About Ian Palmer
Ian Palmer is a retired U.S. Army Colonel with 26 years of experience leading organizations at every level. He commanded at every echelon from platoon to brigade combat team, culminating in service as Chief of Staff of the III Armored Corps, where he synchronized operations and strategy for a 90,000-person organization across five Army installations. His career included combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, advisory and partnership missions across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and strategic assignments on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, where he advised national leaders on global operations. Along the way, he built teams from the ground up, led organizations through crisis and transformation, and shaped leader development across the Army. A Notre Dame graduate, Ian holds graduate degrees from the U.S. Naval War College and LSU and studied as a National Security Affairs Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Today, as a leadership advisor, he works alongside coaches and organizations to build championship cultures, grounded in a belief the Army taught him: leaders build relationships, relationships build trust and cohesion, and trust and cohesion build winning teams.
Why I Lead in Athletics
I’ve loved sports for as long as I can remember.
From the time I was six years old, I played anything I could: soccer, baseball, backyard football, kickball, dodgeball. My first clear sports memory is watching Dwight Clark make The Catch from Joe Montana and replaying it over and over in my bedroom. As I grew up, I was constantly in motion, whether it was pickup basketball at the park, neighborhood football, or sneaking away to catch whatever big game was on TV. I'd check on how the Buckeyes were doing against Chuck Long's Iowa team, watch Keith Byars run wild across my living room floor, and even rig up a tiny TV in the back of my mom's van so I wouldn't miss Bernie Kosar and the Browns stomp the Vikings.
I was more than a fan. Sports were how I made sense of everything else.
That perspective carried me through years of football, soccer, and baseball into my teens and early college years. Sports were a stabilizing force during some of the most challenging times in my life. When my parents went through a long and difficult divorce, I found belonging and consistency in my teammates. The locker room became a safe place, and the field became a proving ground. Sports were there when not much else was.
After a few Division III football programs showed interest, and after briefly entertaining the fantasy of walking on at Notre Dame as a kicker, my playing career came to an end. The lessons stayed with me: discipline, teamwork, humility, and the idea that success is best measured by the team's outcome rather than your own. Those lessons shaped me far beyond the field.
When I began my career in the Army, first through ROTC and then as a commissioned officer, I realized how seamlessly those lessons transferred. Leadership in the military looked and felt a lot like leadership in athletics. Both are built on cohesion, discipline, training to standard, developing and serving others, and winning, whether the victory shows up on the scoreboard or in accomplishing the mission.
There were moments in my 26 years in uniform when I considered leaving, and every time, the only real alternative I could picture was coaching.
My love for athletics never faded so much as evolved. The Army taught me that leadership is found in people: leaders build relationships, relationships build trust and cohesion, and trust and cohesion build winning teams. Coaches are doing that work faster than ever, with rosters that turn over every year and only a few weeks to install a vision and set the standard.