I recently interviewed Vice Admiral Ted Carter, President of Ohio State University, on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today led at the highest levels in the United States Navy and led one of the largest universities in America. Vice Admiral Ted Carter spent 38 years in the Navy, flying on 125 combat missions around the world, and ultimately becoming the longest continuously serving tenured superintendent of the United States Naval Academy since the Civil War. Upon retiring from the Navy, Admiral Carter spent four years as the president of the University of Nebraska system and is currently the president of the Ohio State University. Admiral Carter, thank you for joining us.

Admiral Carter: Adam, thank you. It's great to be with you.

Adam: You lead a sports-obsessed university. And as a kid, you thought you were going to be playing sports professionally. You grew up in Burrillville, Rhode Island, and your dad was a star hockey player at Providence College. You were skating by the time you were three. And even though you never made it to the NHL, you were the captain of the hockey team at the Naval Academy. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Admiral Carter: Well, I was very lucky. My parents were educated. We lived in a very small town, a one-high school town. Laurelville, Rhode Island is one of the oldest textile areas of our country. In fact, the oldest hardware store in the country was started just about two miles from where I grew up. And because both my parents were into sports and music and the arts and even academics, the operative word in my youth was exposure. I got exposure to a little bit of everything. And because my dad played hockey, I was on the ponds in Rhode Island and played in kids' leagues and all the way up. And when I was 13, I played in an exchange program in Canada. I was very good for my age. Of course, anybody that's around that age thinks that they're going to go to the highest level. I was a big Boston Bruins fan. And yeah, I had dreams of playing in the NHL when I was that age. Of course, a funny thing happened. I stopped growing. I just didn't get as big as some other kids. And quite frankly, I wasn't as talented either. But because I had this exposure to so many things, I had a really wonderful public high school education. I went to things like international science fairs. I was growing up in a rural area, so there's a lot of agriculture, and fishing all around us, so I had exposure to that. And I had really good academics in high school and teachers who influenced me. So all of those things set me up well for when I eventually would get into a place called the U.S. Naval Academy. I was fortunate, even though I didn't go to the Naval Academy, recruited as an athlete, I had my growth spurt right around the time I was 18 years old and made the hockey team as a freshman at Navy and was fortunate enough to play all four years there. And to be honest with you, had I not made a varsity sport at a place like that, because it was so foreign to me. I come from a small town where really most of my hopes and dreams might have been to go to an Ivy League school like Brown University or Harvard. I got into the Naval Academy and I wasn't really even sure I wanted to serve in the military, but because I made that hockey team and I found out what it was like to be on a team, I stayed and then eventually I persevered there at the Naval Academy and went on to graduate school.

Adam: You shared a lot there that I love, starting off with the importance of gaining exposure to lots of different disciplines. When you're a kid, you don't necessarily know what you're going to be interested in. And when you're exposed to lots of different things, that's when you figure out what it is that you actually are interested in. It's really not all that different when you're trying to figure out what you want to do with your career. Gaining exposure to different internships, and different jobs, allows you to figure out what you love, what you're great at, and ultimately where you want to spend your time professionally.

Admiral Carter: Yeah, exactly. Take it even a little bit further. My mother was an English teacher at the high school I attended. She was my teacher for three out of four years. She was also a high school drama teacher. So I was in theater and plays when she was doing that type of coaching. I was in the state's model legislature. I went to this high school science fair, state science fair, and eventually international science fair, which ironically was in Cleveland, Ohio in 1977. It was the first time I ever got on an airplane. It started in Ohio. That helped me get into the Naval Academy because I won a prize sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute. So it's this kind of crazy circular thing that happened from when I started in Rhode Island go through this whole Navy career, Nebraska, and now I'm in Ohio. But all of that added up to learning a lot of things like be able to stand up as a senior in high school and make an argument over a scientific hypothesis with results and conclusions. So I was very fortunate to grow up in a small town that had opportunities.

Adam: What were the keys to rising within your career and what can anyone do to rise within their career?

Admiral Carter: Well, I think the concept of the team was really some of the biggest things that I got when I was at the Naval Academy to play on an ice hockey team or to be in any other organization or any other part of activities there. So, for example, I was the editor-in-chief of the Log Magazine. The Log Magazine, believe it or not, was a satirical humor magazine that the Naval Academy had going on for almost 100 years by the time I was the editor. And that had a team aspect to it. And when I was trying to decide what I wanted to do when I graduated out of the Navy, I really wasn't sure whether I wanted to drive ships or be in airplanes. And as it turned out, I got to do both. But I was influenced by the people that were in front of me and their leadership, the charisma that they presented, and who they were as aviators that drew me to that profession. And that's what initially interested me. Again, without knowing a whole lot, about what I was getting into to go into naval aviation.

Adam: After graduating from the Naval Academy, you attended the Navy Fighter Weapons School, which is better known as Top Gun. What are the best lessons that you learned from your time at Top Gun?

Admiral Carter: Yeah, so I got to go to Top Gun at the age of 25 years old, so I was pretty young Lieutenant. I had about 500-550 hours in the F-4 Phantom, so remember this was a Vietnam-era airplane that we were still flying in 1984-1985. even though it was at the tail end of its life. In fact, the Top Gun class I went through in Miramar in San Diego was the last all-F4 Phantom class because the F14 Tomcat was the fighter of the day. So that was pretty wild and very exciting to go to Top Gun. And of course, Even though the movie hadn't come out yet. By the way, we talked about the movie here in a second, but the movie hadn't come out yet. All of us in fighter aviation knew that you had to be at the top of your game to be able to go to Top Gun. In those days, the Top Gun course was five weeks long. It was focused on air-to-air only. And some of the themes that came out of the movie about being the best of the best, those are the things that we thought Top Gun was all about. Now, during the five weeks that I was at Top Gun, this was in March and April of 1985, is when Paramount started filming the movie, the original Top Gun. at Naval Air Station Miramar. And the guys that were instructors at Top Gun, these really were just giants in their field. They were the best we had in fighter aviation. They really didn't want to have a whole lot to do with the original movie. So myself and a guy that was a Naval Academy classmate of mine, Bob Schrader, we were asked to go to the officer's club and meet this actor who was starring in the movie, somebody that only a few people knew. His name was Tom Cruise. Our job was to go there, have a few beers with him, and introduce him to what we do. And then the next day, they were going to throw him in the swimming pool and start his training so he could eventually get some backseat rides. So that was going on while we were there. Of course, we graduate as they're just starting to do the filming. And here was the big takeaway about graduating from Top Gun. Unlike what is depicted in the movie, and it's touched on a little bit in Top Gun Maverick, the real takeaway when you graduate from Top Gun is you become a teacher for life. You are designated to teach the best of the business, to teach other aviators the importance of tactics, how to do planning, how to get up and do teaching and learning. And that's where the passion for academics and just having the ability to get up and teach got invested in me. And I wore that patch from being a Top Gun graduate my entire career. I was an F-14 flight instructor after I finished my tour in Japan. came back and taught in the F-14 Tomcat, and I taught F-14 fighter tactics and landing on aircraft carriers pretty much all the way until I stopped flying as a two-star admiral in 2012.

Adam: I want to pick up on something that you shared, which is a focal point of Top Gun being the best of the best. Top Gun attracts the best of the best, and helps people become the best that they can be. You spent time around Tom Cruise, one of the best among the all-time greats in acting. You've been around the most successful people across a variety of disciplines. military, academia, sports, what makes the greats great and what can anyone do to attain greatness?

Admiral Carter: Well, if you had asked me that question when I was 25 and I just graduated from Top Gun, I probably have a much different answer than I would give you today after a lifelong of flying and doing combat and being in large, complex organizations. When I finished Top Gun, there was a certain amount of chutzpah, a certain amount of confidence that you had because you almost felt invincible. And you certainly had a sense that you had accomplished something really unique and great. And I thought I knew a lot when I was 25. So I probably would have answered that question about being the best of the best means you got to be competitive and you got to never settle for second place as they talk about in the movie. But what I've learned over the years is, first of all, you have to have a curiosity for learning. You can never stop learning. You can never start keeping your mind open. And the longer I've been around, the more humble I've become to realize I don't know everything. I don't try ever to pretend to be the smartest person in the room. I try to leverage the talent of all those that I work with so that when we work collaboratively we bring the best answers from all the people that are around us and bring a diversity of thought to any equation for which we're trying to solve, we're going to come to an answer faster and the answer is usually going to be better.

Adam: Curiosity for learning and humility, are two of the most important traits among the most successful leaders.

Admiral Carter: Well, I think once you remove this idea that some portion of your life is dedicated to creating some sort of legacy, whether it be real or imagined, That's when you can accept what your skill sets are and sometimes more importantly, what they're not. And that starts to get to where you start to see yourself for who you really are. There's the old adage about how you see yourself, how some people see you, and then how you really are. And it's probably somewhere in the middle. And I think the earlier and the faster you get to that, some part of the middle where we really are, it's going to give you that opportunity to be the very best that you can be.

Adam: And that really speaks to the importance of self-awareness.

Admiral Carter: Well, I think sometimes when I say you've got to be able to open your aperture and listen to others, it's not just the listening, it's putting it into action. This will be a bit of a sea story to explain one of those moments in my life where I had to put that concept into action and then what the outcome was. After I commanded a fighter squadron, I eventually went to nuclear power school. qualified and would eventually go on to command a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. In my case, I commanded the USS Carl Vinson, which was going through a refueling and complex overhaul. So basically the concept of taking a 57 Chevy, putting it on the rails, and doing a frame-off restoration, but doing it for an aircraft carrier includes taking apart nuclear reactors, rebuilding them, starting them, catapults, arresting gear, tanks, galleys, combat systems, weapons, you name it. We rebuilt the whole ship. So, we were about to deliver that ship in 2009. Remember, this is a ship that's as long as the Empire State Building. So, it's a huge vessel, a $2 billion level of effort. We had not done this successfully either with USS Nimitz or Dwight D. Eisenhower. So, we're about to deliver the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier on a 25-year life extension for the first time in naval aviation. I am like a proud dad of being the captain of that ship. We've got all the admirals of the Navy doing the final inspection and we've taken them throughout the ship. And now we're in the last space of the ship. And this is our medical space. So that is a showcase of operating rooms, physical therapy, lots of beds in case we have a mass casualty. And the four-star admiral who was in charge of naval reactors is now talking to my senior medical officer, a Harvard grad. Dr. Chris Lucas, and asked Dr. Lucas if he was able to get everything accomplished during this overhaul period that we needed to be the medical spaces of the future for carrier aviation. Now, of course, all of my department heads, whether they were on the flight deck or in engineering or nuclear spaces, had been answering that question all day. Yes, we've got everything done. We're ready to go to sea. We're ready to be operational again. But Dr. Lucas said, if we'd had just a little bit more money, like about a million dollars, we could have created the mortuary affairs capability of the future for the aircraft carrier. I don't even know what Dr. Lucas is really talking about. Now, we do lose people at sea for just normal loss of life, not just accidents. And we have the ability to do all the mortuary affairs. The four-star admiral looked at me, and he said, Captain, do you have an extra million dollars lying around to do what Dr. Lucas is talking about? Now, when I was a younger guy, I might have just said, the doctor doesn't know what he's talking about. We're good. We're ready to go to see. But I trusted Dr. Chris Lucas. And when he said, if we could do this, if we had that much more money, my answer was, I don't know exactly what Dr. Lucas is referring to, but we'll look into it and see how much money we have left when we scrape up. And if it's something important, we'll try to do it. We did find the money. And we did invest in that capability. And again, that might just be the end of the story. But the USS Carl Vinson, shortly after I turned her over, went to sea in 2010, covered the Haiti hurricanes down there, came back home to Norfolk, and then went on another deployment in 2011. And for your listeners who might remember, a key event that happened in the world in May of 2011 is when SEAL Team 6 went into Pakistan and took out bin Laden. When Bin Laden was removed from Pakistan back into Afghanistan at the highest level of our government, at the President of the United States level, it was determined that Bin Laden would be buried at sea. It was only one aircraft carrier that was deployed in the entire world, and it happened to be in the Arabian Sea, and it was the USS Carl Vinson. Bin Laden was brought to Carl Vinson, given proper Muslim burial rights, a capability that was invested as part of Dr. Lucas' vision, and then buried at sunrise the next day from U.S. sovereign territory, the USS Carl Vinson. And there were some capabilities that were involved in that burial that were classified at the time that were invested in because Dr. Lucas had that vision and we had the right leadership in place to say, you know what, that's something we'll try to do and we did it

Adam: I love that story. And I love all the themes lessons and takeaways. Something that you brought up very early on in our conversation, is the importance of teamwork. For a team to be successful, every person on the team has to understand their role, has to have a complementary role, and has to work together, work in unison, and work cohesively. The importance of vision, the importance of trust. You trusted Dr. Lucas, and Dr. Lucas was able to engender trust. How can leaders build trust?

Admiral Carter: Well, you've got to believe in your people. You've got to know their capabilities. Don't ask them to do things that they're not capable of doing. And then two basic things, when they do well, give them the credit. And when things don't go well, if you've tasked them to do something as a leader, you take the hit for it. And that way people understand that they're going to give you the best. When you also invest in people give them the right resources and empower them to do their jobs without trying to manage the details, they're going to give you their absolute best. And that's how you get the best out of your people.

Adam: Leadership development, investing in people, a focal point of your entire career. What are the keys to developing great leaders?

Admiral Carter: Well, a couple of things first, and I learned this, particularly in the higher ed space, whether I was running the U.S. Naval Academy, the University of Nebraska System, and even here at the Ohio State University, which is a size, scale, and scope that is top three or four universities in the world. You first have to realize you can't do everything as a leader. The best thing you can do is bring vision and strategy and then get another keyword that we use a lot, but a lot of people don't understand, and that is alignment. Alignment is this idea that we're all moving in the same direction together, that we have agreement on the big things that we're trying to do. Now, of course, the details of how successful and how quickly you move into any type of change or improvement are going to be based on having the right people in the right leadership job, again, how you empower them, but also how you can continue to develop them. For example, if I have a dean of engineering, whether it be at Nebraska or here at Ohio State, and I know that I need to grow the number of students graduating from engineering because there's a demand signal for that. And then I also need to make sure that I diversify the graduating student body. And then I need to also make sure that I'm infusing them with concepts like artificial intelligence and where all of that is going, I've got to make sure that I've given that dean the resources to grow in that field. And that's more than just getting more students to come do it. You've got to think about the faculty. You've got to think about the lab spaces. You've got to think about the classroom spaces. You've got to think about the dormitories in which you house all these people, the food service that you bring in. So this becomes a very complex answer that involves just dealing with one or two people in a leadership role. You've got to understand, all the touchpoints so you can get everybody aligned for that one single purpose. I'm going to create more engineering graduates. So that's just an example of what it's going to take to be successful in a large enterprise or even a bureaucracy.

Adam: Yes. did an interview with General Barry McCaffrey, something that he shared with me that stood out. General McCaffrey led the consequential battle in the Persian Gulf War. And what he shared with me was there were plenty of other generals who could have led that battle. It just happened to be him. And it speaks to a couple of themes. The first theme that you brought up, is the importance of humility in effective leadership. The second theme is the importance of leaders developing a strong bench at the end of the day General McCaffrey genuinely believed if He couldn't have led that mission for whatever reason There were plenty of other people on his bench who could have stepped up and done just as good a job Yeah, absolutely.

Admiral Carter: I've been in a number of the experiences whether it be in combat I was on the flight deck as a spare for a major strike where I wasn't supposed to leave but then all of a sudden situation happens, and now I'm designated the lead, and now you got to be ready to go. And when that moment comes, you have to have thought about it, you have to plan for it, and you have to have visualized it. And that's something I like to talk a lot about, what it means to be successful. And some of this does come from sports, where if you can imagine, you can visualize these key moments happening in your life when it does show up, and it's that critical split second, Are you really going to be ready for it? And will you just instinctually do the right thing or will you not be ready? And then something else happens. So I like to believe that nothing happens because of luck. I actually believe that most things happen because we're actually prepared. Just like winning on the sports field, you generally want to get out of what you do at the end of the game, and when you look up at the scoreboard, usually isn't a mistake. It's who put in the work, who's the healthiest, who's best ready, and who's thought through all the possibilities. There were a number of scenarios that I was in flying combat. Some of them were so complex, you couldn't actually try to think through all of them. Now, in the Navy, flying off aircraft carriers, we did our own planning, which often I, at the time, I thought, God, it's just so much more work. But it gave you so much more time to think about all the possibilities of what might happen in the course of having to deliver a weapon for a certain effect. In the Top Gun Maverick movie, there's a scene where Tom Cruise and the Top Gun instructors are talking about executing this tactic called the consecutive miracle. Simply stated, it's putting one weapon into the ground that has to penetrate a certain distance, then putting another weapon in either right behind it or next to it that is now can go deeper because of the effects of the first weapon. It was a tactic developed during Desert Storm. During the Kosovo operation, we had done a lot of laser-guided tactics and when we finished that combat action in 1999, we went into some combat actions in Iraq. And we had a presidentially directed mission the first day we showed up in the summer of 1999. And it was a consecutive miracle tactic. So, it's exactly what was depicted in the movie, without having to go through a ravine, and we didn't have as many airplanes coming to attack us. But we had to put two weapons into a command bunker from a long distance away. And for as much as we had planned everything that we needed to do, the dynamics of what happened that day could have so easily changed the outcome of the course of that event. But at the end of it, we were successful. It was two Tomcats with two GBU-24s, which is the same weapon that's depicted in the new movie. We flew about 100 miles into Iraqi airspace under fire for most of it, literally six inches apart, because both these weapons had to be in the exact same wind and environment stream so they could be separated by an exact amount of time as they were launched from a long distance away, more than nine miles away. gravity dropped with laser guidance all the way. And these had to be precisely dropped. And the weapon I dropped went through a three-square-meter vent line. Sounds very familiar from the movie. And because of the accuracy in which we planned this out, we got the second weapon through the vent line, and we had a successful event. But there were about 100 things that happened in the course of that event, any one of which could have had a different outcome. And we had thought through so many of them that we were ready for them with split-second decisions when they happened.

Adam: As you're describing the challenges that you faced during your time performing in the highest stakes moments in the Navy, I'm thinking about your role right now leading in a very different environment, facing a very different set of pressures, a very different set of circumstances. You've had to adapt to a different environment, leading in a very different setting. What have been the keys to adapting to leading on a college campus? And what have been the keys to effectively leading a university in today's environment?

Admiral Carter: I think the biggest thing that's different is the environment's actually more complex. To lead a major public land grant university today has what I call circles of influence or communities that all have touch points with the university itself. And you've got to understand that environment because you've got to tend to all of those spinning plates or circles of influence, all have different gravities, by the way. And ultimately, you've got to know how to tend to them so that you can accomplish your mission. Now, the mission is multifaceted, so it's not singular. It's not just graduating students to get diplomas. Yes, there's an academic mission, for sure, but there's a research mission. We have a medical center, so there's medical research. There's clinical care. Of course, there's athletics. There's community outreach. We have a very large agricultural college year. We're in all 88 counties of Ohio. So we help ranchers and farmers. We're one in eight Ohioans involved in the agricultural field. So you want to make sure that we're doing things that are for the benefit of not only Ohioans, but our country, and then understanding where the funding comes from. So Ohio taxpayers, as a public institution, pay for some portion of what it costs for us to educate students. making sure you're being good stewards of that taxpayer money. So dealing and working with legislators, those that create laws, and then dealing with a board of trustees who are appointed by the governor to make sure that our policies, and our fiduciary responsibilities are being met. All of those things happen in the course of every single day. And then there's the talent management part. I mean, this is a large team for Ohio State. There are six campuses here. We are actually our own system. The Columbus campus itself has 15 colleges, seven of which are medical colleges, 66,000 students, 40,000 plus faculty and staff. And then just across the entire enterprise, when you add it all up, we're employing well over 100,000 people here. So it is a large, complex organization that if you're not paying attention to anyone in those communities, you can get off track and the mission can fail. So I've come with my military background to make sure that, number one, I trust my people. I build them up as a team. They know what their job is. When I was in charge of a number of ships, including multiple aircraft carriers, as a two-star admiral, and as a task force commander in the Middle East in 2012, I gave direction to everybody every day. It was called commander's intent. I didn't tell everybody how to do their job. I just told them what my expectations were for getting the job done. That concept still works even in higher education. I don't have to give everybody a commander's intent every day, but we have meetings weekly where we talk about basically the president's intent so that people know what it takes for us to complete our mission.

Adam: No matter what environment you're leading in, it's essential to understand your environment and understand it intimately. Understand and develop strong relationships with your stakeholder groups. Spoke about the mission being deeply focused on your mission. In your case, that mission could be an academic mission. It could be winning a national championship in football. It could be growing your endowment. It could be all of the above, but being laser-focused on the mission is essential to building a successful organization, and essential to effective leadership.

Admiral Carter: I feel very fortunate. This type of job of being a university president is still a call to serve. I don't wear the uniform. It's not necessarily tied to national defense. But higher education is an industry that is one of the foundations, the bedrock of how our nation was built. It's still very important. And over the last few years, there have been a lot of questions about what the value of a higher education degree is. I feel like we in higher education have a responsibility to be able to communicate that to the American public. There's a cost to having the experiential learning environment, coming, and living on campus. The good news is the youth of this country still want that. They still want to come to a place like Ohio State, but we have that responsibility to make sure that it's affordable, and that we give them a good return on investment when they leave an institution like Ohio State or Nebraska, or even go into a commission coming place from the U.S. Naval Academy. that they're not only prepared, we're setting them up to be great citizens and people that are going to contribute to society, whether they stay in uniform or whether they go and work, but any industry in the state of Ohio.

Adam: What do you believe is the future of higher education?

Admiral Carter: I think it's going to be strong. I think as we look at the job market and what's going to be out there as we are having more things being done remotely, as the elements of artificial intelligence will be threaded through every single thing that we do see and touch, there are going to be more jobs requiring some amount of technical background. Now, that might be an associate's degree. It might be a certificate. It could be an undergraduate degree or a PhD. I actually believe that by the year 2035, the job market is going to require more people with some amount of higher education than what we even require today.

Adam: Admiral Carter, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Ted: I think the first thing you can do is believe in yourself. I got to talk to a whole bunch of new students who came to campus. I welcomed 500 new faculty. And one of the things I said to them is, when you get into a new job, and sometimes it can be overwhelming, or if you're in a new place or new environment, you know, there are going to be people out there looking after You're going to have mentors, you're going to have people that you work for. You may still have your mom and dad very much involved in your life, your spouse, and your family. But at the end of the day, nobody's going to take better care of you than you. And it's really important that all of us remember that. And that means everything from how we take care of ourselves physically, and what we put into our bodies, but it's also an emotional and mental help that requires us to be ready to accept every day and never wish our life away. There are a lot of times we do things in life that we don't particularly enjoy and we always think it's going to get better when we get to that next job or that next thing or the next set of orders. I learned this when I went to nuke power school. It wasn't a very fun experience for me. It was really, really hard. I was 40 years old and it was there that I realized, you know what, I've got to find a way to enjoy this experience of learning all this nuclear theory and math and chemistry and metallurgy And that's when I realized, never wish your life away. Embrace every single day and take care of you. There's only one of you. Make sure you're your best self.

Adam: Take ownership of your life and embrace the now. As important as it is to be focused on tomorrow, which at the end of the day is why we go to college to set ourselves up for a better future. Embrace today. Focus on what you can do to own your day today, to maximize your day today, to make the most out of every given day. Absolutely. Admiral Carter, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Ted: Adam, I enjoyed the conversation and I wish your listeners all the best.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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