Jason Platt

Biography

Jason was born in Garland, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. He and his family moved to Houston when he was four years old and he has called Houston home ever since. Jason grew up in a wonderful, loving home, playing all kinds of sports and, of course, picking on his younger brother Trey.

Scientists have studied and some believe that you figure out what you will do with your life between the ages of 7-14. At age 15, Jason started working by walking ditches in a nearby developing community picking up trash for minimum wage. He jokes about the scientists’ study and says “I don’t have any proof that their hypothesis is correct, but at the age of 15, I know what I didn’t want to do – and that was pick up trash, in ditches, in August, in Houston!

At that point, he knew he needed to become a different person. But, without realizing then, he had a problem. He thought he wasn’t as smart or could learn as fast as the other students. “I always believed I wasn’t as smart as everyone else,” he laments.

It wasn’t until his senior year in high school that he decided to enroll in the “advanced” government class. After the first half of the year, and seeing his poor grades, his teacher called him to the front of the class. Publicly, and humiliatingly, his government teacher said he should seriously consider dropping the advanced class and enrolling in the academic course if he wanted to graduate.

“I was completely embarrassed. It was almost like it was validation for me that I was dumb,” Jason says. However, it was the turning point for him. “Right then and there I decided to prove to him, and more importantly my assumptions about myself, wrong.”

He became a quick study, going in early, seeking tutoring from smarter people, going home later. He locked himself in his room and re-wrote all of his notes several times. “I started to ‘get it.’ It clicked. Learning, comprehending, getting along with other people, discipline. It was like I figured out how to open a safe that has been locked forever. It just opened.”

After high school, he went on to attend Texas State University – San Marcos where led multiple collegiate organizations. “I learned more lessons on leadership and management in college than any of the previous years combined, and the majority of those lessons came from outside the classroom.” After college he went to work for a leading transportation company in Houston, TX where he says he grew as a leader exponentially. “Those were truly magical years. The people made me better.”

Jason earned his undergraduate degree in Organizational Communication, became a certified Human Capital Strategist, and has since helped lead organizations to success through developing and managing their human capital departments. He has written, spoken and been coached on leadership and human capital principles and his passion is combining the two to develop great organizations through leadership and human capital development.

To learn more about Jason, and to subscribe to his leadership and human capital blog, visit: www.jasoncplatt.com