Catching up with Jocelyn Gates
The time we spend at our desks can take up a lot of our time. And while what we do to make a living is important to our lives, it isn’t the full picture of who we are.
So we've set out to discover how our team spends their time during the work day and once they clock out.
Jocelyn Gates is Vice President, College & Coaching Practice. She supports searches for head coaches, athletic directors, and administrators and was previously the Senior Associate Director of Athletics with the Ohio State Department of Athletics.
Read on to learn more about Jocelyn.
I wake up, well, my kids wake me up early in the morning and get ready to go drop them off at school as early as I can.
I have three kids. I have a nine-year-old girl, a five-year-old boy, and a one-year-old boy. The nine year-old girl, that's my bonus daughter. So I get my five-year-old and my one-year-old ready an then drop them off. I try to get a workout in really quick, early in the morning. Once I get back home, I jump onto my computer, and then go through emails, read the D1 ticker to see what's going on within college athletics.
I get through my emails to see what I need to do, check out my calendar and any meetings that I might have.
If it's a day where we don’t have search Zooms or anything going on, I'm trying to build up my network and think of names for jobs that might open in the future.
I’m constantly trying to think of future jobs that might open and names that might go into it.
I'm trying to think, is there going to be a deputy AD job that's going to come open at a Power Five institution? I’ll put those prospecting lists together so that when those jobs do open up, we already have some names of people who might be good fit ready to go.
Then I’ll continue to try to get to know people in the field. I was on campus my whole career, so I know a lot of people in the college space already, but I'm realizing in this job there's still so many more people I need to get to know and many more coaches I need to get to know.
Now, on a day where we're in the middle of a search, things are a little different. For example, last week, I woke up first thing in the morning–7 AM–hopped on Zooms for a women's basketball search and was pretty much on Zooms with the institution and the candidate all day long.
Some days it's fielding Zooms all day long. Some days it's just getting to know people.
A lot of times people reach out, wanting to get their name on our radar. So, I make sure I'm talking to as many people as I can.
There’s a big difference from being on campus to now working on the recruiting side.
The best part is being able to make your own schedule.
Obviously, your schedule is sometimes based on the institution you're working with, but when you work on campus, you're nervous that you're going to get a call at three o'clock in the morning with a student athlete issue. You're also having to deal with the politics, NIL, and the transfer portal. Your life is based on 17 to 25 year-olds.
I’ve hired coaches and staff members before, so I feel like I’ve been able to have a smooth transition. You can tell the TurnkeyZRG college team has been together a long time because they're a well-oiled machine. They just go, They just run with it.
I’m still learning how they do things, but also understanding it's okay to do things my way.
They encourage that. It's been a great transition and they've been wonderful to work with.
The best part is I'm mentally able to be more present for my family right now which is something that I really am thankful for. I feel like there's a lot of burnout on campus, and this is giving me a moment, although our job is still high-volume, to breathe.
My husband and I are still trying to figure out how to balance our busy schedules (Jocelyn’s husband is the Head Men’s Basketball coach at the University of Missouri). But again, campus is 24-7. I have my weekends back now, so I'm able to now be more present for my husband. I can make it to all of his games. This is our first time living together since we've been married, since we've been together.
We try to make sure that we both of us find pockets to be more present.
Like this past Sunday, we were able to wake up, we were able to go to church together, take the kids shopping for books and played basketball together. So, we're trying to just be more intentional about finding that time to be present as a family, but we're all still adjusting and working on it.
After I’m done with my work day, I would love to read or watch movies, but unfortunately, or fortunately, I'm getting my Doctor of Education right now at Boston College. So after I hang out with my kids and get them to bed, I do homework. We're just starting on our dissertations right now, but I'll be done May of 2024.
I'm going to ask everybody to call me Dr. Gates.
I'm just kidding. I won't do that but, I’m pretty pumped. So that's what I do for fun.
If I do have some downtime, I'm going to sit down watch all of the reality TV.
Jocelyn and her family
Jocelyn’s children
Jocelyn and her husband, Dennis
As a black woman in college sports, I know it can be difficult, but I think some other people maybe have felt it more than me.
There's not a lot of faces like mine in leadership. A lot of us have been pigeonholed on campus into the student athlete development, compliance, academic areas, whereas the people that become athletic directors, a lot of times you see them coming from the external areas of fundraising, the people that handle money and revenue generation.
That can be difficult when you don't see people that look like you. You wonder, do I have a place in this business?
I've been so fortunate that I've had amazing– I don't say mentors, I say champions–in my life because I feel like a champion goes above and beyond a mentor.
A champion will make a phone call on your behalf, even when you don’t ask.
I've had amazing champions in my life that have been able to promote me, move me forward, and speak on my behalf, so I may have not had to deal with some of those barriers and difficulties as much. I went to an HBCU for undergrad and I feel like they taught us a hustle and a grind that you just have to have as a person of color.
I see all difficulties as opportunities.
If they think I can't do this, I see it as a chance show them that I can.
Let me grind and show people how I can do exactly what they think I can't do. So maybe it's hard for me to see what the difficulties are because I don't care about them. I'm just going to run through a wall regardless.
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ABOUT TURNKEYZRG
Founded in 1996, TurnkeyZRG is a highly specialized talent recruitment/executive search firm filling C-level, senior-level and mid-management level positions throughout sports, entertainment, music and media. Over the past 25 years, TurnkeyZRG has filled more than 1,400 positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. TurnkeyZRG helps teams, leagues, stadiums, arenas, theaters, college athletic departments, events, sponsors, agencies, media companies, private equity companies and other clients identify, recruit and hire the very best management talent. Turnkey now benefits from ZRG’s global footprint, full array of industry practice groups, data-driven, analytical search tools, and technology investment in changing the way executive search/talent recruiting is done. TurnkeyZRG becomes a tech-enabled disrupter of the prior executive search model.