Meet Steve
Charity founder, Board Director, Olympic gold medalist, husband and father - Steve wears many hats.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Steve currently resides in Calgary, Canada with his wife and two children. His great passions, aside from his family, are sports, business, education, and the overall pursuit of excellence. He’s recently decided to become a distance runner.
Below, you can learn more about Classroom Champions, Steve’s sports experience, with a few fun facts along the way. To learn more about what Steve is all about, check out his newsletter here.
About Steve
Steve is a recognized leader at the intersection of sport, business, and education, known for helping individuals and organizations get better and better.
He helped push his team to Olympic gold. Now, he helps others achieve their big goals.
Classroom Champions
After retiring from sport, Steve found himself visiting schools where he would give an inspirational speech to the students, and then leave.
Surely there was a way to make a bigger, more lasting impact?
Steve knew that many of the lessons he’d learned as a dedicated athlete could help young people learn, grow, and succeed.
Together with his sister, Dr. Leigh Mesler Parise, Steve founded Classroom Champions, an international ed-tech non-profit organization that provides Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum and mentorship with help from hundreds of Olympians, Paralympians, NFL, NHL, and NCAA (student-) athletes.
Schools turn to Classroom Champions for inspiring SEL and mentorship programs to improve engagement, build growth mindsets, and inspire positive classroom culture.
Classroom Champions Olympians, Paralympians, and college student-athletes mentor over 50,000 students annually, while the organization reaches more than 1,000,000 students through programs, online events, and online education content.
Leadership Consulting, Speaking, and Writing
As a leadership development consultant. Steve founded Shift210 Consulting and worked with multi-national corporations to increase employee development, leadership abilities, team performance, and community engagement.
Steve keynotes executive conferences and national conventions from Vancouver to Orlando. He has spoken about the Olympic ideals in Olympia, Greece, and sat on panels in Sochi, Russia and Dubai to discuss organizations’ role in creating peace through sport.
Today, Steve provides speaking services and “fireside chats” to organizations looking to bring the better-and-better mentality to their teams.
Subscribe to Steve’s newsletter here to receive his regular, thoughtfully written articles, or check out the latest on his blog.
“Let the records show the Americans won by 0.38 seconds, their first bobsled gold in 62 years. Anyone who knew Mesler understood it was so much more. It was for everyone who appreciated the sacrifice and commitment he made, what pushed him throughout his childhood, what pushed him to push the sled.”
— Bucky Gleason, The Buffalo News
FAQs
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In 2009, Mesler and his sister, Dr. Leigh Mesler Parise, founded Classroom Champions and have grown it into an international organization affecting change in classrooms and donating needed technology utilizing Olympians and Paralympians as around the year mentors to thousands of students[9] in the U.S., Canada, and Costa Rica.
Classroom Champions empowers children to thrive academically, socially and emotionally. Through the mentorship and mindset of world-class athletes, we improve student engagement, build growth mindsets, and inspire positive classroom culture.
Learn more about Classroom Champions here: https://www.classroomchampions.org/
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Steve is a very proud American who has resided in Canada for almost 20 years. When he moved to Calgary, it offered the best on- and off-ice training environment for bobsled on the continent, and Steve was dedicated to winning - so he made the move. It all worked out, and he won gold at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and then went on to marry his wife Rhiannon and have two awesome CanadAmerican kids.
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Currently his current personal best 5k is <22 minutes.
As you may know, Steve was a sprinter - his speed is what landed him on the USA bobsled team and onto the top of the Olympic podium. After he hit 40, Steve decided to try something new and began extending his distance.
It turns out, he enjoys doing difficult things and before long he was hooked. Now he occasionally runs 10k - just for fun.
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Yes.
“Be the person you would want to be inspired by. No matter what you do, kids are going to look up to you just as you looked up to others who were successful. Be that inspiration you wanted.”
— Steve Mesler, speaking to MBA students at the Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management