C-10 Mentoring & Leadership Podcast Matt Fulks/

This week we're joined by Mary Esselman, the President and CEO of Operation Breakthrough here in Kansas City. Mary has an interesting background in education, starting as a teacher in a prison before focusing on children from under-resourced areas. She taught in the Kansas City area, moved to Detroit, and then came back to KC to begin working at Operation Breakthrough. (If you’re not familiar, Operation Breakthrough, which started in 1971, provides a safe, loving and educational environment for children in poverty and empowers their families through advocacy, emergency aid and education.)
We’re incredibly fortunate that Mary and her incredible team at Operation Breakthrough allow our C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program to use their space on a fairly regular basis during the school year.
Mary takes our Pre-Game Batting Practice before diving in to the 10 questions, including one about our C word, COMMITMENT.
 
LINKS:
To learn more about the awesome work at Operation Breakthrough, visit their website.
For more information about the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program for high school students, visit our website.
To make a financial gift to give students life-changing one-on-one mentoring, visit our secure donation page.
For all episodes of the C-10 podcast and ways you can listen, click here.
If you’d like to make a comment, have a suggestion for a future guest, or your company would like to help underwrite this podcast, please visit our contact page.

This week on the C-10 Podcast we're chatting with Ryan Watson, a one-on-one mentor in the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program. Ryan is finishing his second year in the program. As his student Korey heads to college in the fall, Ryan is eager to get his next student.
Ryan grew up in the Kansas City area, graduated from Rockhurst High School and then Kansas State University. Incidentally, he is the nephew of award-winning jazz musician, Bobby Watson.
For eight years, Ryan was a District Manager with EcoLab. For the past seven years, he has worked his way up to agency owner with Farmers Insurance.
 
LINKS:
For more information about the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program for high school students, visit our website.
To make a financial gift to give students life-changing one-on-one mentoring, visit our secure donation page.
For all episodes of the C-10 podcast and ways you can listen, click here.
If you’d like to make a comment, have a suggestion for a future guest, or your company would like to help underwrite this podcast, please visit our contact page.

One of our favorite nights on the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program calendar happened recently. It’s when we invite the next year’s cohort of students to come to a session and see what C-10’s about. As part of that, we interview the current seniors to see what they’ve taken from their two to four years in the program.
So, this week you’re meet and hear from five of this year’s seven seniors: Alissa from Sumner Academy, Avary from Piper, Dawson from Liberty North, Lisa from Wyandotte, and Trey from Truman. (Our other two seniors, Isaiah and Korey, weren’t with us due to high school baseball games.)
As an extra bonus, these five seniors were interviewed in front of the group by longtime Kansas City sports TV anchor — and C-10 mentor — Al Wallace.
One final note: if you’re a supporter of C You In The Major Leagues and, specifically, the C-10 program, as a financial donor, a mentor, an in-kind donor…whatever it might be…THANK YOU! You are making all of this possible.
 
LINKS:
Register here for the 2nd Annual C You At Topgolf event.
To go straight to the auction page, which closes on May 25th, click here.
For more information about the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program for high school students, visit our website.
To make a financial gift to give students life-changing one-on-one mentoring, visit our secure donation page.
For all episodes of the C-10 podcast and ways you can listen, click here.
If you’d like to make a comment, have a suggestion for a future guest, or your company would like to help underwrite this podcast, please visit our contact page.

For those who've met her in the last 10 years or so, Mandy Shoemaker is an entrepreneur. And rightly so. In 2013, she and her sister-in-law Michala Gibson founded Prairie Elder Care, which provides residential care in a unique setting for people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia. And then last year they launched Connectivities, a subscription-based service that provides boxes of supplies for activities to help build connections for families and other caregivers for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Before 2013, though, Mandy had a much different career. She started as an elementary school teacher in Oregon, where she worked in some challenging circumstances. She returned to the Kansas City area -- her childhood home -- in 2005, first as a principal in the Blue Valley School District, before moving over to the Olathe School District.
With all of this awesomeness that she’s been a part of, Mandy was a 2019 Women Who Mean Business honoree from the Kansas City Business Journal, and then in 2020, Prairie Elder Care was one of the Kansas City Chamber’s Top 10 Small Businesses.
We chat with Mandy about her career, building relationships, the importance of CARE in leadership, and much more.
 
LINKS:
To learn about Prairie Elder Care, go here.
For info about Connectivities, click here.
Register here for the 2nd Annual C You At Topgolf event.
For more information about the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program for high school students, visit our website.
To make a financial gift to give students life-changing one-on-one mentoring, visit our secure donation page.
For all episodes of the C-10 podcast and ways you can listen, click here.
If you’d like to make a comment, have a suggestion for a future guest, or your company would like to help underwrite this podcast, please visit our contact page.

Periodically since February, we’ve been introducing you to the remarkable people featured in the new book, "One Good Thing." 
This week, you’re going to “meet” Ryan Lefebvre. We're putting "meet" in quotation marks because although you likely know Ryan’s work as a Royals broadcaster for 25 years, you’re going to hear a different side of Ryan in this conversation, as we chat about race, how George Brett’s brother helped Ryan get his first real glove, and how that led to a project that’s put gloves on the hands of hundreds of boys and girls in Kansas City. And much more.
Ryan grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a former Major League player and manager, before going to the University of Minnesota on a baseball scholarship, where he was a first-team all-Big 10 selection in 1993.
He spent the first four years of his major-league broadcasting career with the Minnesota Twins before coming to Kansas City in 1999, replacing the popular Fred White. (He mentions that in this conversation.)
Ryan is the founder of Gloves for Kids, which has raised money for youth programs in Kansas and Missouri since 2001. In 2011, he was the recipient of the John J. “Buck” O’Neil MVP Award for his commitment to youth in Kansas City. In 2015, Ryan was named the recipient of the Olathe NAACP Diversity in Sports Award.


LINKS:
To order the new book, "One Good Thing," from Amazon, go here.
To get a copy of "One Good Thing" signed by Dayton Moore, click here.
Register here for the 2nd Annual C You At Topgolf event.
For more information about the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program for high school students, visit our website.
To make a financial gift to give students life-changing one-on-one mentoring, visit our secure donation page.
For all episodes of the C-10 podcast and ways you can listen, click here.
If you’d like to make a comment, have a suggestion for a future guest, or your company would like to help underwrite this podcast, please visit our contact page.

Sandra Olivas is a Kansas City lifer. She grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, went to the University of Kansas, spent a brief time with a TV station in Topeka, Kansas, before coming home and becoming one of the top reporters for KCTV-5.
Sandra spent about 14 years at the station. But then her family, through the tragic death of her mom in a car accident caused by a high-speed police chase, altered her career.
She then went into the banking world, first with Bank of Labor Community Bank and, since January 2021 with First Federal Bank of Kansas City, where she is the Community Development Officer.
(On a side note, if you’ve listened to other episodes of the C-10 Podcast you know that First Federal Bank sponsors the Student Spotlight that hits around the middle of each episode. We are incredibly grateful to bank president JR Buckner and the First Federal Bank family for their continued support of C You In The Major Leagues and, specifically, the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program.)
This interview was recorded in front of our C-10 students and mentors at Music Theater Heritage inside Crown Center on Wednesday night, April 19.
As we do with many of these interviews, we’ve taken out the students and mentors’ questions at the end, but you’re left with a fascinating conversation with someone who followed her dream, pivoted after tragedy struck — although not right when that happened, as she will point out during this chat — but she’s continuing to make a great impact on her hometown.
Max Utsler, who does interviews on the C-10 Podcast from time to time, was one of Sandra’s college professors at KU and interviewed her for this week's podcast.
 
LINKS:
Register here for the 2nd Annual C You At Topgolf event.
For more information about the C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program for high school students, including how current eighth to 10th graders in the KC Metro can apply, visit our website.
To make a financial gift to give students life-changing one-on-one mentoring, visit our secure donation page.
For all episodes of the C-10 podcast and ways you can listen, click here.
If you’d like to make a comment, have a suggestion for a future guest, or your company would like to help underwrite this podcast, please visit our contact page.