Paul Tarell

I’m an Eagle Scout. I earned the rank as a teenager, and I didn’t understand at the time how much of the rest of my life it would quietly shape.

Scouting teaches a few things that never show up on a transcript: how to finish what you started after the early enthusiasm wears off, how to lead a project when no one has handed you a title, and the small discipline of keeping your word when it would be easier not to. I carried those habits into a twenty-year career — through public accounting and operating roles, and then the decade I spent helping take a growth-stage media company to 800,000 subscribers across 185 countries. I run my own advisory firm now, and I’m writing a book about that work. The discipline underneath all of it traces back further than any job. It traces back to a troop.

There’s a line I’ve held onto since those years: leadership is action, not position. You don’t need a title to lead. You need to be the person who does the next right thing when it would be easier to do nothing. Every Eagle Scout I’ve met already knows this, because earning the rank required it.

That’s why my family and I started the Paul Tarell Eagle Scout Scholarship. You’ve already proven the part that’s hardest to teach — the focus, the follow-through, the willingness to see a hard thing all the way to done. I’d like to help with the part that’s easier to support: the cost of what you study next. The award is modest, but the intent behind it isn’t. I want to back the Scouts who are carrying those values into whatever comes after the rank.

If that’s you, I hope you’ll apply. You can find more about my work and writing at paultarell.com.

— Paul Tarell, Founder