108: Mike Thomas on leaving the corporate world for the nonprofit world

With the NCAA men’s basketball tournament happening right now — and the championship of the NAIA national tournament being crowned last weekend — this seems like a great time to chat with this week’s guest.But, frankly, it was just by happenstance that we even found out that he played basketball collegiately.See, we know him as the Chief Operating Officer at Operation Breakthrough, an organization in Kansas City, Missouri that does incredible work for kids and families — and has been an awesome meeting spot for our C-10 Mentoring & Leadership program for the past couple of years. Before that, for the bulk of his career, he was with Hallmark Cards, retiring in 2014 as Vice President of Retail Operations.Mike Thomas, though, learned many of the leadership lessons applied at Hallmark and Operation Breakthrough as a captain on the Seattle University basketball team in the early 1980s. During Thomas' four years at Seattle, the program went from NCAA Div-I to the NAIA. Unlike the majority of his teammates, Thomas stuck it out and learned some incredible leadership lessons along the way. In this episode, he shares about those experiences, some of the highs and lows from his 31 years at Hallmark, and the great work happening at Operation Breakthrough. (Of course, he leads off with some Pregame Batting Practice.)We hope you enjoy it. 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, 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.