The Mentor

Every September for the past 12 years, Russell Wolff has trekked up to Hanover to deliver a speech to incoming Tuck students called “What’s Your Dream Job?” It’s no coincidence that he has clearly found his.

As EVP and managing director of ESPN International in Connecticut, Wolff oversees a team that spans 61 countries. “I love my job because no two days are the same,” he says.

“One minute I can be focused on redesigning a cricket app for India and the next minute I’m looking at five-year financial plans for one of our business initiatives in Latin America. Any given week could be board meetings for investments that ESPN has around the world, office visits to our various operations in Mexico City, London, Säo Paulo, Sydney, Bangalore, and attending sporting events with clients.” It means he spends almost more time traveling than he does at home, but he also has an open invitation to every hot ticket athletic contest imaginable: Wimbledon, the Masters, the Stanley Cup. This August he’ll fly to Rio for his 15th Olympic games. “Almost everyone I talk to says, ‘Now, that’s a dream job,’ ” says Wolff, “but I just kept following my heart and doing things I was interested in and excited about. I also think I got very lucky along the way.”

Choosing between Tuck and Harvard business schools when he was accepted to both was one of those decisions the government major let his heart decide. “I did the cocktail party test,” says Wolff, who worked for Leo Burnett for three years before going back to school, “where I’d give a person one or the other outcome and see how they felt. Everybody I told about Harvard was really excited about that, but I noticed that when I told people I got into Tuck, I was the one excited.” M.B.A. in hand, Wolff took a sales position with MTV networks before moving to ESPN, where he’s worked for 19 years. His early years with the sports network were spent in Hong Kong and Singapore. He moved overseas sight unseen, “which I don’t recommend to anyone,” says Wolff, whose wife, Patty Frank Wolff, Tu’94, got a transfer there at the same time from her employer, PepsiCo. “Still, it was the greatest life experience for us,” he admits. His time in Hanover had a big impact on him, too, which is why he volunteers for Dartmouth and Tuck. A passionate member of the Alumni Council, he was elected president last year and begins his tenure this summer.

Wolff lives with Patty and sons Spencer, 12, and Michael, 14, in Mamaroneck, New York. He dedicatesmuch of his free time to the New York Sled Rangers, a sled hockey program he helped start in 2012 for physically disabled youth in and around New York City. “It’s cool because you get to see these kids who are in walkers and wheelchairs suddenly go very fast on their own,” says Wolff, whose son Spencer has cerebral palsy and plays on the team.

After his trip to Rio, he’ll be back in Hanover to speak to the new arrivals at Tuck. Although he tweaks his speech each year with new anecdotes from his family and work life, his key message to the students doesn’t change. “It’s about getting in touch with who they are, what they really want to do and what they can do to get there,” he says. “I’m not there to say, ‘Do what I did.’ I’m there to say, ‘Be happy.’ Because the idea of toiling away for your whole life at something you’re just okay with? That isn’t good enough.”

JENNIFER WULFF is a former writer for People and a contributing editor to DAM.