Jessica Gelman’s smarts and skills at point guard took her to Harvard where she studied psychology and, when she wasn’t hitting the textbooks, she was rewriting the record books as a point guard under coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. Jessica’s team was the first Crimson squad to go undefeated in Ivy League competition, with Gelman becoming the only Harvard player to score more than 1,000 career points and hand out more than 475 assists.
As a student at Harvard Business School, Jessica had the opportunity to work with the Robert Kraft family, owners of the New England Patriots football franchise and Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, on ways to increase the stadium’s revenue on non-game days. She parlayed the opportunity into a long term relationship with the Kraft family. Today, she is the CEO of Kraft Analytics Group (KAGR), which works with all of the major U.S. sports leagues and properties to apply business analytics in their operations.
She offers listeners a number of tips for making their own luck. These include:
- Creating pressure situations in practice or your daily work to help your team perform better when the chips are down.
- Basing feedback on the “kind hard truth” to improve performance rather than calling out failure.
- Building camaraderie among your teammates to take pressure off of individuals.
- Turning a “lucky” opportunity into a commitment to set yourself apart from the competition.
In this episode, she recounts how her early fascination with Michael Jordan and experiences as a basketball player at Harvard fueled her passion for achieving success under pressure and her belief we make our own success on the field on which we play.
You will learn:
- 3:00 The difference between good and great.
- 8:00 How to perform under pressure.
- 18:00 How to receive feedback.
- 22:00 How to cultivate new opportunities.
Resources:
- Follow Jessica on Twitter
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