the physical nature, whether it’s the mat, the court, the field, we’re seeing the role that athletics plays in the development of leadership. And there’s so many great people that have played sports going through. But it is such a great part of building young men and young women in the way. So I’m a huge supporter of Air Force athletics with what they do. I think it’s a big part of leadership training. And then when you combine that piece with what the Academy offers and the different lessons— they’ll stick you in a tube in the dirt and let you learn how to get out of that, right? It’s unbelievable. They’ll let you almost drown in that. But no, but those lessons when if you take any piece away, of my time at the Academy, you take any piece away, the product is different. And I think every piece is so vital, the education piece, the academic piece, that you kind of work, and that’s important. You know, the military training. Ironing your bed. It’s important. I don't make my bed ever. My wife knows I’m not making the bed, but all those little pieces are important. It’s the recipe for success, for leadership, and if you take out this ingredient, you’re not getting the same price. It’s not going to taste the same. And I think that’s the pieces. The Academy is a phenomenal place. Every little pillar that's built on there is extremely important.   Naviere Walkewicz 51:45 Well, this has been incredible. I can’t believe 25 years flew by, but you’re still inspiring me today. Jemal, this has been a pleasure, and I want to thank you for being on Long Blue Leadership.   Jemal Singleton 51:55 Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Great, great honor. And I said, we've come a long way from those yellow caps.   Naviere Walkewicz 51:59 Yes we have, yes we have. And I’d also like to extend a very special thanks to Stacy Kelleher, John Paul Beatty, Alex Barson, Wes Lauria and Haley McCullough, the team here who provided such amazing support for our production and studio space. I’m Naviere Walkewicz; this is Long Blue Leadership. Until next time, thank you for joining us for this edition of Long Blue Leadership. The podcast drops every two weeks on Tuesdays and is available on all your favorite podcast apps. Send your comments and guest ideas to us at socialmedia@usafa.org, and listen to past episodes at longblueleadership.org.   KEYWORDS Leadership, Air Force Academy, coaching, Super Bowl, mentorship, personal growth, military influence, sports, resilience, career decisions, leadership, success, failure, motivation, personal growth, relationships, coaching, NFL, family, grit       The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation

From A-10 combat missions to three Super Bowl championships, Chad Hennings has led in the air, on the field, and now—through character-based leadership.----more---- SUMMARY In the latest episode of Long Blue Leadership, Chad shares pivotal lessons from two leadership crucibles: flying in combat and transitioning from military life to the NFL. We also talk about his work today helping others lead with moral courage, through business, mentorship, and his Forces of Character podcast.   SHARE THIS CONVERSATION LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/chad-hennings/?token=7e257ea49c6d54079aba6dc03ed4ea5b] | FACEBOOK [https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A//www.longblueleadership.org/e/chad-hennings/?token=7e257ea49c6d54079aba6dc03ed4ea5b]   CHAD'S TOP LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS  - Chad chose to fulfill his military commitment over NFL opportunities.  - Commitment and integrity were instilled in him from a young age.  - Athletics served as a leadership laboratory for Chad.  - Leadership is about setting an example for others.  - Identity is not defined by what you do, but who you are.  - Struggles and obstacles are essential for personal growth.  - Character development requires strong relationships and feedback.  - Kinetic character means actively working on your character.  - Resilience is built through overcoming challenges.  - True fulfillment comes from relationships, not material success. Visualization is key to understanding identity and leadership.  - Leadership is about serving others, not just personal gain.  - True leadership involves modeling behavior for others.  - Identity is foundational for making sound decisions.  - Transitioning from structured environments can challenge one's identity.  - Don't compromise your values to fit in with a group.  - Creating community is essential for personal growth.  - Daily practices like devotionals can set the tone for leadership.  - A growth mindset is crucial for continuous improvement.  - Character and integrity are essential for effective leadership.   CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Commitment 02:02 Crossroads: Choosing Commitment Over Opportunity 05:58 Lessons from Athletics and Leadership 11:47 The Evolution of Identity and Purpose 16:07 Character Development Through Struggles 21:50 Kinetic Character: The Importance of Relationships 24:04 Visualizing Identity and Leadership 29:12 Navigating Transitions and Identity 32:07 Building Community and Legacy 38:09 Daily Practices for Effective Leadership 40:49 The Importance of Mindset in Leadership 42:08 Character and Integrity in Leadership 43:06 Encouragement for Aspiring Leaders   ABOUT CHAD BIO Chad learned the value of hard work, trust, and integrity growing up on his parent’s farm in Iowa. Those lessons became central to the life he’s lived since with unwavering character. From the fields of Iowa to the skies over Iraq, Chad’s journey took him from the U.S. Air Force Academy where he earned academic All-American honors and won the Outland Trophy as the nation's top lineman, to flying 45, A-10 combat and humanitarian missions in the first Gulf war. It was only after fulfilling his commitment to serve that Chad entered the NFL. He was 27 at the time and went on to win three Super Bowl championships with the Dallas Cowboys. Today, Chad continues to lead from the front. He’s a speaker and he’s authored several books including It Takes Commitment, Rules of Engagement, and Forces of Character. He founded Wingmen Ministries and is a principal in Rubicon Representation, where he helps businesses grow through meaningful relationships and synergy. He’s also the host of his new podcast, Forces of Character, where he shares stories of moral courage and principled leadership, including two periods in his life as a developing and growing leader that ultimately became crucibles. One of those in the cockpit in combat and another transitioning from the military to the NFL.   FORCES OF CHARACTER PODCAST Chad Hennings, renowned author and former professional NFL athlete, is excited to announce the upcoming launch of his new project, the Forces of Character Podcast, slated for release in early 2025. Based on the principles outlined in his bestselling book, Forces of Character, the podcast will feature insightful interviews with extraordinary individuals who have demonstrated unwavering character and a noble purpose in their personal and professional lives. LISTEN HERE [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxFfWUuPemiZ_RyOASSgPDQ]    - Copy and image courtesy of Chad Hennings and Forces of Character     CONNECT WITH CHAD LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadhennings/] | RUBICON REPRESENTATION ON LINKEDIN [https://www.linkedin.com/company/rubicon-representation/]       ALL PAST LBL EPISODES [https://www.longblueleadership.org/]  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS [https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/longbluelinepodcast] AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS     TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS Our guest:  Chad Hennings ’82 | Our host: Lt. Col. Naviere Walkewicz ’99   KEYWORDS Leadership, commitment, character, Air Force Academy, NFL, personal growth, identity, resilience, mentorship, purpose, leadership, identity, visualization, transitions, community, legacy, daily practices, mindset, character, integrity     The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation