Player development staff
Know their athletes, their calendar, and what a rookie is walking into. What they usually do not have is a method for changing behavior in a room, or the training to run one.
HomeAbout
Lainie Hodges
Lainie Hodges founded Improv Alchemy after a career in human development and education, time inside the NFL league office, and training in improv. That combination is rare, and it is the whole practice.
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The overlap
Three worlds that rarely meet.
Athlete development, education, and applied improv are separate professions with separate conferences and separate training. Most people belong to one of them.
Educators
Give their all every day to the students they serve, and every day demands a responsive and agile mindset. It is a demanding job, and they need tools that are actually applicable in the building and that lead to student success.
Improv practitioners
Know how to run a room and get a group moving. What they usually do not have is a grounding in human development, or any real understanding of what happens to a twenty-two-year-old in a professional locker room.
We work with all three. Lainie is not a comedian who learned to talk about teamwork. She came to improv from exercise science, sport counseling, education, and years spent with young people in transition, and she knows the player engagement side because she has worked in it.
Where this started
From Denver to New York to the world.
The improv work itself began in New York, at the All Stars Project, which develops young people through performance on the premise that being able to try on a different way of being is how anybody grows. She did not arrive there wanting to become an improviser. She arrived with a background in exercise science and an interest in why the approach worked at all. We have been building on that answer ever since.
More about our approachInside the league
On the buyer’s side of the table.
Lainie worked in the NFL league office as a Player Engagement Coordinator. It gave her a view most outside vendors never get, of what player engagement staff are responsible for and how little room the calendar leaves them.
She ran her first Rookie Development Lab for an NFL club in 2016, with the Ravens. Seventeen clubs have booked the work since, and we still build every session around what a specific group is walking into rather than around a package.
Training
A blend of skills and expertise.
Development and sport
- BS, Health and Exercise Science
- Syracuse University
- MLS, Global Affairs
- University of Denver
- Graduate coursework, sport counseling
- San Diego University for Integrative Studies
- Play and human development
- East Side Institute, New York
Improv
- Magnet Theater
- New York
- Improv LEAP, Chaos Bloom Theater
- Denver
Before the rookie work, and alongside it
Most of this was worked out in classrooms first.
The structure of a Rookie Development Lab came out of community programs, alternative education settings and school classrooms, where the stakes were different and the rooms were harder.
- All Stars Project
- New York. Performance-based youth development, and where the whole approach started
- NFL league office
- Player Engagement Coordinator
- Colorado schools
- Improv electives, student programs and staff development across middle and high schools
- Think 360 Arts for Learning
- Teaching artist across grade levels, and staff development for schools
- Denver Talent Show Network
- Director. Produced three talent shows, supported by the Rose Community Foundation and the Denver Foundation’s Arts Affinity Group
- Colorado GEAR UP
- Pre-collegiate advisor, working with students on the transition into higher education
- National Football Foundation
- Academic coach for student-athletes at Abraham Lincoln High School, Brooklyn
- Institute for Specialized Alternative Education
- Instructor for court-ordered education programs
Speaking and podcasts
Where the referrals come from.
The athlete development world is small and it talks to itself, which is how most of this work arrives.
- Presenter, 2019 NFL Player Engagement Annual Meeting, Scottsdale
- Presenter, 2019 PAADS Athlete Development Summit, New York
- Member, Professional Association of Athlete Development Specialists
Podcast appearances
Who runs it
Based in Denver, but we run anywhere.
Improv Alchemy is led by Lainie Hodges, who designs every engagement herself. When a group needs more than one facilitator, she brings in experienced practitioners with backgrounds like hers in human development and applied improv.
That is what makes a full rookie class and a twelve-person leadership team the same conversation. Whoever stands in front of your group, Lainie built the session.
Lainie beautifully fuses life skills through improv work, and we enjoy having her curate a session for us annually on the historic stage of Detroit’s Fox Theater.
Tell us about your group.
A brief phone call is usually enough to figure out what your people are working through and whether a session is the right instrument for it.
Let’s Talk