Sarah Rochniak’s path at Easton Training Center began in 2014 as a CU Boulder college student looking for a part-time job. Eleven years later, Sarah helps the entire company run behind the scenes as its Director of Admin, ensuring that all eight academies stay aligned and on track.
Though Sarah wasn’t deeply involved in martial arts when she started at Easton, she did Taekwondo as a child for two years, attending classes after school and learning the discipline of showing up every day. Ironically, when Sarah applied for a position at Easton, she also applied for a job at a local bar. Her prior positive experience on the mats, however, and her dad encouraging her to try BJJ before college, pulled her to Easton.
The more she became involved with the Easton community and the people there, the more she fell in love with her job and the relationships she built along the way. Eventually, Sarah realized that her initial interest in psychology and pursuing a medical career (which was what she previously sought to pursue with school) wasn’t her true calling.
Today, Sarah juggles many responsibilities, ranging from HR work like ensuring compliance with Colorado state regulations, managing payroll, overseeing accounting, and working on standard operating procedures (SOPs) to make life easier for everyone involved. She’s also in charge of logistics for merchandise, event planning, and managing multiple aspects of balancing the big picture with the day-to-day tasks.
The art of clear communication
One of the most challenging aspects of Sarah’s position involves managing communication across all eight Easton schools. However, Sarah thrives on finding the overlaps and connections, and helping different schools innovate and adapt best practices. Seeing firsthand how one school’s experiment with a new approach works — whether it’s in marketing or class management – can inspire others to try something new.
This balance between individual experimentation and big-picture alignment involves a careful structure, and Sarah has had to learn how to both create boundaries while allowing space for play and personal growth for all of the schools and staff involved.
[Community: the Heartbeat of Easton Training Center]
With a life so deeply entrenched at the academy, balancing personal friendships with work relationships has been a challenge at times. Sarah has grown significantly in this aspect, however, learning to separate her role as a leader from her personal connections with coworkers. Anybody who has worked with her knows – Sarah gets things done. She deeply values the ability to show up as someone who can be counted on.
The transition to working from home has also been difficult for Sarah, especially since she’s naturally extroverted and thrives in social environments. While she manages to stay connected with her colleagues through regular communication and meetings, she can feel somewhat disconnected when not present in person – especially across multiple locations. Working closely with program directors and senior leadership, however, helps Sarah have her hands in multiple places at once!
A balance of facts and fantasy
With the large focus on admin in her role, Sarah finds great satisfaction in organizing the chaos – the spreadsheets, the numbers, all the moving parts. She enjoys using data to find trends and figure out ways to improve processes that contribute to the growth of Easton. As a woman in a male-dominated field, Sarah finds value in bringing a unique perspective to the leadership team, which she believes has become even more impactful as the company continues to grow and promote women into leadership roles.
While Sarah’s work is often rooted in tangible results, she finds creative outlets in her personal life. She loves reading, especially fantasy novels, writing and creating art through drawing and bookbinding – creative experiences that help expand her thinking and allow her to approach her work in a more innovative way.
“Maybe reading a fantasy book has nothing to do with my day-to-day,” Sarah says, “but being able to think creatively, I’m able to bring that to work and apply it in a different, tangible way.”
Sarah is a firm believer that it’s essential to maintain a balance between work and hobbies to prevent burnout, and in expressing different sides of yourself no matter what your focus is.
“It’s important to have something outside of what you do,” says Sarah, “so you’re not so focused on that one thing 100 percent of the time. It’s healthy to have different interests and ideas.”
[All About Balance: Training, Recovery and Life]
Though Sarah does not currently train consistently in martial arts, she enjoys going hiking, skiing, lifting and pushing her body in other ways. She is also a master diver! Her exposure to Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai at Easton has taught her an invaluable lesson in resilience and doing hard things.
For Sarah, the culture at Easton has been a driving force in teaching her to tackle difficult situations head-on, knowing that she can get through them with the right mindset.
Earlier in the year, Sarah completed a challenging six-and-a-half-mile hut trip, with a 1,500-foot elevation gain. For anyone unfamiliar, Colorado has a system of backcountry huts – remote cabins – with no running water, which rely on solar panels for electricity and wood stoves for cooking and snow melt. The only way to reach them in the winter is via a 6.5-mile hike on skis – mostly uphill.
It was one of the hardest things Sarah had ever done, but the lessons from Easton helped her push through as she reminded herself, “This is what Easton people do.”
She embraced the struggle, leaned into the challenge and knew she could endure it; tough things are simply part of the process.
Looking back at her career at Easton, Sarah reflects on the evolution of her life from college student to a responsible adult leading and managing others.
“It’s been cool to break up different phases of life in comparison to my time at Easton,” says Sarah, “really growing into adulthood through my years here.”
Her journey with Easton has undoubtedly shaped Sarah into the person she is today, and she’s excited to see how the next phase of her career and life unfolds. The connections she’s made, the leadership roles she’s embraced, and the lessons learned along the way are all part of a fulfilling experience that continues to guide her path.
