As an award-winning keynote speaker, business leadership coach, eleven-time New York Times best-selling author, and longtime Associate Editor for Sports Illustrated, Don Yaeger has fashioned a career as one of America’s most provocative thought leaders. As a speaker, he has worked with audiences as diverse as Fortune 500 companies and cancer survivor groups, where he shares his personal story.
He is primarily sought to discuss lessons on achieving greatness, learned from first-hand experiences with some of the greatest sports legends in the world. He is also often retained by companies and organizations to coach their leaders, management teams, and employees on building a culture of greatness by studying great teams in sports and discerning the business lessons we can learn from them.
Additionally, as an Executive Coach, Yaeger has worked with a range of leaders from the president of the largest bank in the Caribbean to CEOs of financial services companies to technology executives. His coaching model is based on years of experience and study with those who have inspired championship-level teams.
Throughout his writing career, Don has developed a reputation as a world-class storyteller and has been invited as a guest to almost every major talk show – from The Oprah Winfrey Show to Nightline, from CNN to Good Morning America.
Few journalists can lay claim to as exciting and colorful a career as Don Yaeger. In the three decades since he accepted his first newspaper job in Texas, the breadth of his assignments has been astounding. He has traveled the world in pursuit of stories as diverse as:
After several years of freelancing for Sports Illustrated, Yaeger joined the magazine’s staff full-time in July 1996. Two years later, he was promoted to Associate Editor where his job was to cover not just sporting events but also the off-the-field happenings that affect the world of sports. He took an early retirement from full-time work at SI in 2008, but continues to freelance for the magazine.
Yaeger and his co-author William Nack were finalists for a 2000 National Magazine Award in the public interest category for their cover story “Who’s Coaching Your Kid?: The frightening truth about child molestation in youth sports.” This important piece triggered follow-up reports by programs such as Dateline, 20/20 and The Oprah Winfrey Show. It also resulted in changes to the law in several states and several youth sports organizations, including Little League of America, which changed rules to require background checks of coaches and volunteers. Born and raised in Hawaii, Yaeger has traveled extensively and lived abroad in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Japan ,and Great Britain. A 1984 graduate of Ball State University, Yaeger currently lives in Tallahassee, FL. He also owns a political consulting business and a public relations firm. He and his wife Jeanette have a son and a daughter.
Don teaches the habits of high performing individuals, and guides your team on a personal pursuit of greatness. He will take your team on a journey through the career defining moments, and teaches your team the lessons learned from those such as Walter Payton, Warrick Dunn, Michael Jordan, and John Wooden.
*Part of this keynote includes 16 characteristics of great champions.
“Your “conversational” manner of delivering the message on What Makes the Great Ones Great, and being able to weave that message into every day activities was truly inspiring for all in attendance. There is no question as I listened to you and watched the audience that you were engaged with them and the qualities you spoke of were from life’s lessons we could all benefit from.”
“Our attendees were a bit apprehensive at first not knowing how sports could relate to the field of Human Resources. However, you connected the two and shared such great stories on teamwork, preparedness, goal setting and relationship building. This insight provided a unique aspect on their everyday tasks and responsibilities. Not only are they trying to find “great” employees, they are also furthering their professional development.”
“Your Characteristics of Greatness presentation was overwhelmingly rated as the best motivational speech the employees had ever heard.”
“He may be a sports writer, but he should be a speech writer. Don Yaeger is as polished with the spoken word as he is with the written. His speeches transcend age and gender. School kids and Fortune 500 executives will learn similar lessons about life, told in poignant and humorous anecdotes from Don’s personal experiences.”
“Inspiring stories that make the audience stop and think. Even if you aren’t a sports fan, the stories transcend the sport into how we impact others around us.”
