Episode 199: Unlocking Success - Jon Harris Reveals How to Transition Athletes to Post-Sports Careers

Your Next Stop with Juliet Hahn

Jon Harris serves as Chief Executive Officer of AthLife®, which was initially established in 2004 to provide educational and career advising services to post-professional, professional and collegiate athletes. Current partners include the NFL Players Association, The Players Trust (powered by the NFL Players Association), NBA, National Basketball Retired Players Association, NBA Players Legacy Fund, MLS, MLB Players Association, and the NHL. On an average day, more than 650 current and former professional athletes are in service with AthLife advisors working on one-to one career fundamentals and educational advising.

For more than 19 years, AthLife has also created and executed in-person programs for professional sports teams and more than 40 college and university athletic departments. In that time, AthLife Unlimited evolved as a division of AthLife to work with sport and entertainment brands to deepen their relationship with fans, including a now 15 year relationship with Marvel Entertainment, while also building and launching the company hustl. To create NIL opportunities in the world of sport and entertainment.

Jon also serves as Board President of The AthLife Foundation, a non-profit aimed providing support and resources to kids in our nation’s most challenged but promising communities. As of 2023, the Foundation has raised and distributed more than a million dollars to high schools, along with training and supporting the academic coaches in 15 states while annually impacting more than 10,000 deserving kids that play sports. He is also a founding member of the Foundation for Teamwork, home of the Joe Moore Award, that recognizes the best offensive line unit in college football, and recently joined the board of The Institute of Sport and Social Justice where he got his start in 1995 as an intern.

Prior to forming AthLife, Jon served as Manager of Player Development for the National Football League, where he was hired to establish and manage the NFL's Continuing Education Program. The program was designed to assist active NFL players with all aspects of continuing education including degree completion, graduate school preparation, and guidance for continuing education as it relates to personal development. For six years previous to his time at the NFL, Jon helped build the NFL’s education program while working for the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (now the Institute of Sport and Social Justice) where he rose from Intern to Associate Director.

Jon earned a master’s in management of Public Service from DePaul University in 2000, penning his thesis titled The Affects of Achievement in Higher Education on the Career Transition of Retired NFL Players. He is certified in the Strong Interest Inventory and a member of the National Career Development Association, and for more than 25 years he has been an active member of The National Association of Academic and Student-Athlete Development Professionals (N4A). He earned his bachelor's degree from DePaul in Political Science in 1995. While studying Political Science at DePaul, Jon was a four-year letterman in basketball and four times was named to the Conference All-Academic Team. His accomplishments were recognized by being named to the '14 Under 40' class by DePaul in 2012. He and his wife Keri are raising four remarkable children who undoubtedly will change the world for the better.

You can find Jon on LinkedIn and check out AthLife.

Remarkable Quote:

“One thing I noticed with me is that when I grab onto an idea that I'm really passionate about, whether it was playing college basketball or starting a company, it probably takes about nine years in my life for the idea to turn into something pretty meaningful.”

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