Ep. 273 | D-Day Leadership Academy: Jake Schroeder on WWII Veterans, Normandy & Redefining Success

About this episode

Jake Schroeder discusses his journey from coaching youth sports to founding the D-Day Leadership Academy in Normandy, focusing on leadership lessons from WWII.

He sang the national anthem for the Colorado Avalanche a thousand times, coached 4,000 inner-city kids, lost it all, and rebuilt on the beaches of Normandy — where a WWII veteran watched children playing on Utah Beach and said through tears: "That's why we came." Jake Schroeder—former frontman of OP Gone Bad, national anthem singer for the Colorado Avalanche, and executive director of the Denver Police Activities League—now runs the D-Day Leadership Academy, bringing inner-city youth to Normandy, France to learn leadership through the stories of World War II. After concussions, insurance costs, and political shifts dismantled his youth sports programs serving 4,000 kids a year, Jake pivoted. Inspired by the WWII veterans he’d been bringing back to Omaha Beach and Utah Beach since 2011, he transformed his nonprofit into a Normandy-based leadership program built on five pillars drawn from D-Day: leading from the front, total commitment to mission, chaos, preparation, and empathy. In this conversation, he and host Christian Taylor—director of the award-winning documentary The Girl Who Wore Freedom—explore what success really means when the money isn’t there but the mission keeps…

People in this episode

Host: Christian Taylor

Guest: Jake Schroeder

Topics covered

• leadership
• World War II
• nonprofit
• youth programs
• success
• D-Day

Keywords

• D-Day Leadership Academy
• Jake Schroeder
• youth leadership
• World War II veterans
• nonprofit pivot
• success definition
• Normandy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: D-Day Leadership Academy, Denver Police Activities League

Books & works: The Girl Who Wore Freedom

Places: Normandy, Colorado, Utah Beach, Omaha Beach

More episodes of Documentary First

• When Is Silence Wisdom and When Is It Complicity? I Deep Dive on Ep. 279 · June 11, 2026 · 8 min
• Ep. 279 I She Was Here: Heather O'Rourke's Family Debunks the Poltergeist Curse · June 4, 2026 · 52 min
• The Two Kinds of “Alone” Every Filmmaker Knows I Deep Dive on Ep. 278 · May 28, 2026 · 10 min
• Ep. 278 I Adapt or Die: A Working Filmmaker with AI in 2026 · May 21, 2026 · 55 min
• Anthropic's $1.5B Mistake. Yours Could Cost More. I Deep Dive on Ep. 277 · May 14, 2026 · 9 min
• Ep. 277 I Why Does One Documentary Clip Cost $70,000? Music Licensing and Fair Use · May 7, 2026 · 25 min