Destiny Bound

Edrick Floreal, today the Head Track & Field Coach at The University of Texas, posted this short Instagram message about Erica McLain the day he learned she was engaged to be married:

Utcoachflo: 3x USATF champion and 3x ncaa champion in the triple jump 14.60/47’11w triple jump / 6.53/21’6, 14x All American, Stanford hall of Famer @ericamclain_ and her fiancé came to see her coach... my baby getting married #Floknows #Hook’em! 🤘🏾

That’s a proud post, and Coach Flo knows excellence when he sees it. In addition to being a globally recognized veteran coach of more than 25 years, Flo himself is a multi-time National Champion and Olympian. 

But in that post, there were two things he didn’t mention; one of them is that before a career-ending injury, Erica McLain was the youngest triple jumper to enter the Beijing Olympics. When she competed for Team USA at the 2008 Olympics, many expected her to become one of the top 5 women triple jumpers in the world. 

Today, Erica’s stories and studies are about the second thing Flo left out. They’re about a phrase that Erica first heard as a young girl, and that has changed her life. It’s something she heard her grandmother say - far before her injury, before the Olympics, before even her first career as a young gymnast under the tutelage of famed coach Béla Károlyi. 

A simple phrase, heard over and over again - as a farewell and as a command: 

“You go to your destiny, girl.”

Sitting in a hospital bed, being told you may never walk again, it makes you wonder - what is destiny, and how do I get there?

That is the theme of this website. 

Today, having forged a transition from track to tech, many people would describe Erica McLain as a leader in Silicon Valley - a young woman working at Google, an alumnus of both Facebook and even Mark Zuckerberg’s family foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. She’s broken barriers, set records, and made memories, and through it all, thinks of that phrase. 

Finding your destiny is a pursuit available to us all. While mostly told from the perspective of athletes, Erica’s stories and studies are not about sports. They are instead about a game played on the most uneven of terrains, where nobody is ever cut from a team, and everybody has a shot to reach their destiny. This website is about human beings on the most challenging playing field of all, the one we call life.

RESUME SNAPSHOT

EDUCATION: B.A. Communication, B.A. Studio Art; Stanford University | M.B.A.; Univ of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business

PROFESSION: Product Manager; Google

HONORS: Stanford Hall of Fame, Plano Independent School District (PISD) Hall of Honors, Team USA Olympian, Consortium Fellow

HOBBIES: “Upcycling” furniture, bottle-cutting, and photography

VOLUNTEERING: Youth development organizations, such as Athletes for Hope