Board Member Profile: Sean Harrington
Founder & General Manager at Notemeal
Sean currently serves as Founder and General Manager of Notemeal, a platform integrating Sports Dietitians and Performance Kitchens to create an optimized athlete fueling experience. He attended Tufts University where he played Football and Baseball, and graduated with a degree in Computer Science. Sean founded Notemeal in early 2019 after serving as Director of Software Engineering for the New England Patriots through four years, including two Super Bowl Championships. Notemeal was acquired by Teamworks in late 2021. Sean is an (amateur) guitarist, and has published research in the nutrigenomics space. He continues to pursue research focused on the prediction of plant compound bioactivity, and specifically, the practical implications of these predictions on human diet and corresponding performance. Sean lives with his wife, Alicia, in Boston, MA.
We spoke with Sean to learn more about his perspective on the Tactical Athlete. Here is what he had to say:
(TA-LB): The themes of the Tactical Athlete Leadership Board are Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery. From your perspective, why are these themes important, and what about them resonates with your experience in the human performance industry?
(Sean): My work looks to ensure readiness, build resilience, and aid in recovery for our Tactical Athletes. We research ways to improve health, wellness, and performance and find ways to improve injury prevention, healing, and recovery.
(TA-LB): Looking to the future, what technological innovation do you think will have the most significant impact on tactical athletes?
(Sean): Technology is incredible, and it will be a game-changer. However, all the technology in the world won't help our Tactical Athletes until we change the culture around them to maintain health and wellness through self-care to ensure constant readiness.
(TA-LB): The spirit of the TALB is to bring a diverse set of perspectives to the table aligned toward a singular purpose: to sustain the tactical athlete of today and prepare for the tactical athlete of tomorrow. Why is it essential for the broader human performance industry to work together towards this end?
(Sean): Those working with this population will find what works and take from everything that is being done and shape it to work for this particular population. Few people understand the unique requirements and needs of this group - those are the ones that need to progress the work with them, taking from what we can learn from others working with other populations.
(TA-LB): What is the greatest challenge to innovation in the human performance sector?
(Sean): Money and collaboration. Everyone is looking to make money and to control the industry and the data. Those trying to help the TAs are hampered by the new trend with technology requiring paying for continued access to software and cloud access to your data.