Game On! with Terrance Rivers

Talk to the Citadel alumnus today, and he’ll tell you that he prefers to watch highlights instead of entire games. So it seems appropriate that we feature his career highlights here -- and show his transformation from football recordbreaker to readySC star player!  

1st Quarter

Kickoff: With a coin toss determining who gets the ball at kickoff, much is left to chance, and tensions can run high in that pre-game uncertainty. 

Terrance knows a bit about that. After playing high school football in Jacksonville, Florida, the Citadel was one of the colleges that made his post-secondary shortlist… until a teacher recommended that he watch The Lords of Discipline. The movie, based on the 1980 novel by famed Southern novelist and Citadel graduate Pat Conroy, tells the story of a fictionalized military college’s brutal culture of hazing and abuse. Terrance just so happened to be watching the film when the Citadel football coach knocked on his door to discuss recruitment. Talk about a conflict of conscience! 

Touchdown #1: Though Terrance wasn’t seeking a military college experience, the Citadel seemed like the best choice for him to be successful while staying focus on completing his undergraduate degree. It turns out he was right. He praises the quality education received at the college and says he learned much about leadership from watching good leaders -- from the Corps of Cadets and professors to his coaches and football teammates -- lead. 

And though he would never brag on himself, we will. Citadel record books show that he had more than 100 yards in four games and 16 touchdowns in 1994 alone, which tied for the school record at the time and is currently tied for 4th in number of touchdowns for a season -- no small feat with the “hard-nosed, ground-and-pound” wishbone offense. 

Extra point: The icing on the cake also came in 1994, when Terrance scored four touchdowns and 217 yards against Furman, the Citadel’s biggest rival. One online commentator refers to the early 1990s as the Bulldogs’ golden era, and Terrance was a big part of that success.  

Fumble: After completing his four years at the Citadel, Terrance was confident that he didn’t want to join any branch of the armed forces. (Having a nurse at Fort Jackson poke his arm about eight times in an attempt to draw blood may have had something to do with that.) But today, he admits that serving as a commissioned officer may have been a missed opportunity. Perhaps.… But selfishly, we would hate for him to have taken a different path and not joined readySC.

2nd Quarter

Field Goal: After college, Terrance entered the banking industry, serving alternately as a data analyst, an Internet banking manager, a mortgage lender and a relationship manager. He installed software, tracked loan campaigns, trained clients and wrote training manuals for internal staff and user guides for clients. His climb up the corporate ladder and skills mastery were signs of success, but that success wasn’t complete. The desire to nurture growth in people, likely instilled by his mother, who taught kindergarten for 35 years, was missing.  

Halftime

Coaching: While he battled this sense of unfulfillment, the right person came along at the right time with advice that would set Terrance on a new trajectory. Jim Maxon, whom Terrance met as a young cadet at age 18 and also sat with him on the Citadel Football Association Board, invited Terrance to take a look at the readySC Boeing project. Jim was the readySC Area Director in Charleston at the time and knew that Terrance may be able to find what he was looking for with readySC.   

3rd Quarter

Second-Half Advantage/Kickoff: Soon after, in 2011, Terrance joined readySC, where he worked as a manager on the Boeing project for three years. Once he became the Area Director in Charleson, he supervised all other prospects and projects in the region, which grew to include the Volvo project in 2014 and the Mercedes-Benz project in 2015. 

Handoff: With such an industry boom, Terrance’s responsibilities shifted so that he focused solely on Volvo and Mercedes. And did we mention that this happened while he was pursuing his doctorate degree in Higher Education and Organizational Change? His ability to “absorb a lot of work” while developing himself as a leader makes him “a pretty impressive dude,” according to Vice President of Economic Development Brad Neese. 

Touchdown #2: Mercedes-Benz Vans was in the Charleston area for ten years, reassembling vans that were built in, disassembled in and shipped from Germany, before it announced that it would conduct all operations in South Carolina. Terrance helped launch the project, even traveling to Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz plant in Dusseldorf, Germany, in late 2015 to assess the extent of the company’s training and recruitment needs. He would see the project through to its completion, ensuring that readySC’s commitment to train 1,300 employees was fulfilled. 

4th Quarter

Touchdown #3: Meanwhile, as Volvo Cars quietly considered how to best launch into the US market, Terrance was the company’s contact person to fulfill a 4,000-employee training commitment. Now, as Senior Area Director, he delights in finding motivated, competent talent that, when given a concept, comes back with surprising and innovative solutions. He strives to create an environment where employees want to come to work, they pass that desire on to their trainees and trainees pass it back out into the community. 

Extra point: Validation of his efforts came in his October receipt of the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) Silver Award, which he is quick to point out is a team award. A portion of the award was for Volvo Cars’ post-hire training aids, which helped close the gap between training and the production floor. He and his team have since incorporated similar training aids with pre-hires so that pre-hires can become successful post-hire trainees, and post-hire trainees can become successful in production.

Post-Game Press Conference

When Terrance recalls his early-90s athletic success at the Citadel, he says, “It doesn’t matter if you have a superstar if the team isn’t good.” The same is true of his work with readySC, and this team is award-winning. He uses phrases like “freedom to innovate,” “employee happiness” and “offsetting strengths and weaknesses” to describe the people he works with. He likes how there’s balance between generalists and analysts. And he’s glad to have finally found that people-centered fulfillment that he missed back when he was in the banking industry. 

Off-season

Terrance’s down-time is less adrenaline-packed than a football game, but the quiet, thoughtful way he leads at work spills over into his hobbies. For instance, he enjoys woodworking and recently built a workbench with a mounted miter saw, as well as two planters -- one with wheels, one without. He also likes to landscape, propagate plants and grow vegetables. (He’s had success with both carrots and cabbage, but the jury’s still out on the okra.) And he regularly transports his 13-year-old daughter to her volleyball matches and track practices. In both his professional and private life, he is dedicated to building and growing -- whether it’s people, plants or projects -- and that’s what makes him our readySC star player for November!