SALT LAKE CITY—Utah House Rep. Jason Thompson, R-Cache County, is using his own life experiences to create the Legacy Forward Foundation. A nonprofit organization with a mission to establish leadership development opportunities for schools and districts.

“I was raised in Florida,” said Thompson. “By the time I was 16 I had moved 20 times. There were problems in my home and it wasn't the most stable. So I grew up not really caring about school and quite frankly not believing that I could do good in school even if I wanted to.”

Thompson said he joined his church when he was 16. “I was kicked out of my home and I’ve lived on my own since then. Some remarkable things just started happening. People just started coming into my life and it almost seemed like the perfect time that they came into my life when I needed them to.They showed up for me.”

After moving from Florida to Texas, Thompson said a gentleman reached out to him. “He said ‘I’ve heard your story about joining our faith. I’ve heard about the troubles you’ve had. Just tell me more about yourself. Tell me some of your goals.’ He spent some time with me.”

The gentleman turned out to be a guy named Frank Gay, he said. “He was in his 80s at the time but he was Howard Hughs’ right hand man. Frank Gay just started meeting with me and helping me set goals and showed me what real leadership looked like.”

It was like he was showing up, said Thompson. “It was very intentional. He would set goals with me and call me frequently. I would check in with him every two weeks.”

By the time he graduated, Thompson said he’d attended five different high schools. “My guidance counselor wouldn’t let me fall through the cracks. She was determined that I was going to graduate and I did.”

Because of a mentor that was a true example of leadership and because of these people who started showing up in his life, Thompson said he started to believe in himself. “I ended up getting a 3.89 GPA at UVSC and transferred to BYU. I never thought I’d be accepted to BYU. I never took the ACT or the SAT. I went on a mission and then when I came home I did a graduate degree.”

Thompson said it was just crazy how these leaders spoke to him. “They so clearly spoke to my potential that I started to believe it.”

I started this pest control company, he said. “We were entrepreneurs and super eager and excited to start a company and grow a company. So we started digging into every leadership book that we could. From Stephen R. Covey books to John A. Maxwell books. You name it, if it was a leadership book we read it.”

After a while, Thompson said they started to call themselves a leadership company that just so happened to do pest control. “We would recruit college students that would go out and sell. We would teach people to be leaders and that was everything from showing up to having resilience, to being able to work together, to being able to have difficult conversations and work through conflict. We were hyper focused on these leadership principles.”

Fast forward to 2023 and they sold the business, he said. “I had run for mayor just before we sold the company and was elected mayor of River Heights and then I ran for the legislature and now I’m trying to work to solve a tremendous number of problems that we have.”

Thompson said one of the areas he’s focused on is education. “Some of our biggest problems leadership principles would solve. Showing up, connectedness. We have almost no connectedness and it wasn’t COVID.”

It started 10 to 15 years prior to COVID that people started disconnecting, he said. “We started having chronic absenteeism rates that went through the roof. So I’ve seen this decline in the use of true leadership principles.”

So why Legacy Forward? “Well because I asked Frank how I was going to repay him because he paid for my first year of college at UVSC. I will never forget what he told me. He said ‘Jason you will repay me by doing what I'm doing for you for someone else.’ That always stuck with me.”

Thompson said he wants to get the principles of leadership taught in schools. “I want to have more parents, administrators and teachers speaking about the potential of these kids to them. So much that they start believing in themselves just like I did.”