As a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, business leadership coach, a twelve-time New York Times Best-selling author, host of the top-rated Corporate Competitor Podcast, National Geographic’s “Storyteller in Residence,” 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 and business legends in the world.  Additionally, Don has been retained by companies and organizations to coach their leaders on building a culture of greatness by looking at Great Teams in sports and discerning the business lessons we can learn from them. In 2023, Real Leaders magazine acknowledged Don as a “Speaker to Watch” because of his success on stage. Throughout his writing career, Don has developed a reputation as a world-class storyteller and has been invited as a guest to every major talk show – from Oprah to Nightline, from CNN to Good Morning America. Few journalists can lay claim to as exciting and colorful a career as Don Yaeger. 

In three decades of reporting, the breadth of his assignments has been astounding.  He has traveled the world in pursuit of stories as diverse as:

Yaeger began his career as a reporter for the San Antonio Light where he rose through the ranks to pen investigative features for the daily. He later moved on to the Dallas Morning News. Following his stint in Dallas, Yaeger worked as a political editor for the Florida Times-Union.

After four years, he decided to dedicate himself to the pursuit of writing books. Yaeger’s first book, Undue Process: The NCAA’s Injustice For All, was published in 1990. In the 30+ years since, he has penned 34 more books, including an incredible TWELVE New York Times Best-sellers. Among his Best-sellers are:

Don also wrote A Game Plan For Life, with legendary UCLA coach John Wooden. It was published on Coach’s 99th birthday in October 2009. Movie rights to both the Duke book and Turning of The Tide, a book about a 1970 football game between the last all-white team at the University of Alabama and the fully-integrated team from the University of Southern California, have recently been sold. Both movies have been scripted and are in production.

After several years of freelancing for Sports Illustrated, Don joined the magazine’s staff full-time in July 1996.  Two years later he was promoted to Associate Editor, where his work was to cover not just sporting events but the off-the-field happenings which affect the world of sports. He took an early retirement from full-time work at SI in 2008 and continues to freelance for the magazine. He also is Forbes.com’s most-read leadership columnist.

Don Yaeger and his colleague William Nack were finalists for the prestigious 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 Don’s appearances on 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, to require background checks of coaches and volunteers.

Born and raised as a native of Hawaii, Yaeger has traveled extensively through his career. The Dominican Republic, Honduras, Japan, and Great Britain can be counted among the countries in which he has resided. A 1984 graduate of Ball State University (where he was selected as one of the university’s “50 Graduates of Distinction” over its first century), Yaeger currently lives in Tallahassee, FL. He and his wife Jeanette have a son and a daughter.