Then and Now: Gaven Smith coaches at J.B. Hunt Transport

Gaven Smith jokes that his mom wouldn't let him be a coach, but he found a way to coach anyway. As senior vice president of engineering and technology at Lowell-based J.B. Hunt Transport Services, he's a coach in a professional environment. The son of a mother who was a first-grade teacher and a dad who coached for 35 years, Smith grew up in Rogers, soaking up lessons from his parents: "I was learning leadership lessons in my early, early, early childhood years and didn't know any better. "Those lessons I learned from being a coach's kid, and being the ball boy, or water boy all those years, and seeing how to lead, and lead in an empathetic way - I'm thankful for, because I don't know that I would've gotten those lessons otherwise, especially that early. I see a lot of people make leadership mistakes in their 20s and 30s that were lessons I learned in my teens from parents that were doing it all the time." Lessons like how to put teams together and how to balance styles when solving problems. "I'm somebody that thinks, how do we attack it? Who are the right people to attack it? I've learned that's not always an innate leadership trait that all leaders think about. "Empathy...

Source: https://talkbusiness.net/2026/08/then-and-now-gaven-smith-coaches-at-j-b-hunt-transport/