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Jesse Tubb

Jesse Tubb playing trumpet in a cemetery

Jesse Tubb had long been interested in AACC’s Engagement Coaching program, but as a trumpeter in the U.S. Army Concert Band, founder/head coach of a youth development program, and a husband and father, he hadn't been able to carve out time to attend classes in person. When the pandemic hit and the program moved online, he took advantage.  

"Because the program is now virtual, there are people from all over the country taking the course(s) and so it's been really incredible to go on this journey with other people,” he said. It also enabled students to hear guest speakers from around the world. 

AACC’s Engagement Coaching program, which is the only such community college program in the nation accredited by the International Coach Federation, teaches people how to ask questions of others to help them find their own solutions to life’s obstacles. Tubb applies those skills at the young program he began. G.R.I.T. (Generating Resilience Independence and Tenacity) Adventures teaches youths mental resiliency through adventure race training.

“The great thing about this program is it has really helped shape the course of how I've developed (G.R.I.T. Adventures) over the year,” he said. “We just celebrated our one-year anniversary and the way that this life coaching works, you ask all these power questions and ... establish a foundation to allow your clients to discover things on their own. What I've done is incorporate a lot of these questions and a lot of these skills into the team-building exercises so that it helps land the content in a more meaningful way.”  

Tubb also uses his new skills in building relationships with soldiers in the band and with his family.  

“I think my life is much more on track now…” The classes “dialed it in in a way that wouldn't have been possible if I had not had the hundreds of hours of coaching from everybody in the program.”