Jerry Colangelo
Arizona Diamondbacks and Phoenix Suns
Phoenix, AZ USA
"You can't do anything about yesterday, you certainly can't do anything about tomorrow, but you can control what you're doing today."
Career Roadmap
Jerry's work combines: Business, Sports, and Accomplishing Goals
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Here's the path I took:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Sports, Kinesiology, and Physical Education/Fitness, General
University of Illinois at Chicago
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life has been direct
1.
Grew up playing basketball and baseball, wanted to be a professional athlete.
2.
Blew out his arm at age 17, essentially ending his dreams of becoming a pitcher in the MLB.
3.
Says you can't "sit in the corner, coil up and be miserable for the rest of your life" just because you hit a setback.
4.
Grew up in a poor, Italian-American community in Chicago, where they "didn't have very much."
5.
Got a job as a the manager of the Phoenix Suns at age 28, the youngest general manager in professional sports history.
6.
Had to move his family from Chicago to Phoenix with very little money; "it was like starting a new life."
7.
Says that through his upbringing in sports, in a poor neighborhood, he became unafraid to fail.
8.
People think he's caught "lucky breaks," but he believes it's because he's taken every opportunity possible, didn't just wait for his ship to come in.
Defining Moments
Experiences and challenges that shaped me
Grew up in a poor Italian American community in Chicago