PROVO, Utah (Feb. 27, 2014)—American Studies graduate Travis Snyder wasn’t sure what he was going to do after graduating from Brigham Young University. Now as CEO of The Color Run, Snyder told BYU students and faculty how his humanities experience helped him create and direct one of the most successful 5K runs throughout the world.
It wasn’t easy for Snyder to figure out what he wanted to do in life. He said that as he was sitting in his graduation ceremony, he could hear the students around him talking about graduate school and exam preparations. He thought, “‘What in the world am I going to do?’ because I didn’t take an LSAT course and I wasn’t pre-law,” Snyder said.
He ended up creating a global phenomenon.
That’s why he came back to BYU to share his experience. “If I was in your shoes, I would have liked an event like this,” Snyder said. He wants students to recognize their skills as Humanities majors and realize the opportunities before them. “The biggest goal of my talk is to help each of you individually feel a little more in charge of your destiny, whatever that may mean.”
Snyder knows firsthand what it means to take charge of one’s destiny. He always enjoyed organizing various runs, but when his wife was too intimidated to participate, he realized he wanted an event that was accessible and fun.
While at the Disney’s World of Color show, Snyder noted that an event like this was aimed towards entertaining everyone. And that’s how he got the idea for The Color Run.
What started as one event in Utah, The Color Run now has had over 600 thousand participants in more than 170 events in more than 30 countries. The Color Run “is not limited by nationality or culture,” Snyder said.
So how did Snyder make it happen? He said that his experience as an American Studies major made it all possible.
“American Studies is amazing. So much of your college experience wants you to be specialized, to the point where you’re valuable as a specific doctor for a very specific surgery. For me, American Studies was very attractive because it’s less narrow. In all these different classes, you step back and gain perspective. Maintaining that perspective has served me well for what I do.
“The humanities, this major, becomes more and more powerful and more and more relevant to how this world is moving. The world is moving so quickly. What this tells me is that forcing yourself down to highly specific things is dangerous.” He said it’s important to develop skills that can provide perspective on everything: how to write, read, think, develop an idea, etc.”
Snyder even shared his experience as an employer, hiring people and looking for these types of skill sets. “There’s a point where the resume becomes irrelevant. What employers are looking for is impact.” He told students, “Try and learn to make an impact through your studies…through quality work. Look at every course and ask yourself, ‘How do I extract as much as I can from this?’”
He observed, “A lot of it is how a person thinks and their ability to adapt and work with others.”
For The Color Run, those skills are necessary. “It hasn’t been easy,” Snyder said. “There have been setback and failures, but you have to keep battling.”
He offered an example of what happened at the very first Color Run event in Atlanta. At the last minute, a road closure was changed to half-closed, so they quickly had to call for fences and barricades to ensure the safety of the runners. Then the city opened the roads 20 minutes after the last runner finished. “The colors were dragged into Atlanta,” Snyder said. “It looked like the Wizard of Oz. There was a lot of work to do. There were moments that were dark, trying to figure out what to do, but we soldiered on and created processes to handle it.”
In those difficult moments, his humanities skills came through. “My degree was perfect for me,” he said. “It teaches you how to think. It’s the idea of stepping back and looking at America—looking at the whole experience. Having that mindset has been helpful.”
That mindset and those skills are what it takes to direct and run something as large as The Color Run. “One of my directors is a philosophy major. He runs one of the largest departments because he listens well, interprets and can make the necessary changes.”
All in all, those humanities skills are important in any situation, and Snyder is evidence of that. Kristin Matthews, director of the American Studies program, said of Snyder, “He gives an alternative view of what you can do with a humanities degree and the skills one develops: initiative, writing, vision. Those skills can be used in a variety of fields.”
Snyder told students, “Your ability to read and interpret something, form an opinion about it, and have a good argument about it, is highly valuable.
“You face pressure when you graduate, and I battled for years, taking the skill sets I’d acquired and figured out how that combined with my natural abilities to add value to something.”
Snyder has done just that. For Snyder the greatest things about The Color Run are that “1.2 million people went out and ran who hadn’t run a race before.” Also the Color Run, in 2012 alone, donated over 3 million dollars to charities.
For more information on the Color Run, check out their video.
Snyder also offered a $10 discount for all BYU students and staff with the code “GoCougs.”
—Stephanie Bahr Bentley BA’ English ’14