6.18.09
OK, somehow you manage to get yourself invited to a game with a senator or cabinet secretary or, by a miracle, the president. But you actually suck at basketball, and talent is a tough thing to fake on the court. Now what?
Well, you might try calling Arthur Jackson.
For fun, he's the commish of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's Saturday morning run at The Lab School of Washington. His day job is president of One on One Basketball, a company that organizes youth training camps in the area. To get to Jackson's office, turn on a narrow side street off Mass Ave. and pull into the parking garage. In the shadows, there is a green door that leads to, of all things, the back of a flower shop. That's where he works. The place smells like a garden
In what little time he has left over in his day, Jackson coaches two youth teams. This winter, Bernard Muir, a teammate of Jackson's at Brown who is the athletic director at Georgetown, invited Jackson to bring the kids to a Hoyas game. Coincidentally, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty (who has played ball with Obama and Jackson) invited him to the same game. Jackson asked the mayor whether he could bring the kids up to his box. The mayor said yes. In the suite, Arthur ran into Duncan, which is where the Lab School run was born.
Watching all of this closely was the parent of one of the kids and CEO of a nonprofit company who does work on the Hill. The next time he saw Jackson, he pulled him aside: "I have a business idea."