 My giant leap was going from Purdue to the Olympic Games. Thanks to Purdue I have the confidence to set big goals and work hard to achieve them. I graduated from Purdue in 2013 and after I graduated I went on to win an Olympic gold medal at the Rio Olympics in rowing. I think Purdue gave me the confidence to work hard and be consistent in my dreams and just go for it. It was hard but I'm proud of all the work I put in and it paid off. All my siblings went to Purdue. My dad was a professor here. I actually grew up in West Lafayette. So I always kind of knew that I wanted to come to this school. There are no high school rowing programs in the area but I always knew I wanted to row because my brothers both rowed. My novice coach Jen Stump was a big motivation in my rowing career telling me that she thought I had the potential to row past college and I was only a freshman at that time. Her putting that idea in my head really made me think about that as I was growing in my rowing career. A big influence in my professional development were just my teammates at Purdue. We all pushed each other and kept each other accountable and rowing practice was more than rowing. It was community. I'd say the biggest thing that Purdue taught me was just mindset. I think there's this culture at Purdue that's kind of unique around work ethic and learning how to earn your victories at Purdue especially on the rowing team as a club. We were never entitled to anything. We worked for everything and just learning to be independent and working hard and earning our victories that was something that I took past Purdue was really important in my development. In my sophomore year at Purdue we won the Dadvale Regatta in Philadelphia and by winning that race we got to race at the Women's Hemley Regatta in England. So on the Olympic team I was in an eight-rower boat and so there's eight rowers in one coxswain and I was in the stroke seat position sitting closest to the back of the boat facing away from all the rowers. I was the least experienced youngest in the boat but somehow my coach thought that I had that leadership quality that people would be able to follow. The footprint that I'm proud of is that I am actually the first woman from Purdue to win an Olympic gold medal and I'm proud of that because looking forward they're going to be hopefully many more women that achieve that title. That was Amanda Elmore. Look for more stories at purdue.edu.com