usa triathlon it is my pleasure to welcome victoria brumfield how do you think you happen to be here so i gave a little bit of a preview already mentioned some of your professional highlights but before we get into that tell me a little bit about your your background tell me about growing up with you where do you grow up where you go to school we're athletic that kind of stuff sure i don't know if i was off by dick but i grew up in northern california we moved around quite a bit my dad was actually a country club golf pro so grew up on a golf course that was kind of my sport and played golf a lot and i was really into skiing actually snowboarded and we moved to utah when i was in high school so that was a really cooperate unity for me to get really in the snow boarding and was into writing courses and i was just very outdoorsy i always wanted to be outside and i think that that translated into when i went away to college a i always just trying to find an opportunity to be up in the mountains i went to brigham young university also in utah it sounds like you're saying you were more not necessarily at that wedding but you're active you're always doing something super active always yeah always engaged in a whether it was hiking or camping backpacking just i loved being outside and i think i was always good at what i i did physically or athletically but i never played team sports i think a lot of it had to do with we moved around a lot when i was younger and i never i never really got engaged with team sports and so i didn't really understand what it meant to be on a team and i was really i like doing things alone which i think later i found i really enjoyed that isolation but also the ability to push hard when i found in durance sports it was kind of a nice combination of the two interesting yeah so ok so you went brigham young got a degree in what i studied communications ok and i focused on public relations which is so funny because you learn these things in college and i remember wanting to study public relations because at the time it was really hip and cool and like all the cool kids did p r and the irony is i don't think i ever really knew what it meant and then i graduated and there's like oh wait you just write press releases like that's that's not fun so i never actually went into public relations although there were aspects of it when i ended up working for core federal presence which was a sports marketing agency but i loved studying it i love studying media because you're in utah you taught in new york city is a big step how do you how do you end up here best i've ever it's so interesting when i saw i worked all through college so i had to work and my last two years in college i worked for a johnny miller course in utah called things giving points and i was a tournament director there so i put in on all of the corporate events essentially and as i recall we had over one hundred corporate events a year so a lot of different golf tournaments and i did everything from the coordination side on on the from the gulf a silicate perspective and in that role i ended up producing some corporate events linked to a senior p g a golf tournament in park city and one of the major sponsors of that tournaments was smith's food and drug that was a really big supermarket on the west  of america in utah arizona california and they had a significant sponsorship in that sponsorship was managed by a company called core from the prison out of new york ok so my recollection of the story was that the woman who was managing the account for them had quit the week or two before the tournament and so when they showed up it was just a mess and so i remember and jumping in and doing a lot of the things on the client side that the client would normally do and i had this great reporting connection with this crazy guy i remember him showing up in the short shorts i don't know if you'd like on running or like whatever but they were like those old like eighty's tulip style running shorts and then he had these like long legs and every time we talk to me like how his leg up on something is like stretching just this crazy guy but i really connected with them and i ended up producing the corporate outing for them and it was i don't even know maybe on a friday or something like that and the next day they were hosting a balloon festival in the same area where i was working at the golf course at things given point but unrelated to the golf course and you know great good luck have fun nice meeting you piece out and i got a phone call a bust a bit like four o'clock in the morning so i pick up the phone and it's john and the crazy lawyer that's what short guys are great if you are a short man who stretches a lot and my recollection is that they've closed the canyon from park city to salt lake city and so they couldn't get through because there was construction and they had to load in this balloon festival so like i'm the only person jungwirth newsome called me up so i was like sure if we put my doing i drove but to things given point and i loaded in this entire balloon festival i remember i'm like you know like loading traffic i'm like doing media interviews setting up hot air balloons and it was just this wild experience of this lone young girl setting up a balloon festival and john was really impressed by that i ended up meeting w john several times when he would come to town for work we'd meet for i'd say for coffee but me drink coffee so we'd meet for soda and we would talk about work and what i wanted to do and at one point when we were meeting i just remember saying i want to come work for you well he just said although i like it ok it was like ok so i flew to new york to like make sure i could survive and like i don't know got lost in central park for eight hours and i was like yeah this is cool this this place is like living in the mountains little did i know i was just like walking in a circle for eight hours because like i was like the wilderness and and i loved and so i said the outcome worked for us so i took a job with him in the fall of ninety nine and my first account with him was producing that same golf tournament that i ended up did the genesis of that if they try so trapped on wasn't even on the radar i don't even know why i'm sure john knew what traffic noise he was an ultra marathoner at the time so really familiar with insurance sports i wasn't familiar with endurance sports other than i knew what a marathon was and you know i would would run recreationally when i moved to new york i started doing all the road runner events because like what else do you do when you know nobody and have no money like you go over the south and central park and get a t shirt so that was my experience with it but we had a client working with and we see twenty twelve which was new york's a limping bet effort which we lost to london and one of their initiatives was putting on national and world championships so we were supportive of there these events and it included things like the world championships of wrestling and archery and fencing and truffle and and so the very first triathlon started as a part of n y c twenty twelve's olympic efforts they brought in experts from each area so they brought in a guy named bill burke who was a race producer that was very well respected and they brought in a local swim expert morty berger he was the guy who started n y c swims which did all the swims around the island and at the time and i see swims was it was like you know thirty really fast x and see double a division one swimmer type people that would do these swims but he designed the swim course and we came on to do you know overlook the look and feel john's expertise while many things was he had this vision for how things should be experienced and how to promote things in a way that made them look like their tenth year in their first year that was that was one of the things he did really well and the first year went off and you know i think it may have happened and maybe even happened two or three years what was still part of n y c two thousand and twelve and john recognize look we just produced the world championships of wrestling and weightlifting and fencing and you and i can go participate in those events but you show up to the start line of a travel and you've got the fast skinny guys up front but then you've got people like me who are is that it's interesting that that wasn't necessarily the plan all along but yes it's turned into one of the biggest best known races in the country or in the world for that matter i'm curious i mean obviously putting on a triathlon anywhere if you do put on tr found in utah i'm sure it's a big undertaking but putting one on a new york city where you're swimming in the hudson where you know you're shutting down the west side highway where it's a point to point raised i'm sure that presented some unique challenges y logistics are incredibly challenging we were really lucky in new york that the city was so supportive and they were incredibly supportive also because of how it started as a part of new york the one thing that i mean they were supportive of the entire effort and the was just a piece of that but the city was incredibly supportive but logistically it was so challenging and an incredible learning experience and when i go now to races even whether i participate or or work them or watch them to see a race that you just stand on the beach and you go you run and you swim a little loop you come out you get on your bike like right there in the beach and you just hop on the road and you come back and you run on a trail and it's all right there and it's in its natural environment nothing manufactured him playing and everything else and finishes hard as opposed to you have to shuttle from central park to the transit area and although it's things to me it's we're oculus when you see events like that when there's so little production i mean it's just so much production and in part that's part of the fun of it like that's to me that's why you want to do the new york city marathon like the schlep is part of it i'm in town here to do the new york city have i can go run thirteen miles in colorado and i showed up to my first race when i moved to colorado i showed up an hour and a half early i got there the guy had just shown up in his pickup truck was like hey you want help me set up the start line it was like two ladders in a banner i was like like what's happening in the world yeah i'm used to the production and i love that because it's part of the energy and the excitement and around the experience that makes it that much more to this day the only one i can think of that would be an even bigger production was the one that you were the race director for the iron man and i have to admit i was someone who when people when you know when they were the whispers there were rumors about all this is going to happen i would just being the jaded new yorker that i am i would just chalk on the there is no way that that will ever happen because again i mean the just extra just overwhelming and i never thought it would happen yet then i was at the of everything and having to sort of apologize to john and say well you actually make it happen how long was that in the works and how did that finally happen john was a visionary he had the ability to visualize something and then do whatever it took to make it happen and i was the one who did all the work around it you know but he was the one who said we yes we can make this happen we can get these people to yes and the number of people that we were able to get to yes blows my mind and it took my recollection is we took like four to seven years from from conception to actually happening and when you think about what we did it was unprecedented we shut down palisades park way over two states i mean that was that was an incredible accomplishment never been done before not for an event maybe for an emergency but not for an event and we shut down major sections of fort lee and with no event planning and and we got the police in new york city to shut down major intersections for us and we were able we built very docks in new jersey and we put into place a the amount of coordination and synchronicity and all of these things coming together was it was incredible and a lot of it was really really hard work but it was also the fact that john didn't take no for an answer he found a way for us to get to us and and that was a really cool experience for me because i was one of those people too who thought you had to i mean you know what again i'll admit i'm cynical but that's so yeah i mean obviously there's a reason it hadn't happened before and it's also you know it's seems to me that you know what if you want to be persistent and not take no for an answer find a way to get to yes as she said for something that takes a couple of weeks or whatever and that you know we and the will so realizing that that best case scenario it was go license deal this wasn't us just paying a fee this was core front of prizes and ironman partnering and getting this done and it was it was an incredible experience i think for me the greatest learning from this experience was i'm an operations person so i had to build it but it really also helped me learn and understand in an even bigger way of how to keep your head up and say ok where do we want to go what do we want this to be and this has to be a lot more than just an operational achievement this has to be an experience will achieve met and how do we turn this major slab event into something that's iconic that has sustainable that will be sustainable and repeat now it didn't come back right was i think that this appointing to you i mean obviously you guys wanted it i'm assuming you want to do is to continue and it was just a one off as it turns out yeah it's incredibly disappointing it was like i felt like i was just telling i carry member wh somebody asked me at the time they're like well how does it feel it was like oh my gosh like i feel like i just like took me seven years to have a baby and then like social services took it away like it was awful because we built it thinking that this would be something that would be a legacy not only for us but for iron man for new york city me nothing showcases a city like a traffic on nothing does because you turn an entire city into a stadium that involves all of these different environmental experiences from swimming to you know your waterways and your roadways and your parks and and it brings out the city services in a way and volunteers and community groups that the other outdoor events don't so i mean i'm sure it's not a easy answer but what what ultimately put an end to it what why did the second one not come to fruition it was complicated i think there were a lot of different factors from a financial model it was more than twice expensive as expensive any other race and that's that's once you have your sustained fixed costs not even your upfront development costs like those are sunk right but just your operational event we cost more than double any other race and the question a was was people's willingness to pay more than double and that's a that's a factor when i think you know iranians used to  they have a very fixed model of the type of venue that they go to a type of operational structure and a staffing structure that's very predictable and this wasn't predictable in that way and i think that that was a big part of it so so i would imagine that i mean i again having crossed paths with you professionally a few times with throughout the years and certainly having crossed with john corp and i would i can only imagine there was a lot of good cop bad cop because yeah he's not one who takes the path of least resistance has no filter if you get it to me before then so i would imagine that in some contexts you two really complemented each other and probably helped you know sort of smooth things over yes times with him i'm curious so then you know your so what was really cool is they're both visionary people they both have the ability to really visualize what it is that they want to accomplish and what they want to achieve and it's typically something that they see first you know john john envisioned the new york city triathlon being the biggest most prestigious travel on in the world well before it became that mary envisioned a valving running and running events into these festivals of sport and even before we as a team could really visualize it and and then execute against it and i i love that about both of them you know john he was always pushing boundaries he was the  she wouldn't want to go push boundaries in the same way that jon did but she was always pushing boundaries and so what was really cool for me as the person who had to deliver is i've had the opportunity to see to see two very different  points of view on how to see the forest but then how to navigate through the trees and i think that both require operational expertise to deliver but the way that they visualize things was very different and so that was a really cool experience for me and where where along that spectrum whether it's the you know the junk or fast for permission later versus you know mary sort of staying within a structure and getting everyone on board with where do you stand you know where would you describe yourself and that's a great question and i i want to be more collaborative that's i think that's what i want to say about myself but there's definitely that edge of just like screw it just do it and which was also the virgin way to write like that's richard branson sure moto discourages do it and so i think there's a little bit of both and i think i'm really lucky in that i was able to see like ok one of the challenges of just being an operations person is there's always the conflict if you want to say no to everything and the visionary wants to say yes to everything and so i'm actually really lucky because i feel like in my experience of having to deliver in very small entrepreneurial environments for two visionary people i feel like i've been able to really bridge the gap between the two so  and how you ended up leaving there yeah it's version sport was amazing it was really exciting and it started because freddy andrews who's richard branson son in law experience these events that virgin was sponsoring virgin companies were sponsoring so it was a big bike ride in south africa or the london marathon in in the u k and experience in them thinking these are incredible events we can actually do them better we could we could add we could only add something to these experiences and that's why i think virgin can bring value and so they search for the best c e o that they could find worldwide and they were lucky enough to find mary and mary brought me on to lead the operations and so we decided i decided to start in the u k because that's where virgin has a presence and one hundred percent brand recognition and i think some of the challenges our willingness to pay in the u k is actually lower  and it's very expensive to start a company in united states to build a company in the united states that's launching in the u k so we had a lot of costs that were just challenging from us trying to operate over there well being based here so we ended up spending a significant amount of time there and that was challenging and then we wanted to launch in san francisco is our very first u s event which we're really excited about we came in and we fill this void where the nike women's marathon used to be actually which was my first marathon oh years there something a little backwards but a yeah so so you went from working with john corp his big personality mary who's also very very presence and learning from both of them and now there was a board meeting and the very first question from the president who is just amazing very self i don't know if you know him but you know he is an incredible individual and a fabulous president board and his first question was so what is the chief of staff i guess i was feeling a little bit yeah a little bit slow on that one but i'm glad i'm not the only one that wonders yes so i oversee the operations of the business so h r and finance and technology and then stretch strategic planning to and that's that's my main focus is are we as an organization every single day connected to our mission and our priorities and achieving that mission over the next few years and in the olympic space we call things a quad so it's the olympics so over this quad through tokyo we have really clear objectives and it's my job everyday to make sure that everything we do is delivering against the objectives from the c e o down to  part time customer service people and helping keep the team aligned and you know are we doing too much are we doing too little are we measuring it are we improving how are we tracking so that's what i do every day today than it was a year and a half ago now so they brought on a new c e o in september of last i guess twenty seventeen his name's rocky harris and he's incredible and he's why i took the job when i think about how lucky i have been in my career i've had the most inspirational bosses i've had the opportunity to work with people who every day make me a better person and bring out qualities in me that make me feel like i'm reaching potential in a way that i couldn't under anybody else's leadership and i felt that with john i felt that was mary and i feel it was rocky and they're all very different but he's incredible so he came over a year and a half ago and has made dramatic changes in the organization i joined a year ago this week actually  and to me it feels like a different organization and just the last year and we've had it fifty percent of the staff is different than it was when rocky started so we've had a lot of people leave mostly partly because business and take this nonprofit organization that works in a very lifestyle minded environment of colorado springs and say ok we have a mission to support the sport of and we've got to start moving at the speed of business to do that so we can support our coaches and our race directors and the athletes in a way that they've never felt supported before and feeling in experiencing that changes is really rewarding you  being out in colorado i love colorado i love it it's such a life change i've lived in new york city for almost twenty years it's all i've known as an adult i really struggle with a lot of things driving i've never owned a car before it was known as super i feel like a soccer mom like you know like i shop at wal mart and who am i but but i love experiencing life in that way every day i walk out of my apartment and i run on trails and the day i moved i cried because i went for a run in central park and thought where am i going to run and i got to colorado thought oh my gosh am i crazy and it's amazing and i'm training for the leadville one hundred bike not the run but the bike and the big undertaking and the dirty kanza gravel race and i'm i'm training for all these really cool sport experiences that i wouldn't have the same access to in new york but what i miss like crazy is i miss the stimulation and energy of new york city and that can please replicate it anywhere else it's not it's just not that's really awesome but look i mean it's amazing that you've had those three big chunks of your professional career and something you've had three people who you think of as whether mentors role models and you know and it's also impressive to me that it seems like you learn from each of them but you've also each of them has allowed you to shine and grow rather than again big personalities but they haven't overwhelmed you and they haven't gotten in the way of your progress and they maybe think they've they've helped facilitate and they have all empowered and encouraged me in a way that  to reach potential i didn't realize i was capable of on my own and i loved that about all in full thing yes terrific that's you haven't spent all you can ask for i really enjoyed talking i'm sure audience has it's been a real pleasure getting to know you