ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Shaun Ward
Outdoor Track & Field, 2008-12
BBA, Management & Marketing, 2011; MBA, Management, 2013
Hometown: Eagle River (Chugiak HS)

Then…
*All-American in 400-meter hurdles (2009) and three-time NCAA qualifier
*Five-time GNAC champion (400 hurdles, 4x400 and 4x100 relays) and seven-time All-GNAC performer
*Career bests of 52.00 in the 400-meter hurdles (still UAA record and No. 3 all-time in GNAC) and 15.02 in the 110-meter hurdles
*Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-West Region (2012) and three-time GNAC All-Academic Team honoree

Now…
*Lives in Kirkland, Wash., with wife Yulia
*Senior Manager of Consulting at Smartsheet, where he has worked since 2016

You had a very successful high school career and must have been pursued by other schools. What gave you the confidence to know UAA was the right choice and stay home for college?
“UAA was not on my mind. I had every expectation to continue my track career at college in California. I was pursued by a couple California schools and ended up choosing Humboldt State. But after about a week and a half of being down at Humboldt, I was like, ‘No, this is not for me.’ The program wasn’t as mature as I was led to believe, which put me in a position to start being more proactive about UAA, my home! I hadn’t done a lot of due diligence relative to learning about UAA, but the stars aligned and I ended up coming back and contacting Coach (Michael) Friess. After my freshman year of competing and getting second at conference championship as a 400 hurdler, Coach Friess and Coach (Rafael) Echavarria – my hurdles coach – wanted to keep me around, saw me as a valuable asset and ensured UAA would be my alumni school one day in the future. That really was the beginning of a successful college career.”

How did your coaches have an impact on your development?
“I give a lot of credit to Coach Friess, who I’ve called my second dad for a very long time now. I think where Coach Friess was successful was less about me as an athlete and more about me as a human being, and understanding that in life there are progressions we all go through, and through these progressions, it’s not always going to be easy. There are going to be peaks and valleys, but as long as you can liken back to what your progressions are, your ‘why’, the process that you’re in and the goals that you want to achieve, you’ll be better positioned to achieve those goals. I think what I was able to do was triangulate what Coach Friess was saying relative to who I was as a human being and how I apply that as an athlete – a student-athlete. Being able to bridge the gap between those areas really put me in a position to have the mental aptitude and strength to be successful as a student-athlete. Connecting mind and body was something really important that Coach Friess focused on very heavily with me, and to this day I reference back to what he did and what he instilled in me as a human being that applies to my personal life, my athletic life, and now my work life.” I owe a tremendous amount of credit to all of my coaches (Ryan Williams, T.J. Garlatz, Tony Tomsich, Rafael Echavarria). All of those leaders brought their own brand/profile to the track every day and those complimentary skill sets helped all of us athletes focus on the necessary aspects that put us in positions to make long-lasting impacts.

What were your most memorable experiences on the track at UAA?
“The most memorable story is me as a sophomore at the national championships in Texas, where I was two hurdles away from winning the national championship and my left track spike came halfway off. I wish it had come all the way off so I could have continued (without breaking stride). So, I ended up getting sixth, which was still All-American. It hurt for the longest time, but it also played a big role in who I am today and my outlook on life. Not everything is going to be perfect, but it has more to do with what you do after a tough outing. I think it was important to go through a tough time, have to reflect on that, but push forward and be better for it. Going through that experience helped me put a lot of aspects in perspective and narrow my focus on where I need to hone in to be better with things that I can control.

“That (experience) was important, but it’s definitely not the funnest. The most fun time I had on the track was a 4-by-4 relay at the conference championships when Ethan Hewitt – our best runner alongside me – was out. We had two alternates, and I was the anchor leg. By the time I got the baton, we were in third place behind Western Oregon and Northwest Nazarene, and Northwest Nazarene probably had a 50-meter lead, if not more. And I used the entire 400-meter track to catch him. I ran my fastest 4-by-4 split, I think 46-something. Just the way the crowd was energized, it was a really cool experience. I was all about the team, always. Track is an individual sport but there is still a common goal that you look to achieve. That’s where my passion was and I tried to rally the team around that concept. But that was a defining moment in my track career where the team came together under tough circumstances and we still came out with a conference-championship win, and I was able to carry it through the finish line. That was fun.”

Do you recall watching a teammate achieve something that was impressive to you?
“As a leader on the team and through my years there, being able to see how difficult of a dynamic it is to have a track team in Alaska, who has to travel all the time, who does not have the numbers (of athletes) as far as the sport is defined by scoring. Just having bodies helps you win championships, and we didn’t have that. We had careers where we were going into conference championships and we were always getting first place in each event, but Western Washington was getting second, third and fourth, and they were accumulating more points because they had all of these bodies and we didn’t. Being able to see all of the work that we put in on the front end, the adversity we had to go through on a daily basis, looking back at that and seeing all the work being applied in a given event was inspiring. Whether it was seeing someone win a steeplechase or watching David Registe win a 100- or 200-meter race, that brought joy and really brought everything together in terms of the ‘why’ – why we’re here and the goals that we’re looking to accomplish. That, to me, was more special than looking at a given individual and the success that they had.

“But then obviously there’s the Marko (Cheseto) story, right? He was someone I was very close to, and seeing how he persevered is a heartwarming story. It’s humbling, and it really put things in perspective and put me in a position as a leader to talk to our team about the importance of being a family and a community, and really what we can achieve together if we focus on what we can control. If we can do that, we can really be proud of what we accomplished.”

Was there a professor or certain class that had a major impact with you?
“Dr. (Rashmi) Prasad was my professor during my undergrad and my master’s courses. I always liken back to him because he’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, but typically when you find those intelligent individuals sometimes what they lack is empathy and the ability to relate. Dr. Prasad had that fine balance where he had his intelligence but he was able to ground himself in his audience. He was able to make what he was teaching applicable to what we know and how we can apply it, knowing that he’s dealing with 20-something-year-olds who don’t have a lot of working experience. He was very good at bringing things back to real life, putting things in a position where we could understand. He was very impactful in that sense, and I was able to not only learn from him from an academic side, but I was able to understand how I could apply that in my personal life, and I apply it today now that I am in that business world.”

You coached as you were getting your feet wet in the business world. How did you get started professionally after you graduated?
“As I was wrapping up my MBA degree, I knew I needed to get into my professional career, as I did make the decision not to pursue going pro in track. Just based on my injuries, it just didn’t seem feasible. So I had to go to the next chapter, and it was a bit of a switch. You wake up with a routine every day of going in the weight room, going to school, having a laid-out plan, and I entered this world where it was a lot of ambiguity. It put me in a position where I really had to think critically and figure out what I was doing and what I needed to do next. But I was fortunate enough to still maintain my UAA relationships. So I continued to help the team as much as I could (as a graduate assistant coach). I always told myself, regardless of being a formal coach or not, I will always try to give back to the community where I can, and the UAA community was top priority for me. Because of how much they invested in me, I wanted to continue to invest in the younger generation. And Coach Friess put me in the position to do so while still working at Jacobs Engineering for almost two years.

“I love where I’m at right now – I would not change it for the world – but I would not have been where I am today if it wasn’t for working at Jacobs*, because it really did lay the foundation for me to understand the types of business acumen that I would need to be successful. It helped me tie a lot of the leadership components that I learned at UAA into how I could apply that in a professional setting – building and maintaining healthy relationships, understanding what the common vision is and the tactics that we need to take to be successful with that vision. There were so many business settings I got thrusted into that – absent of being at UAA and learning those foundational capabilities – I don’t think I would have been as successful as I was.”
*Ward worked as a project manager and project controls specialist locally as Jacobs Engineering from 2013-16.

Explain what you do now at Smartsheet?
“I am a senior manager of consulting, so I manage a group of consulting manager leaders. Ultimately, our consulting organization is responsible for building and deploying Smartsheet solutions for our customers. Smartsheet allows you to collaborate, manage, and report on work in real time, automate workflows, and deploy new processes at scale. Smartsheet is more than a productivity or task app, it’s the end-to-end work execution platform with the proven power to help your organization achieve more. We are a collaboration tool that really was meant for disparate workstreams – people working all over the place, just like you see now with COVID – where you are dependent on other organizations to complete a project. It’s not just working on a project by yourself, you have other stakeholders that you have to work with, so it’s a tool that really increases the collaboration across businesses to achieve and execute more. We deliver those solutions for our customer. We are customer-facing every day. We are trying to understand their true business problems and mitigate those problems by building a solution that maps to their business, so that we can ultimately achieve value for our customer.

“One of the coolest aspects of my job has been the opportunity to travel the world, before COVID hit, of course. I’ve had the chance to work with customers all over the U.S., along with Spain, France and Germany. It’s already given me the gift of making long-lasting relationships.”

How did being a part of a team with UAA Track & Field prepare you to face the challenges you face in the business world?
“I think most situations that we’re put in – when the goal is to be successful at something, whatever that is – it’s never as simple as it seems. You’re put in a position where you need to achieve a goal. You’ve got to go be a national champion in the 400-meter hurdles – that’s the headline. But how do you think critically about understanding what it means to be successful throughout that journey that I’m on, and how do you define short-term, measurable goals that you can establish along that journey? So, I think it helped me take a step back, be able to think critically about a given situation and understand that I can’t just go from point A to point B. No, I have to establish milestones that I can reflect back on and be like, ‘Hey, yes, I achieved this small step to a larger goal.’ So building those progressions and understanding how to think through what the overall journey is and how you get there has put me in a position – as I get thrust into the business world – to take a step back, understand what I need to do and how I’m going to get there. I think it’s really helped with my critical thinking in that aspect. But also, it’s helped remind me that we are never really independent. There is always somebody that you are going to have to answer to. There’s always a dependency. Being at UAA and being in track & field, again, has helped me understand how I work with a larger group of individuals and how each individual has their different motivators. There is psychology that goes into it, but if you can find what motivates people and hone in on that, it puts you in a much better position to be successful across a larger body of individuals.”