Lisa Meyers Strasman, Chief People Operations Officer at IMG Academy

Show Notes

Ignite Our Heartbeat: IMG Academy’s CPO on Hybrid Culture, Burnout, and Purpose-Driven HR

Summary

When half your workforce is on a Florida campus and half is fully remote, how do you sustain one culture, prevent burnout, and support growth in a world of constant change?

Lisa Strasman, Chief People Operations Officer at IMG Academy and former President of NCSA (acquired by IMG Academy), shares how the world’s leading sports education brand aligns people, performance, and purpose.

She outlines IMG Academy’s unique mix—boarding school and elite training in Bradenton, year-round camps, and IMG Academy+ for mental performance, nutrition, and college recruiting guidance—and explains how “athlete DNA” fuels a high-performing team.

Lisa unpacks the realities of hybrid culture, why careers must be treated as dynamic, and how their engagement surveys directly shape priorities. She also details their 2026 people-first goal—Ignite Our Heartbeat—designed to elevate the employee experience so staff can better serve student-athletes and families.

Expect practical guidance on closing the communication loop, reducing burnout (especially for remote employees), and connecting daily work to a mission that matters.

Timestamps

[00:45] – IMG Academy overview: campus, camps, and IMG Academy+ (mental performance, nutrition, recruiting)

[02:48] – CPO scope: 2,200 employees split between Bradenton campus and fully remote

[03:56] – Hybrid culture in practice: pace of change, bridging onsite and virtual teams

[05:26] – Nonlinear careers: growth without rigid ladders and HR’s role in transparency

[07:12] – Engagement survey insights: burnout, work-life balance, development, and communication

[08:45] – From insights to action: 2026 goals and “Ignite Our Heartbeat”

[10:51] – Role evolution: from President/COO to CPO and integrating acquired cultures

[13:04] – Athlete DNA at work: hiring for coachability, resilience, and teamwork

[15:02] – Closing advice: connect everyday work to a mission that matters

Takeaways

- Anchor culture to a clear mission and consistently spotlight real impact stories.

- Listen with regular engagement surveys—and close the loop by tying programs to what employees said.

- Build hybrid rituals that serve both onsite and remote teams; make communication inclusive and repeat key messages.

- Treat careers as dynamic; offer development that builds confidence without rigid paths.

- Tackle burnout proactively—especially for remote staff—through workload norms, energy checks, and manager enablement.

- Align people priorities with business outcomes; make people-first goals (like “Ignite Our Heartbeat”) visible, measurable, and owned across the org.

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Rebecca Taylor (00:00)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with Lisa Strassman, Chief People Operations Officer at IMG Academy. Welcome, Lisa. Thank you for being here.

Lisa Strasman (00:11)
Hi Rebecca, thanks for having me.

Rebecca Taylor (00:13)
Yeah, I'm excited because I mentioned this just before I hit record, but I'll put it on the record here. There's so many talks about different paths into HR and paths, you know, cross functional skills between different roles. I noticed that you went a COO route to you're the president of your last company and now you're running people operations. So can you give us a good understanding of what that means for, know, what is your role and what is IMG Academy?

Lisa Strasman (00:38)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ So I'll start with IMG Academy first. We're the world's leading sports education brand. So IMG Academy is most known for our, have a campus in Bradenton, Florida that is a boarding school that really combines academics and elite athletic training. And then we also offer camps throughout the year where student athletes can come and ⁓ train in their sport and really world-class facilities with world-class coaching.

And we also have an online extension called IMG Academy Plus. And that includes mental performance and nutrition coaching that families can receive from anywhere around the world, as well as college recruiting guidance, which is our largest online product. And at IMG, we really believe that the lessons learned through sports build better humans. So while we are preparing tens of thousands of kids every year,

To play at the next level, we're really delivering a holistic approach that also helps them develop the mindset and the habits and the discipline for their life beyond sports. so back to part one of your question, I ran the college recruiting portion of IMG Academy for the last 15 or so years. So I started with NCSA, which is the college recruiting product.

for IMG Academy over 20 years ago and ran that business for a long time. And we were acquired by IMG Academy several years ago. And so as we've been bringing the brands and the products and the people together, was really a natural transition as we were looking at leadership and what was needed for me to step into the people operations role at the IMG Academy level.

Rebecca Taylor (02:30)
I had no idea that it was an acquisition and that was sort of where the trajectory kind of went. That's really cool. so in as your role as Chief People Operations, what is that sort of encompass? How many folks are you kind of overseeing? What does the sort of job responsibilities look like?

Lisa Strasman (02:48)
Yeah, so at the end of the day, my role is really to help the business perform better through our people. We have over 2,200 people across IMG Academy. And the really interesting part of it is about half of them sit in Bradenton, Florida on our campus. The other half are remote all over the country. So we're really catering to a very physical in-person on a campus. ⁓

team member population while also ⁓ managing a completely virtual population for half of our folks. as you can imagine, ⁓ there's some common challenges, but also a ⁓ lot of differences in kind of what's needed and what's important for those two situations.

Rebecca Taylor (03:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, I was just going to ask you, what are, know, inevitably we have to go into challenges, right? Because everything always sounds, it always sounds so easy to explain sometimes when you say it, it's sort of the top level, right? But so what are some of the challenges of overseeing a hybrid culture and an onsite culture, ⁓ especially navigating as much change as it's been for the last few years?

Lisa Strasman (03:56)
Yeah, look, the pace of change in the world right now is fast and that brings a lot of, that's the case anywhere, right? So that brings a lot of challenges with it. And I think every company right now is figuring out, ⁓ you know, how all the changes really impact their people and their culture. For us, absolutely maintaining strong culture in a remote environment ⁓ is important.

Rebecca Taylor (04:02)
Yes.

Lisa Strasman (04:26)
⁓ bridging culture across different physical environments is ⁓ also super important. And the way we work together for everyone, even if you are all on site, has just massively shifted in the last five plus years. And it's really created tremendous opportunities, but also challenges. yeah, for us with half our team being fully remote, it makes it that much more important that our communication mechanisms, our engagement opportunities,

Rebecca Taylor (04:30)
⁓

Lisa Strasman (04:56)
And really our cultural touch points all hold relevancy in this environment. That's something that's very top of mind. Team members want to grow. And I think most employers want to support that. We certainly do. ⁓ But also the days are gone of kind of having very set in stone, multi-year, clear career paths. The world's just moving too fast. So it's an interesting opportunity to support individuals in this dynamic environment while also managing burnout and energy levels.

Rebecca Taylor (05:26)
Sounds very, very simple, but keeping with the pace of change, trying not to burn out, trying to keep everybody kind of together. It's funny because you mentioned sort of the days of having a really clear career path where you can map out five, 10 years of your career. They really are behind us in a lot of ways. We're seeing a lot of that just in talking to so many different HR folks from so many different walks of life, different locations, different company styles, different industries.

Lisa Strasman (05:28)
Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (05:54)
It's almost like you have to think of your career as sort of this living and breathing kind of thing. ⁓ It's almost like maybe you can plan out six months. Maybe if you're really long-term thinking, you can kind of get a general vision for a year, but we just don't know what's going to happen or what's going to be needed from us in the next few years. And it's funny because I think that we're trying to also teach employees that while some of us are kind of learning that ourselves. And that's like,

Lisa Strasman (05:59)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Taylor (06:24)
Sometimes it can be really hard to not have all of the answers as HR, because you're usually the one that people turn to for answers. But I think it's like a time where there's sort of this refreshing perspective that I've heard from people where we're being open about, we're learning too, we're figuring it out. And the point is like we're figuring it out together.

Lisa Strasman (06:41)
Yeah, absolutely. I think for people sometimes learning to live in that great space and being comfortable or comfortable enough with it can be a real growth opportunity in itself.

Rebecca Taylor (06:54)
Yeah, yeah. And so what are some of the projects that you're working on that you're excited about right now? I love this sort of question because it's timely, because it's still kind of the beginning of the year when you look at, we've got a whole year ahead of us. So what are some of the things that you're excited about for this year?

Lisa Strasman (07:12)
Yeah, we recently conducted an engagement survey, which is something that we do regularly ⁓ throughout each year. And really our team told us what we should be focused on. ⁓ Burnout and work, work-life balance are definitely high on that list, ⁓ especially for team members who work remotely, but not exclusively. Other big areas of focus are growth and development, specifically focusing on helping more members of our team.

Rebecca Taylor (07:26)
Love that.

Lisa Strasman (07:42)
really have the confidence that they can ⁓ continue to grow and meet career goals within the organization. ⁓ Communication is always a big one. And I know different companies have different approaches. I firmly believe that really listening to your people and then acting on insights in a highly intentional way is crucial. It's hard, but it's crucial. And so really ⁓ connecting the dots for folks on a lot of the different programs that we

have in place for 2026, ⁓ connecting those back to the feedback that we've heard through the engagement surveys is something that's really important. We just laid out our 2026 organizational goals, which we put a lot of intention behind, ⁓ not only what the goals were, but how they were delivered to the team. the number one goal across the organization is called Ignite Our Heartbeat. And it's all about our people and our internal

and all the things that we're doing to try and ignite the heartbeat of our staff so that they ⁓ really are feeling their best to take care of our customers and ⁓ the student athletes and their parents and all the families that we serve. And so we were very deliberate in putting that as the number one goal and look forward to acting upon it throughout the year.

Rebecca Taylor (09:05)
Yeah, that's really cool. I want to call out something that you said that I think sounds very obvious, but is sometimes where some of these things can really miss the mark. So you talked about doing an engagement survey and taking those results, communicating some of those results, and then tying back the goals of the HR programs to the results of that survey. That piece right there is where the communication part can sometimes sort of get lost. ⁓

do engagement surveys, we'll see that people need help with burnout or they want more career development. And, you know, in HR, we'll kind of go into problem solving mode or planning mode and we'll say, okay, we'll create this training program. We'll, you know, research new benefits. We'll, you know, find different ways to kind of operate. But where the reinforcement comes in is like, we're not always great at connecting that to the employee why. ⁓ Even if it's like, even if it might seem obvious, just being over-communicative.

especially in an environment where there's constant change. People are working, you know, some remotely, some on site. You can't repeat yourself enough. It's like if you feel like you've said something a thousand times, people are probably just only hearing it for the first time.

Lisa Strasman (10:15)
Absolutely, it's something we're trying to get better at as well. I mean, intentional, but definitely an area we're constantly trying to improve on and make sure that we're delivering the information in all the right ways so people really are hearing and connecting the dots because it is so important.

Rebecca Taylor (10:33)
Yeah. So how does your role from, you know, from when you were running the recruiting side of the business, you know, recruiting college athletes or working on that sort of side, you know, as president, as COO, even before that, how does your role, how is your role different now, now that it really kind of encompasses the people side too?

Lisa Strasman (10:51)
Yeah, it's a good question. For me, it was a pretty natural evolution. One of my strengths and personal passions in my prior role really was team and culture and a huge reason for all the success that we had at NCSA and continue to have throughout the years was really our team and culture and the intentionality which we put behind fostering that culture.

I always put a lot of energy and focus there. So really with the transition to people operations, really doing that on a wider scale across all of IMG Academy. So one of the biggest change was I was already working with the campus side of the business, but ⁓ in this role, I got the opportunity to really work in much deeper way with the campus side and helping to... ⁓

put programs in place and bring together these two ⁓ similar but distinct cultures that had come together through acquisition. So ⁓ currently I sit across the online and the campus sides, ⁓ which was a change, but overseeing the overall people and engagement and trying to make this the best possible workplace that we can be that

that's something that was always near and dear to my heart. At the end of the day, our goal as a people operations team is really to create a stronger, tighter, higher performing organization so that we have happier customers, more engaged, more performant team members, and long-term financial health of the business. And that's really where we see our role. So it's pretty exciting.

Rebecca Taylor (12:44)
That's cool. It's like you're nurturing and growing high performing athletes to do amazing things. it's like, there's your, want to kind of also nurture and grow high performing, you know, professionals and team members. It's sort of like, there is this natural kind of symbiosis and kind of the, the, product that you deliver and the internal way that you're kind of operating when you're thinking about it like that.

Lisa Strasman (13:04)
yeah, I mean there's so many similarities. We put our kids through goal setting courses and are teaching them a lot of these skill sets that we need to remind ourselves are equally as important for our staff. And we have the same DNA. ⁓ The majority of our staff are athletes, were high school athletes, many were college athletes, some even professional athletes. So we view that as a big advantage as well.

Rebecca Taylor (13:09)
haha

Lisa Strasman (13:33)
just hiring athletes ⁓ absolutely ⁓ is a smart thing to do with people who are goal oriented and competitive and ⁓ know how to work well with teams. And I could go on and on about all the other benefits of hiring athletes.

Rebecca Taylor (13:46)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓ When I was first starting in HR, I did a lot of work in high volume recruiting, specifically in placing sales positions in New York City for tech companies and insurance companies and all these companies that were looking to hire. And one of the first requirements was usually before even a degree, they really wanted to see someone with an athletic background if possible, just because of playing like a team, overcoming obstacles, resilience, just all those things. And the coachability element too, because you're constantly

Lisa Strasman (14:13)
Absolutely.

Rebecca Taylor (14:19)
when you're an athlete, you're constantly coached, you're constantly working with someone whose goal is to make you just a little bit better every single day. And translating that into a job is just like, does, because it's a hard skill to learn if you don't already have it. It's not impossible, but it definitely does make some sort of like prime for specific roles that they really can thrive in. So I think it's really cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa Strasman (14:33)
Mm-hmm.

really.

Rebecca Taylor (14:43)
So I know we're coming sort of towards the end of our time now here. So do you have any closing thoughts you want to share for maybe someone who's listening to this and they're navigating a lot of change or they're trying to figure out what steps to take as they're looking at their employee survey and they're seeing that people are burned out? Any closing thoughts or advice for people listening to this?

Lisa Strasman (15:02)
⁓ I would say one of the things that we always come back to at ING Academy is, ⁓ you for us, it's easy because ⁓ people are really well connected to the mission of helping kids win their future through sports. ⁓ I think for any company, people want to be part of a mission that matters. And so really helping connect ⁓ the work.

Rebecca Taylor (15:04)
No pressure.

Lisa Strasman (15:29)
And the reason for being there to that higher purpose is something that's so important. And I think when people are really bought into that, it helps a lot of the other bumps that come along with work inevitably be a little bit smoother. So I think that's important one is even if you have that purpose again to connecting the dots and reminding people and showcasing those success stories can really go along.

Rebecca Taylor (15:57)
Yeah, I I love that because it's true. It's like HR can also really serve as that connective tissue that kind of helps people to find purpose again, you know, in partnering with leadership to where if you need someone to see through a challenge at the company or, you know, we always hear a lot about resilience and overcoming obstacles. Now it's very much the theme of the world that we're in. Right. ⁓ So a lot of what you're a lot of what organizations are asking for can be, you know,

easier for people to access when you help them find that purpose, connect them to the customers, connect them to just, you know, here's the impact that your work is having on the world and here's why it matters. ⁓ So yeah, the connection point, I think that's going to be the biggest takeaway for me from this conversation is the reminder, like don't take the connective points for granted because they have to be, they have to be actively connected and then reinforced constantly. Yeah. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope that, you know, I hope this was

as good of a conversation for you as it was for me. And thank you everybody for listening and hope you have a great day. Bye.

Lisa Strasman (16:57)
Thanks for having me, Rebecca. This was great.

Rebecca Taylor (17:00)
Yeah, thank you.