James Tillinghast has always enjoyed being on the move. He’s been running since his WMS days, when the WMS running club began. He played lacrosse in middle school at The Tatnall School, and played tennis and ran track and cross country in high school at Saint Mark’s High School.
But when he began thinking about forging a career path, he decided to pursue economics. After graduating from Saint Mark’s in 2010, he attended East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where he majored in economics. After two years, he transferred to University of Delaware (“The in-state tuition was too good to pass up,” he said.) and graduated in 2014.
His first job after college was with the Vanguard Group, where he worked as a financial data analyst. Three years later, he took a job at JP MorganChase in Wilmington as a global information systems master.
But as James advanced in the financial services sector, his career aspirations began to change, and he started to wonder whether the corporate life was really for him. He started working as a part-time CrossFit coach while still working his day job at JP MorganChase, and soon found himself running a local CrossFit gym in Wilmington full-time.
“Working out and athletics has always been an important part of my life,” he said. “And helping other people with that is fulfilling.”
While James was happy to leave the corporate life behind, during his two years as head coach at Crossfit CR10 he struggled to ignore an interest he'd long had to serve in the military.
“It was always something in the back of my head and I just knew if I didn’t do it I would probably look back and be regretful of that,” he said. “I was also approaching the age limit for enlistment and decided I had to take the plunge.”
