KT,
The recording of your Celebration of Life was officially opened this weekend. I thought it appropriate to acknowledge your being found in the Sports Product Management (SPM) at the UO, as Ellen so eloquently noted was your last stop on this earth.
"I am honored to have the opportunity to tell you about the KT we knew.
THIRD COHORT: The MS SPM program, which I co-founded with Dr. Roger Best, is a new master degree preparing students for the ultra- competitive sports product industry. KT entered in the third cohort when only 37 other students had graduated from the program. He realized quickly that this was much more than a graduate degree, it was an opportunity to be a pioneer and make a mark in this program and this industry.
MS SPM: The Sports Product Management program is a rigorous 18-month program to prepare talent to contribute in a sports product industry. You learn by doing. Find a consumer need and build a brand, build product, build marketing, and go-to-market. I tell the students we are taking the 27 years it took Nike to teach me this industry and putting it into 18-intense months.
TEAM: Not alone: The program is designed to challenge students in a cohort learning situation (all classes together) as well as putting teams of 5 together to create products. For a guy who put “we before me”, he was considered by his team as the “ultimate teammate, the heart and soul of their team, calm, level headed, where team success was more important than his own.”
CLASSROOM: The Karsten Tindal who arrived at the UO SPM program last September and the Karsten Tindal who walked out the door in June were two very different people. He was described by one professor as “Directed, focused, at a whole different level”. We witnessed his growth and watched him become a positive influence in the cohort and the entire program. One classmate said Karsten taught him that “If you do everything with passion, positivity and humility, you will bring happiness to your life.”
FUN: One classmate said, “He loved having fun. There was no such thing as having a bad time with Karsten”.
GRATEFUL: We remain grateful to have known Karsten. For he taught us how to smile more, be more genuine, be more kind, laugh more, and show more empathy. Grateful to the Tindal family for giving us KT. We had him for a short time and will honor him forever.
BELIEVE: Let’s do something for him….the next time things are not going exactly right for you…you didn’t get the job, the promotion, the parking space ....STOP and believe…believe, like Karsten did, in the goodness of life….keep focused on the bigger picture and NEVER give up…we owe it to KT." Ellen, Executive Director of SPM.