EdTech: Ted Sullivan of IMG Academy On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact On Education

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course, many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. In this particular installment, we are talking to leaders of Education Technology companies, who share how their tech is helping to improve our educational system. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ted Sullivan.

Ted Sullivan is the Chief Growth Officer at IMG Academy. In this role, Ted leads the product and technology teams, including the development of IMG Academy+, the first-ever online coaching platform and mobile app that brings the power of IMG Academy’s student-athlete development program to students worldwide. As a former professional athlete turned entrepreneurial leader, Ted built the GameChanger youth sports platform from concept to beloved brand, market dominance and acquisition by Dick’s Sporting Goods. He created a customer-obsessed culture, empowering a talented team to design, engineer and market one of the highest-grossing sports apps in the world. Previously, Ted founded Headfirst Camps with his brother, and he remains an owner and advisor.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

When I was a student, baseball was my primary sport. As I advanced in the game — like any athlete, I eventually reached that point when I was over-matched by the talent around me.

In the span of a year, I went from being a senior in high school at a small all-boys private school in Washington D.C. to pitching at Duke University in the Atlantic Coast Conference. When I made this jump, I realized — the hard way — that my talent alone wasn’t good enough anymore. When you hit that wall, you can start doubting yourself, you can start losing confidence and your performance starts spiraling.

During this time, I was in college and my brother was in Minor League Baseball, learning from players and coaches who were mastering the mental game. He would get these little bits of knowledge on mental performance, opening my eyes to the fact that there are actual skills that you can learn — beyond physical skills how to throw a curveball or a change up — that are a critical part of the toolkit to succeeding at a high level.

Fast-forward 20 years. I was recruited to join IMG Academy, the world’s leading sports education brand, with the role of growing the organization beyond the campus in Bradenton, FL. During my first few months of research, I learned that IMG Academy is the leader in mental performance coaching for teenage athletes, along with other disciplines like nutrition coaching, leadership, character.

I was confident that these coaching disciplines were much needed throughout the youth and college game and would be a significant opportunity for IMG Academy to have a positive impact on student athletes.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

In 2015, when I was really struggling through the rollercoaster ride of being a startup founder, I started working with exec coach Jeff Riddle. He’s a remarkable coach and is now a close friend. Working with him showed me the true power of coaching as a tool not only for athletes but also for professionals in the business world and high-level executives. Jeff’s coaching went beyond business and into being a better, more capable human, husband and father. Jeff was, and still is, a critical person in my life.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My dad has been a practicing litigator for more than 50 years. He has seen a lot of people make a lot of mistakes! He would always tell my siblings and me, “Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want to read about on the front page of The Washington Post.”

That was a memorable way to say: “Treat people well, have strong character, take the hard right over the easy wrong.”

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

My three are empathy, prioritization and hard work. Instead of sharing a story about all three, I’ll just focus on empathy because the others are self-explanatory.

Empathy is especially important when building consumer products. You have to have a deep empathy and curiosity about customer problems to build great products.

Many great businesses were built because the founders are the customers, which happened to be the case with my startup. I was a youth coach and I built a product for youth coaches. However, this isn’t always the case, so when you aren’t the customer, you have to do everything you can to put yourself in their shoes.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our educational systems. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?

We’re aiming to help young student-athletes improve their lives in the most general sense, to help them win their future. In my early 20s, I realized that parents put their kids in sports not just for the sports skills, but because sports are such an effective teacher of life’s most important lessons.

The lessons that come with sports — focus, resilience and handling pressure — are essential to building productive skills for education, but most importantly life overall. This was why the opportunity to work at IMG Academy resonated so much with me.

Right now, only a small percentage of kids have access to this kind of skill development. I want to solve this and expand access to the transformative lessons kids can learn through the lens of sport.

How do you think your technology can address this?

Technology can scale what IMG Academy is offering in person on campus. We are working to take some of the magic that is taught on campus by incredibly talented teachers and coaches, and scale that to a much larger audience. Our challenge: how do we take that magic and deliver it to student athletes through their mobile device. We’re seeing great traction already and have big plans for the future.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about education?

I’ve always been passionate about coaching and teaching, and interested in the life skills one develops playing sports. Discipline, resilience, handling pressure, good sportsmanship — these are all lessons that set student-athletes up to be successful in all areas of their lives, and that is why I am so passionate about education and providing students with the resources to develop those skills.

How do you think your technology might change the world?

I’m confident that the intentional teaching of personal development and life skills through sports can change lives for the better. We see it daily on campus at IMG Academy.

Our challenge is to scale these transformations to student athletes around the world. Technology can help us do that.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?

While social media and mobile devices benefit our lives in many ways, there are some drawbacks to them as well. They can be a distraction, a time drain and can have significant mental health implications for young people.

However, with the technologies we’re building to extend coaching from IMG Academy, we believe there are very few drawbacks. We’re providing a platform for fundamental life skills and knowledge that any human can benefit from. Specific coaching and training hasn’t been previously designed for the teenage athlete and then scaled to become accessible to great numbers of them.

How do you envision the landscape of education evolving over the next decade, and how does your technology fit into that future?

Massive changes are happening before our eyes, and more changes are coming. At the end of the day, I see AI and LLMs impacting the way that our customers experience IMG Academy. Our student athletes and their families are on a journey through youth sports and education. It’s a personal growth journey — so by definition, every journey is different. AI and LLMs can help us customize coaching, guidance and motivation to each athlete’s specific journey and needs, only magnifying our potential for impact.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1 . Deeply understand the problem you’re trying to solve. Far too often, I see products that are solutions looking for problems rather than actively solving a defined, pre-existing problem. In the early days of building IMG Academy+, I was personally involved in product research and sales. I did that to get as close to the customer and problem as possible.

2 . All products need an effective business model — including social impact technologies. Leaders of social impact organizations need to be realistic about the investments required to build great technology and ensure they have a profitable business model to support that development.

3 . Do fewer things better. In trying to solve too many problems, you don’t solve any of them well. Ruthless prioritization of problems and solutions is critical.

I’m going to follow my advice, ruthlessly prioritize, and give you only three and not five!

In the realm of EdTech, there’s often data collection involved. How do you ensure the ethical handling of user data, especially when it concerns students?

This is an incredibly important question. First and foremost, start with an experienced information security expert or team. That’s what we have here at IMG Academy+ because we take this very seriously. User data becomes particularly complicated as a global brand looking to serve student-athletes all over the world due to the different laws.

The other key piece when working with students is staying close to the family to make sure you’re doing this in partnership with parents and guardians. We know that we’re going to be more successful if parents and guardians are part of the entire journey. By looking at just the students themselves, we overlook the full picture. It’s crucial to think about the family as a whole and partner with the family as we help the student through that journey. That approach puts us in a better position to manage that student-athletes data in a way that a parent would approve.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Honestly, I would tell young people they should work in an area they are passionable — whether it has social impact or not. Since I was young, I’ve been into sports, coaching and the development of young people. Working at IMG Acadmey is right in my wheelhouse. For young people, the only way you’re going to be successful is if you are — and it seems like a cliche, but it’s true — passionate about your work. There are many ways to have an impact on our environment and society outside of your career. Only do it as part of your career if that is what drives you and gets you out of bed every day.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I like this question, but it’s a hard one. If I could have breakfast with anyone, I’d go back in time and have breakfast with Steve Jobs.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

IMGAcademy.com and all of the social channels for IMG Academy where you can find everything we’re doing with athletic and personal development, both on campus and off, and all of the other products that we have to offer.

Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.