Athletes Mean Business: Mays Program Prepares Student-Athletes For Career Success

Student-athletes Jacob Wimberly ’28, Ava Underwood ’26, Jaden Harris ’26, and Kam Dewberry ’26 enrolled at Texas A&M University relishing the challenge of competing at the Division I level. They also are gaining another competitive advantage as part of their college athletics experience: a business mindset through AmplifyU, an innovative program created through a collaboration between Mays Business School and the university’s athletics department.

AmplifyU is designed to prepare Aggie student-athletes to make financial decisions in relation to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Name, Image, Likeness Rule (NIL). Additionally, the course helps these students — many of whom are majoring in subjects other than business — consider key business issues they may face as professional athletes and in careers after their competitive days are over.

The program extends Mays Business School’s relationship with Texas A&M Athletics, which started in 2018. “Athletics have always been an important piece of the soul of Texas A&M University, and Mays Business School is proud to offer this innovative course that sets up student-athletes for success now and in the future,” says Mays Business School Dean Nate Sharp.

Leading the Team

AmplifyU’s founding came from the intersection of ideas from two former students who found success in the professional world after growing up in the world of athletics: Aggie football alum Chris Valletta ’00 and Alex Sinatra ’11 ’14, who was a competitive gymnast.

Sinatra, a sports attorney and a sports law professor at Texas A&M Law School, began thinking about a program for student-athletes in 2021 after the Supreme Court ruled on a case that allowed student-athletes to be paid for the use of their name, image, and likeness. “I wanted to make sure athletes were not taken advantage of in the new ecosystem of college athletics,” she says.

Around the same time, Valletta, who played professionally for three National Football League (NFL) teams and is now president of SideKick Operators, was looking for a way to prepare Aggie student-athletes for careers after athletics, based on his own struggle with identifying a professional path after retiring from football in 2003. Feeling lost at the time, he turned to his father for clarity. “My father told me, ‘No one can teach you the skills that are most in demand in business — and that’s the skills you have between your ears, the instinctual leadership skills that you’ve been learning since you were 5 years old playing little league baseball,” Valletta recalls.

The next part of that heart-to-heart planted the seed for AmplifyU because Valletta realized that he already had the skills from his athletic career to succeed off the field and could prosper if given the proper business knowledge. “My dad said to me, ‘What skills did you learn playing sports?’ and I just started naming off: dedication, discipline, the desire to be the best, perseverance, performing under pressure, handling adversity, responding to a loss, working as a team, communication, coachability, and working in a multicultural team dynamic,” Valletta says. “My father smiled and said, ‘That is all you need, that’s it. You bring that to the workforce and you’re going to dominate.’”

Valletta and Sinatra each brought their ideas to leaders at Mays Business School and through collaboration with Janet Parish, director of Mays Business School’s Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute, and Texas A&M Athletics, AmplifyU launched as a series of four-day seminars in 2022.

Aggie track and field athlete Jaden Harris ’26, who took part in the seminars in both January and May 2023, says signing up for AmplifyU was a “no brainer.” He appreciated learning about loans, credit cards, starting and keeping a business, and employee management. “These topics will help me with a base knowledge of business and how to talk to people,” says Harris, who is majoring in marketing and hopes to become a model or actor.

Gaining Field Position

Building on the success of the seminars, the program expanded to include a credit-bearing course this fall called AmplifyOne: Athletes Mean Business, offered through Mays’ Department of Marketing. This semester-long course, taught by Parish and the Sales Leadership Institute’s Johnna Melton, covers key topics such as effective communication, personal branding, business networking, digital presence, entrepreneurship, and future educational opportunities in business.

The course also taps a roster of guest speakers that includes former Aggie athletes in baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, equestrian, football, women’s golf, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, and volleyball who are thriving in the business world.

“The most meaningful experiences that I’ve had thus far are the speakers who come weekly and pour advice into the young people,” says student Kam Dewberry ’26, an ag leadership major who plays for the Texas A&M football team.

AmplifyU organizers have further plans to expand the program’s scope to include a series of in-depth workshops, corporate site visits, micro-internships, and a private network on LinkedIn.  “No matter when or how they choose to enter the business world, we’re equipping them with knowledge, vocabulary, frameworks, and, most importantly, a network to help them do so, whether that’s the day they graduate or the day they retire from a sport,” Parish says. “We’re here for them.”

A Touchdown

Texas A&M Athletics is pleased with the results and now views the program as a game-changer that will help with recruitment efforts. “AmplifyU is an invaluable resource for our student-athletes at Texas A&M. Our athletics department’s partnership with Mays Business School to provide this program is at the cutting edge of the NIL space in educating student-athletes,” says Texas A&M Director of Athletics Trev Alberts. “This is a pivotal and transformational time in college athletics, and here at Texas A&M, we firmly believe that preparing our Aggie athletes in all facets of name, image, and likeness is what sets us apart from the rest of the country.”

Thirty-five student-athletes who compete on Texas A&M’s football, swimming and diving, and equestrian teams participated in the initial AmplifyOne course this fall. Of those, 75% are freshmen. One of them, swimmer Jacob Wimberly ’28, who is majoring in biology, says the course has expanded his view of the future. “This class has left an impact on how I view business and my role as a student-athlete at Texas A&M greatly and has helped open my vision to the many opportunities I have,” he says.

Calling it “life changing,” Ava Underwood ’26, who competes on the Aggie women’s volleyball team, says AmplifyU is helping her develop a strong business foundation. “The information provided is great insight on how to make the most of your talents and abilities as a student-athlete,” the marketing major says. “There is nothing comparable to the unique caliber of this experience in the nation, and we are blessed as Texas A&M student-athletes to have the opportunity to be part of this special program.”

Calling on the Aggie Network

Underscoring the strength of the Aggie Network, more than 50 former student-athletes have supported AmplifyU as guest speakers. Many of them say they believe the program addresses missing pieces in the student-athlete’s academic experience. “If I were an 18-year-old kid coming to Texas A&M and knowing what we know now, I’d want this opportunity to learn more about the business side,” says Dat Nguyen ’98, a former Aggie linebacker who earned his degree in agriculture leadership, played in the NFL, and now owns a Chick-fil-A franchise in Fort Worth.

Former Texas A&M defensive back Ray Mickens ’96, who earned his accounting degree from Mays, agrees that AmplifyU gives student-athletes a larger perspective of their competitive experience. “There are challenges when it comes to running your own business and the success rate for being an entrepreneur is not high,” says Mickens, who also played in the NFL before opening his own business running airport concessions. “Commitment and consistency are very important, and I think that being a student-athlete helps you with those two areas by going to practice every day, committing to your teammates, and having a sense of accountability between you and your teammates. As a business owner, there’s really no one who is going to hold you accountable, except for the free market. You have to be committed and consistent with what you believe in and what you’re doing, and then you have a chance to be successful.”

For Chris Valletta, AmplifyU is also about current and former student-athletes’ commitment to the Aggie Core Values. “It is our responsibility as Aggies to develop the next generation of business leaders because businesses are the engine of our economy that keeps us strong, safe, and secure,” says Valletta, who along with a dozen former student-athletes and friends of the program, has started an endowment through the Texas A&M Foundation to make AmplifyU sustainable. “If the economy fails, we all fail — and nobody wants that. So we’ve really got to really contribute, and AmplifyU is a way we can build better leaders.”