Formerly the Director of Leadership, Organizational Development, & Mental Wellness for the Texas Rangers, Baroody brings over 20 years experience in professional sports, having overseen leadership, mental wellness and organizational development programs for the Texas Rangers Baseball Operations Department.
During his tenure with the Rangers, he spearheaded the revolutionary ‘Rangers U Player Pathway’ in partnership with ACU, creating bilingual, custom educational programs aimed at enriching players’ personal development and advancing their careers. He also played an integral role in leadership programs for professional sports staff, such as the Rangers ‘Leadership Academy’ for players, coaches and front-office personnel.
Baroody now leads the expansion and promotion of ACU’s robust portfolio of sports-related academic and continuing education programmes.
Baroody on the need for leadership:
“In order to maixmise performance, you have to invest in the holistic development of the indivual. If you are trying to maximise player development, we need to maximise staff development. It’s about taking that approach systematically and making sure it is scalable right across the organisation.
“Sport has a way of bringing people together, inspiring, captivationg and creating connections. So I think developing leaders in and through sport is a critical part of our mission and vision.
But the other component of leadership is helping individuals and groups to find their own genuine and authentic leadership style, but doing so through self-reflection, self-assessment, identifying strengths, understanding your opportunities. It doesn’t need to be the President of the company, or the Head Coach. Everyone has an opportunity in whatever area or walk of life they have, whatever role and responsibility they have, to embody leadership qualities. Our progression, is lead yourself, lead others, lead groups and lead organisations.”
Baroody on the role of higher education in sport at ACU:
“Our work now is to take what has typically been at the forefront in professional sports, whether it’s Learning and Development, or Staff Development and really making that accessible, making it scalable, formatting it in a way that can be easily intergrated into operations for a team or organisation, because we know the value of it, we know the impact it can have, we know that coaches, staff and players, they want to grow, they want to invest in themselves, to be the best they can be, so how can we intergrate that into team operations.
So that’s been the goal in partnering with teams and groups and organsations that really value this, to build those resources for their people. We are doing stuff across all sports and are working with different talent agencies that represent coaches and executives and we are seeing that those individuals want to grow, they want to advance in their carers, they want to be better for their team. So, it has been really exciting, it’s been really rewarding and incredibly fulfilling to work with organisations that want to invest in these areas for their people and it’s going to show up in results.”
Baroody on life with the Texas Rangers:
“I spent nine seasons with the Rangers in a variety of different roles, spanning from the scouting department, our player recruitment from the amateur side, to the Director of Baseball Operations, which was really focussed on contracts, transactions, negotiations, daily roster management.
In my last three years there, I was in Leadership Development, but really about human development, everything from education programmes, staff development, mental health and wellness across the Baseball portion of the organisation.
From an industry standpoint, from an organisational standpoint, recognising that if you are looking to maximise performance, it really comes down to a holistic development and support system, for not only players, but staff and supporting them in all areas of their life, on and off the field, personally and professionally”.
