Thom Singer is the author of twelve books and makes his living as a professional speaker and master of ceremonies. Thom has interviewed over 300 CEOs, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and solopreneurs on the popular podcast: "Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do" (named on INC.com as one of 8 business podcasts to listen to). Thom has an background working in sales, marketing and business development roles for Fortune 500 Companies, Law Firms, and entrepreneurial ventures.  He is a business growth speaker whose work allows people to build influence, unlock potential, and drive performance.  Thom runs Potential Mastermind.

Think of Alexandria Barker as your Spiritual Personal Trainer. She'll put her extensive training and over 20 years of experience to work to help you achieve what you want. Her mission is to help you master the art of deliberate creation, so you can live the best life imaginable!



She's a certified Soul Realignment Practitioner, Law of Attraction Life Coach, and Infinite Possibilities Trainer as well as being author of Relief Beyond Belief; Exploring the World of Natural Healing and the Wishful Thanking Life Success System, a fun and easy system to transform your life.



As a Transformational Speaker, Reiki Master, Crystal Therapist, Akashic Records Consultant and Yoga Instructor, she'll give you the tools you need to turn the life you HAVE into a life you’ll LOVE.



FB: @AlexandriaJBarker

Contracted by NASA for many years, by trade David is a leader and visionary in technology. He is a great artist, 3-D designer, and machinist, with his design skill as a strong point in his career base. His fabrication skills also are extremely keen, all through his artistic abilities give him the vision to do his work. It takes more than just knowledge of a craft or skill, it also takes talent to bring technology to life. Project to project, the space industry utilized David’s design and fabrication skills to the fullest. Receiving countless rewards for jobs executed with perfection.

David the published author of, Angel Boy. A rendition of his life’s view into words.

Poisoned, stabbed, swindled. Then his ex-wife pulled the trigger! However, it does not begin there. David raced in the Astrodome, became a contractor for NASA, was buried alive, and then died on the operating table. All before the age of 31. David is a loving single dad with a story of survival, success, and everything in between.

Angel Boy is about a strong, never yielding positive determination to survive. Illustrating to others what harbored deep within. A drive to succeed even when the odds are against him. A fixer type mentality, Angel tries to be helpful to those who may need it. Full of good intent and a strong passion for life and love. A reflection on greatness, that men can also be strong enough to raise children. Without the support of a good mother or female influence. Yet after many years of great struggle, Angel does succeed!

Dream Development is his name for the development of tomorrow. He writes as passionate as he feels towards life. Life is rich with what comes out of a person’s personal actions. To take with us into heaven the richness of everything we see and discover. David wears his heart on his sleeve and lives life to its fullest.

“The world is my home, the life within is my family! My goal is to help to make this world a much better home for us all to live. A fun place to live, grow and prosper. Not only for myself but for all of us. We are all put on this earth to discover greatness and great love.”

David is an artist at heart, and extremely talented with his mind and hands. Animals and people mean more to him than just a name or a face. Each person is unique and has a story to tell. To watch and listen is always a treat. David could not wait to be a father and prize his children. His family was not well off, yet they showed wealth in their actions and how we interacted with each other.

This makes us rich. Life has only just begun for all of us!

About Robert Sjoquist:

Starting in 1977 with his first company, THE AVALANCHE COMPANY, Robert Sjoquist has always been fascinated with why people buy what they buy and what is the process that sets a value to a good or service?

The AVALANCHE COMPANY was a start-up based on an innovative way to remove snow from primarily Residential but also pitched Commercial roofs.  It was an amazing concept and a brilliant idea but the Inventor and company Founder had gone Bankrupt trying to get the AVALANCHE into the Mainstream Marketplace.  On his way to Bankruptcy he had rung up over $20,000.00 in Legal fees with Robert’s Father’s Patent and Trademarking Law Firm in Minneapolis, MN.

The result was that the firm, in order to try and salvage something from the account, took control of the limited inventory and all Patents and Trademarks that they had filed on behalf of the company and Attorney Sjoquist was tasked with “Get us some money for all of this”  In stepped Robert with a Guerilla Marketing Plan that eventually got the product noticed and successful and he and his Father bought the Patents and Trademarks from the Law Firm and 3 years later sold them for a HUGE Profit to a small manufacturing company in the Midwest.  By then Robert was off to his next innovative episode.

Soils Solutions LLC is Robert’s 12th start-up company and it truly brings together all that he has learned and had a passion for throughout his life.  The innovative and market making plants, amendments and erosion control products that Soils Solutions Is either exclusive with or, at least, one of a very few Distribution points for will all be centers of their own Worlds at some time in the not too distant future and building the bridges to those new worlds is what Robert LOVES to be a part of.

About Soils Solutions:

Soils Solutions Inc. is a Certified Small Business that scours available markets, growers and suppliers locally and around the World so as to offer the most efficient, cost effective, environmentally beneficial and highest quality Plant and Soils Solutions available anywhere.

Toward that goal we are partnered with Delta Bluegrass in Stockton, California to distribute their proprietary line of Native California Legacy Grasses which have been proven to require 40% - 50% less water than traditional fescue grass sods that have been in the market for years. Our Native California Grass Sods Program currently features 5 varietals and each have features and characteristics designed for different installation requirements and aesthetics.

Working with our partners at Delta we are currently bringing to market a true Paradigm Shift in Extremely Low Water Groundcover. The plant is called KURAPIA and at Delta they grow it as a sod that is delivered as 2’ X 5’ strips that are rolled up and placed on pallets for deliveries daily to homes and commercial addresses across Southern California. KURAPIA has been proven to require 80% - 90% less water than conventional grass sods. In testing at various Universities, here and abroad, areas of mature KURAPIA have shown to achieve root depths in excess of 10’ deep into the ground so as an Erosion Control tool it is unsurpassed. KURAPIA also flowers periodically throughout the hotter Summer months so it is an excellent pollinator for your neighborhoods and gardens.

Another product line that we are extremely excited about is the Concrete Cloth textile matting sold by Milliken Industries. Cal Trans, the U.S. Forest Service and hundreds of City, County and State Maintenance Departments are using Concrete Cloth daily in their repair and design plans as a Hard Armor to protect vulnerable areas from water and soil erosion. Artists, Sculptors and Outdoor Space designers have discovered Concrete Cloth to be an amazingly flexible “Canvas” for creating truly unique visual and structural environments that will last for decades. Landscape Designers that work with Water Features and Water Courses LOVE that they can use Concrete Cloth to create Waterfalls, Streambeds and Bank Contours that were previously not possible. All of that plus the fact that Concrete Cloth has a fabric top layer that is paintable, stainable and almost chameleonlike in it’s characteristic of blending into the environment into which it was placed has allowed for the creative release of dimensional design not found until now.

As always Soils Solutions Inc. continues to be a provider of California Native Seed Mixes for Hydroseeding Contractors, City, County and State Botanists and Horticultural Designers and even to Homeowners with Large areas of land that they wish to keep in a “Native” condition. We carry the highest quality and most intensively researched Mycorrhizals, Humates, Organically Derived Fertilizers and more Generalized Soils Conditioners available in the marketplace.

As the Director of Soils Solutions, I am constantly searching for NEW but PROVEN “better mousetraps” that I can bring to our loyal and expanding customer base.

Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services Director Wanda Wright is the third generation of her family to serve in the U.S. military.  She has three decades of military experience.  As a 1985 United States Air Force Academy graduate, Colonel Wright began her military career as Deputy Budget Officer with the Tactical Air Command at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with a follow-on assignment to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, as the Budget Officer.

Leaving active duty in 1990, Colonel Wright joined the Arizona National Guard.   During the next 21 years, she served in various positions including accounting and finance officer, communications officer, executive officer and, finally, as the Director of Staff for the Adjutant General in Phoenix.  Among her many achievements was to serve as Air Commander of Operation Jump Start from June 2006 to December 2008 during which she commanded more than 4,000 airmen on our Southwest border.

Colonel Wright holds a B.S. degree in Management from the U.S. Air Force Academy, an M.B.A degree from Webster University in South Carolina, an M.P.A. degree from the University of Arizona, and an M.A. in Educational Leadership from Arizona State University.  Colonel Wright’s military awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, and the Air Force Commendation Medal. 

How I Became a Humanitarian Journalist by Tim Shorrock

In the fall of 2008, I was asked to speak at a conference organized by Alexis Dudden, a professor at the University of Connecticut, on Humanitarianism and Responsibility. Most of the speakers were human rights activists, and I was honored to be the only journalist. In my talk, I explained how I had become an investigative journalist and focused on two events that completely changed my life: my coverage of Korea in 1980 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Here’s what I said:

When Alexis first asked me to speak here, she suggested that I talk about my experiences as a journalist writing about South Korea during the 1980s and New Orleans and the US Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. She saw a connection between my reporting in both instances. That was intriguing to me because 1) those experiences were among the most moving and emotionally jarring experiences of my adult life and certainly the highlights of my career as an investigative journalist and 2) nobody had ever suggested that those stories might be connected.

But as I began to think about the topic of this conference I had to figure out how my Korea and Katrina reporting would fit into our theme. How could I define it in the context of humanitarianism and responsibility? Particularly when journalists typically report about humanitarian disasters and situations from the perspective of observers, but rarely actually participate in them. And suddenly the answer loomed: I should talk about humanitarian journalism. It occured to me that that’s what I’ve been practicing all these years – without even knowing it. So today I’m going to create a new genre of journalism.

Let me start with my experiences in Korea. In 1980 a terrible event occured in Kwangju, a city in southwestern Korea that was the birthplace of Kim Dae Jung, South Korea’s former president and its most famous dissident. On May 18, 1980, hundreds of students and democratic activists were shot down and bayonetted to death in the wake of a violent military coup in which Kim Dae Jung – who’d nearly been murdered by the Korean CIA seven years earlier – was arrested and nearly executed. In response to the savagery of the Korean Special Forces who were responsible for the bloodshed that day, the citizens of Kwangju, who were well organized after years of oppression, took up guns and chased the military out of town. For seven days a citizens’ committee held the city, negotiating with the military to seek a peaceful end to the crisis. It was the first uprising against military rule in South Korea since the Korean War and is widely seen there as a turning point in Korea’s democratic movement.

At the time of the uprising, a US military general commanded the combined South Korean-US Joint Command – just as it does now. One of the most powerful figures in the country was the American ambassador, the late William Gleysteen. With Korean and US forces surrounding the city, the Kwangju Citizens Committee made a desperate attempt to bring Mr. Gleysteen into the negotiations. But taking his command from President Jimmy Carter, a man who had pledged to make human rights the centerpiece of US foreign policy, Gleysteen refused. On May 22, 1980, at a meeting at the White House, Carter’s national security team – led by national security adviser Zbigniew Brzenzski and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke – made a fateful decision to deploy Korean troops from the DMZ, the border with the North Korea, to put down the uprising.

Under my FOIA request, the secret minutes of that meeting were declassified. After a full discussion, the minutes stated, “there was general agreement that the first priority is the restoration of order in Kwangju by the Korean authorities with the minimum use of force necessary without laying the seeds for wide disorders later…Once order is restored, it was agreed we must press the Korean government, and the military in particular, to allow a greater degree of political freedom to evolve,” the White House decided. The U.S. position was summed up by Mr. Brzezinski as ”in the short-term support, in the longer-term pressure for political evolution.” But over the next eight years South Koreans endured one of the harshest police states in the world. And the people never forgot that all this had occured under a US president promising respect for human rights.

Even though I was living in the United States at the time, I was following these events almost on a minute by minute basis. In 1980, I was a graduate student in Asian Studies at the University of Oregon, and writing a thesis about the South Korean economy and its dependence on low-cost and unorganized workers. Workers and unions played a huge role in the democratic movement. I was shocked and ashamed that my government had aided and abetted a government that oppressed its citizens. A year after the Kwangju Uprising I went to the city and learned first-hand about the events there. I returned in 1985 and met many activists, some recently released from prison, who told me more stories and described their anger at the betrayal of the United States. Tell the American people why we are so angry, they asked me. Explain to them what we’ve been through. Make them understand that we believed America supported democracy, but when democracy was on the line, your leaders let us down. Tell Americans that we Koreans will never forget. I promised them that I would, and I promised myself that I would try to unravel the truth of the disgraceful American role in the events.

Why was I so outraged? Well, I had grown up in South Korea and Japan and had been raised by parents who spent their life serving humanitarian causes. My dad had learned the Japanese language while serving in the Navy during World War II and he and my mom, after meeting down the road from here at Yale Divinity School, had gone to Japan in 1947 as missionaries. For most of the next 20 years my dad provided humanitarin relief to Japan and South Korea sent by US churches. They both had a lifelong commitment to healing the wounds of war and improving the lives of people who had previously been America’s enemies. Their commitment placed a heavy burden on me and my siblings – not always a welcome one, I must add. But it nurtured in me a sense that I owed something to humanity and the knowledge that there were many many people less fortunate than me. And a belief that I had a responsibility to somehow make others aware of these truths.

Later, after South Korea became a democracy, the Korean parliament began looking into the events at Kwangju. The Bush administration refused to allow the US ambassador and the top US general to testify; instead it wrote a “white paper” explaining US actions. I read it carefully. After visiting Kwangju twice and reading everything I could find about the incident, I concluded it was full of holes. I filed a freedom of information request for all the background documents. By 1996 I had compiled over 3,500 pages of declassified documents.

They showed that, far from being ignorant of what the Korean military was planning in May 1980, the United States 1) gave the Korean generals a green light to use military forces to end the nationwide, peaceful protest movement that spread throughout South Korea in the spring of 1980 and 2) knew ahead of time that the generals were sending special forces troops trained to kill North Koreans to Kwangju and other hotspots.

We did not pull the trigger of the guns at Kwangju. But our government was complicit in the killing. To this day, no American official has ever acknowledged this or taken responsibility. But thanks to the documents I obtained, historians such as Chalmers Johnson and Don Oberdorfer have been able to write that the American role was far more direct than was ever admitted. Those documents told the truth. It’s one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. While my reporting on that story was fair, it was not objective – I took the side of the Korean democratic fighters who risked and lost their lives at the hands of one of the most vicious police states ever seen in Asia. My stories came from my identification with humanity and the truth. For a journalist there is nothing more important.

That’s also what drove me to report on Hurricane Katrina, which was in part a man-made tragedy where the government utterly failed to serve the people it is supposed to represent.

At the time of the hurricane I was living in Memphis, Tennessee. I was shocked along with most of the world at the inhumane response of the Bush administration. The thousands of people begging for help and  rescue. President Bush playing air guitar while the nation wept. Telling his FEMA chief, “Brownie,” that he was doing a ‘heck of a job’ as the terrible events unfolded. I soon heard about a free clinic that had sprung up during the hurricane to help the poor and dispossessed. This was amazing to me because I knew from first hand experience that hundreds of nurses had contacted the Red Cross and the government to volunteer their services – only to be told that there was no need. Another lie.

I went down to the clinic, which was called Common Ground, in late September – about 3 weeks after the storm. I stayed in New Orleans for weeks afterward, and later spent a lot of time on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It was heartbreaking.

Remember, I grew up in postwar Asia. I’ve seen a lot of destruction. But nothing like I saw in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, where the flooding from the collapse of the levees was the worst. For blocks in every direction it was complete destruction. Empty lots where houses once stood. Cars on roofs. Big black marks showing how many bodies had been found in certain houses. It looked like a war zone. People evacuated as far as Utah, not knowing if they’d ever see their homes and neighborhoods again. And all our government did was hand out big contracts to giant corporations and asked them to lead the ‘reconstruction’ – for a profit of course. The people, the suffering people, were last on their list.

When I was down there I felt an intense sense of shame. I was ashamed that my government could let its own citizens down like this. I was ashamed that a proud African American community, with an amazing cultural heritage, could be abandoned like so much lost cattle. And I was angry at the excuses and explanations from Bush and his minions. The racist response of people like Rush Limbaugh that the people of New Orleans just wanted a handout – statements he repeated this year when flooding struck white Iowa. I yearned, and still do, for a government that cared for its citizens. All I could think of while I was there was – we need a new New Deal, like Roosevelt started. We need a Works Progress Administration – giving jobs to youths and anyone else who wanted to help New Orleans rebuild. We still need that.

But most of all I was struck by the humanity and dignity of the people living there. There’s one day I’ll never forget as long as I live. I was in New Orleans on assignment for Mother Jones with a photographer friend, Kike Arnal, who’s from Venezuela. We’d spent the last few days in the Ninth Ward walking around. The only people in the area were rescue workers, the police and the National Guard. One day the city announced that homeowners could go back to their neighborhoods for the first time. Kike and I showed up at a big crossroads in the Ninth Ward.

As Kike and I drove up, we spotted a family getting out of a van and pulling on white overclothes to protect themselves as they entered their homes for the first time since the storm. We asked them if we could accompany them, and they readily agreed. It was a family of four: Evelyn Gilbert, and her three sons, all in their 50s: Rhett, Gustaf and Daniel. I felt privileged to be with them on such a sacred moment. Kike and I followed them slowly down North Claiborne and into a little cul-de-sac near the canal. We stopped and got out in front of a long white house completely off its foundation. Next to it was a tiny blue structure, leaning crazily to one side with its roof caving in. It had been Evelyn’s home, and was built in 1978, she said; the rest of the family lived next door. The heavy line at the top of the roofs showed that both houses had been almost completely under water.

As the Gilbert brothers explored their property, I hung back, feeling like an interloper and trying to avoid being intrusive. After a while, I asked Evelyn, who didn’t want to go near her house, where she was when the water came. She told me she was evacuated on the Friday before the storm, and ended up in Houston; she’s now staying in Mississippi with family. She watched anxiously as her sons pushed open her front door and gingerly took a few steps inside the destroyed house. Finally, Rhett walked out carrying a portable barbeque. “We found something at least,” he said. “But it’s the only thing salvageable.” He dusted it off as best he could and loaded it into the van.

Gustaf and Daniel then went to look at their house as Rhett told me a little about the neighborhood. “I was born and raised here, and this is the only place I know,” he said. “I know this city like the back of my hand.” He motioned to the other broken structures near their property. “All these are kin-folk. Used to walk to the church over there, the store.” Now, he said, he lives in Dallas, and everywhere he walks he runs into another freeway; worse, the services he needs are far away. He had no idea if he and his family will return, or where his former neighbors are. Finished with their short tour, the Gilbert family shook hands with Kike and me and slowly drove away. All I could do was sit inside my car and weep.

Later that day Kike and I ran across Michelle McKenney Jones outside of her family home in the Lower Ninth that was built by her grandfather in 1953 and where her mother lived until Hurricane Katrina and Rita swept through the area. Jones sighed as she surveyed the house, which was knocked off its foundations and is now uninhabitable. The social impact of the disaster in the Ninth Ward, she said, was compounded because this neighborhood once had the highest percentage of black homeownership in the entire Parish of Orleans. Then she paused as her emotions caught up with her.

“You’ve got to be our voice,” she told me and Kike. “This community doesn’t have a voice. Nobody seems to be listening to us. Represent us, please.” As she spoke, tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Kike and I stood with her in silence for a minute, trying to share her grief, and assured her that we would hold her words in our hearts. And I did tell her story. And I’m telling it to you now.

So what motivated me in both cases were the pleas of the victims and survivors – tell our story because no one else will: “Be our voice.” I heard almost the exact same words when I was reporting in Kwangju. I took those words like a solemn vow. Another motivation was the callousness of the government. Once, after my first visit to Kwangju, I met with the political officer at the US Embassy in Seoul. He told me the stories I’d heard about massive killing were exagerrations. Even the ones from the American missionaries, he said. Much later, when I got the documents, I was told officially by the State Department that, while Kwangju was a tragedy, “When all the dust settles, Koreans killed Koreans, and the Americans didn’t know what was going on and certainly didn’t approve it.”

Yet we trained these soldiers. We financed them. We told them their job was to defend their country against communism – and their own generals told them the rebels in Kwangju were communsts, to be treated like dogs (a statement that was repeated almost word for word on ABC’s Nightline by US General John Singlaub). Once I confronted Richard Holbrooke about Kwangju, and he literally screamed at me, explaining I had no real understanding of the national security stakes involved.

It was the same with Katrina. Nobody took responsibility. Brownie was fired, sure. But all the corporations that failed miserably to help – like the ones who couldn’t get the buses to New Orleans on time, or the ones who supplied the trailers filled with formaldahyde that poisoned – and still poison – so many residents of the Gulf – they got paid. Soon, America forgot what happened. Katrina was a national disgrace. There’s no other way to look at it. And that’s because it’s my responsibility as a journalist and a human being to speak for those who have no voice.

In other words, the truth of those residents of New Orleans and Kwangju is all of our truth. Humanitarianism means understanding the truth of lives we know nothing about. Responsibility means doing something to alleviate their pain and make sure their suffering never happens again. And to me that is the ultimate responsibilty of journalism – to go where ordinary people can’t go and tell the stories of those who suffer so the rest of the world can do something. It’s not “objective” journalism. There’s not “another side” to the story. It’s exposing reality – placing it before the public so they can’t hide from it. And our leaders can’t hide from it. It means taking risks. It means coming off like a fanatic sometime. It means making other people uncomfortable and even angry. And it means being human, and taking responsibility for the other inhabitants of this planet, and saying NO to the powers that be.

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Tim Shorrock is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. He was raised in Japan and South Korea and has been covering the intersection of national security and capitalism since the late 1970s. During the Vietnam War he was active in the peace and antiwar movement and writes and comments frequently about US military policies in Asia and the Korean peninsula.

Dr. Kovacs is a renowned performance physiologist, researcher, author, speaker and coach with an extensive background training and researching athletes and elite performers. His unique skillset has made him one of the worldwide leading performance experts in the area of optimizing human performance through the application of cutting edge, evidence-based information. He formerly directed the Sport Science, Strength & Conditioning and Coaching Education departments for the United States Tennis Association (USTA). He was an All-American and NCAA doubles champion in tennis at Auburn University and earned his PhD from the University of Alabama. He is a Certified Tennis Performance Specialist (CTPS) and Master Tennis Performance Specialist (MTPS) through the iTPA, and in 2012 he was the youngest ever recipient of the International Tennis Hall of Fame Educational Merit Award. He has worked with more than two dozen top professional tennis players on all aspects of physical training including John Isner, Robby Ginepri, Ryan Harrison and Sloane Stephens.



As a sports administrator and executive he has worked at the highest level of sports and industry. Most recently he was the Director of the Gatorade Sport Science Institute which was established in 1985 and is committed to helping athletes optimize their health and performance through research and education in hydration and nutrition science. He was also an executive at Pepsico working in the area of long term research and innovation focused on improving athletic performance and monitoring using science and technology. He also directed the Sport Science, Strength & Conditioning and Coaching Education departments for the United States Tennis Association (USTA). The USTA is the largest National Sports Governing Body in the US. During his tenure at the USTA he created the integration of the medical and sport science services for full time athletes at the National Training Center in Boca Raton, Florida as well as the development of full service care and training at satellite facilities in Los Angeles and New York. He was instrumental on securing a long term partnership with Cleveland Clinic Florida as well as creating a systematic approach to the training and treatment of tennis athletes throughout the US.  He is also the co-founder of the International Tennis Performance Association (iTPA), which is the worldwide leader in tennis-specific performance enhancement and injury prevention education and certification. It is an international organization with members in over 23 countries focused on improving standards in the training and treatment of tennis athletes from the weekend warrior to the top professional players. The organization offers in-person and online educational opportunities for Strength & Conditioning professionals, athletic trainers, physical therapists, medical doctors, chiropractors, tennis coaches and other healthcare providers who work with tennis athletes. The iTPA is also the official education provider for major tennis federations throughout the world. Dr. Kovacs has also served on the investment and finance committees for the National Strength & Conditioning Association and gone through a Finance program for executives through the Emory University Goizueta Business School.

As a leader in the scientific community Dr. Kovacs has earned Fellow status in the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The ACSM is the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles and abstracts in top research journals, in addition to presenting workshops and keynote addresses on five continents and well over 100 presentations. His research has been published in top tier scientific publications including the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, Sports Health, International Journal of Sports Physiology & Performance, Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise, Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research among others. In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious Plagenhoef Award for sport science achievement (youngest ever recipient), and in 2012 he was the youngest ever International Tennis Hall of Fame Educational Merit Award winner. He currently chairs both the PTR Sport Science Committee and the ITF Health Benefits of Tennis Taskforce. He also is a member of the USTA National Sport Science Committee and the International Relations Committee of the ACSM. Over his career he has served on editorial review boards and as a peer reviewer for more than a dozen scientific journals.



Along with his academic and scientific background, Dr. Kovacs is also a coach and former professional athlete. He was an All-American and NCAA doubles champion in tennis at Auburn University. After playing professionally, he completed his graduate work at Auburn University and earned his Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from The University of Alabama. Dr. Kovacs is a Certified Tennis Performance Specialist (CTPS) and Master Tennis Performance Specialist (MTPS) through the International Tennis Performance Association (iTPA), Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, a certified Health/Fitness Specialist through the American College of Sports Medicine, a United States Track and Field Level II Sprints Coach and USPTA-P1 Certified Tennis Coach. Over his career he has worked with more than two dozen top professional tennis players including John Isner, Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys, Robby Ginepri, Donald Young, Taylor Townsend as well as dozens of top professional athletes in the NBA, NFL and MLB.



Best Selling Author, Speaker Consultant and Media Expert: Dr. Kovacs has published six books which have been translated into more than a dozen languages on sport and exercise science topics focused on stretching, recovery, mental skills training, anatomy and training.  His expertise has been retained by major corporations, academic institutions and media outlets including Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Southern California, University of North Carolina, New York University Medical Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pepsico, Gatorade, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ESPN, NCAA, National Athletic Trainers Association, National Strength & Conditioning Association, American College of Sports Medicine, International Tennis Federation, Association of Tennis Professionals, Women’s Tennis Association among others.