Alto Rendimiento en el Servicio Público | Juan Andrés Suárez Gutiérrez | TEDxESAP
Juan Andrés Suárez Gutiérrez, a lawyer and public servant in Santander, Colombia, shares how his childhood dream of becoming a professional footballer evolved into a career in public sports administration. He argues that high-performance public service, applied to sports programs, can transform lives by expanding access, reducing inequality, and empowering vulnerable youth. He equates purposeful governance with the discipline and passion of elite athletics.
Summary
Juan Andrés Suárez Gutiérrez opens his talk with a personal story from childhood, describing how a simple football—his most treasured possession—shaped his identity and dreams. At around age 11, older boys stole his ball, and his act of chasing it down and reclaiming it was his first experience of courage and self-belief. This formative moment planted the seeds of resilience in him.
Despite his passion for football, Suárez never had access to formal sports training, clubs, coaches, or public sports infrastructure in his hometown. He recounts how societal labels—'you can't,' 'you're not capable'—compounded the lack of institutional support and ultimately prevented him from becoming a professional athlete. Rather than viewing this as failure, he came to understand resilience as the ability to transform adversity into strength.
Life eventually led him to public service. Armed with a law degree from ESAP (the Higher School of Public Administration), he became the head of the legal office at the Departmental Institute of Recreation and Sports in Santander. He reframes his identity: though he never became a high-performance athlete, he considers himself a high-performance public servant—someone who 'went from the dream of competing to the purpose of serving.'
Suárez outlines four concrete 'doors to well-being' that effective sports public administration can unlock. First, the social and health impact of sport: citing the WHO, he notes physical activity reduces cardiovascular disease risk by up to 30%, and per the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, it can reduce a teenager's likelihood of involvement in crime, drugs, or school dropout by up to 40%. Second, equal opportunities: his office uses a 'pro-sports tax' to fund snacks and transportation so approximately 4,000 children from 87 municipalities—many of whom had never visited the city—can attend professional football matches in a stadium of 25,000 spectators. Third, identity, coexistence, and values: by providing uniforms and equipment, the institution fosters a sense of belonging, community respect, and non-violence. Fourth, public management with real impact: a transparently managed budget supports three pillars—high-performance athlete training, community and social sport for all ages, and student/developmental sports reaching 38,000 students daily in values and teamwork.
He closes by challenging everyone—whether in the auditorium or watching online—to approach any position of governance or leadership the way an athlete approaches sport: with discipline, passion, respect for the rules, and above all, love. His central thesis is that 'to govern is to serve,' and that public service, when executed with purpose and dignity, can transform lives just as powerfully as sport itself.
Key Insights
- Suárez argues that his failure to become a professional athlete was directly caused by systemic gaps—no sports clubs, no coaches, no public sports programs—rather than lack of personal talent or effort, framing it as an institutional failure rather than an individual one.
- Suárez claims that physical activity, according to the WHO and UN data he cites, can reduce cardiovascular disease risk by up to 30% and lower the probability of a teenager engaging in criminal activity, drug use, or school dropout by up to 40%.
- Suárez describes using revenue from a 'pro-sports tax' to fund transportation and snacks so that approximately 4,000 children from 87 municipalities can attend a professional football match in a stadium—an experience he argues can itself be life-changing for children who have never left their municipalities.
- Suárez redefines high performance away from athletic achievement, claiming that a public servant managing interdisciplinary teams, transparent budgets, and real social programs qualifies as a 'high-performing official,' effectively transposing the athletic ideal onto bureaucratic excellence.
- Suárez contends that the true measure of public administration is not contract compliance or documentary fulfillment, but rather the identification of real territorial needs and the delivery of solutions that generate measurable social impact.
Topics
Transcript
[0:07] Hello. Well, good afternoon. Today I am speaking with a Santander accent. You know? Sometimes the biggest, most important things in life begin with something as simple, as small, as a ball. an idea or a spark. Well, I remember when I was little, [0:39] I loved to jump, play, run, I liked to dream. And what 11-year-old boy doesn't like to do this kind of thing? But I had a particularity, and that was that I was always seen with a ball in my hands. It was a gift I had been given for my birthday. I confess something, that ball was my most precious treasure, it [1:11] was my joy. That ball was my whole world. I…
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