University of Georgia Athletics
Massaquoi Remains Fascinated By Performance
October 16, 2022 | Football, The Frierson Files
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By John Frierson
Staff Writer
As former Georgia wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi talked about his business, Vessol, which helps organizations figure out how to best utilize and maximize their talent, it often sounded like he was talking about football.
"I help with talent strategy within organizations," said Massaquoi, one of three 2022 recipients of the Arch Award presented by the UGA Athletic Association and Piedmont Bank.
"More specifically, how teams interact in organizations. There are a lot of global organizations that are trying to figure out how to best coordinate efforts across time zones, geographies, responsibilities, state lines, and sometimes that can be challenging, figuring out how all of those moving parts work together."
Like a football program with all of its different aspects - coaches, players, analysts, trainers, nutritionists, video personnel, recruiting staff and equipment managers among them — large businesses and organizations have to figure out the best way to get all of those moving parts operating most effectively and efficiently.
Vessol, as it says on its website, "is a team of organizational psychologists, consultants, analysts and leadership coaches." Massaquoi started the business in 2018, long after catching his last pass, and a year after a life-changing accident.
During his great Georgia career (2005-08), Massaquoi caught 158 passes for 2,282 yards and 16 touchdowns. A second-round pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, Massaquoi spent four years with the Cleveland Browns, catching 118 passes in 54 career games.
Always a good student with an eye on what he wanted to do after football, Massaquoi graduated from Georgia with a Psychology degree and went on to attend Harvard Business School, completing the Program for Leadership Development. He also recently earned a Master's in Industrial-Organizational Psychology.
In 2017, Massaquoi was in an ATV accident and eventually had four fingers on his left hand amputated. Massaquoi had worked at Morgan Stanley before the accident, but afterward, he realized that his passions and talents lie elsewhere.
The accident, Massaquoi said, inspired the creation of Vessol "because it kind of had me sit down and re-evaluate what I wanted to spend time on. ... Functioning as an organizational psychologist is probably where I always wanted to be, and the accident helped accelerate that."
Massaquoi, a first-generation American, said he's always been "fascinated with how people come into the world." And as an athlete, he's always been "fascinated by performance and how you compete and how you continue to develop and ascend to the highest levels of whatever you're interested in."
If you pair those two things together, he said, "the natural fit is how you get people to perform in areas that they care about."
Vessol also helps organizations improve team culture through diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
"When you talk about culture, when you talk about diversity, inclusion and equity, you're trying to get whatever your team composition is, you're trying to make that the best that you can and you're trying to get those pieces to work together for a desired angle," he said.
"When you think about football, each player has a different position, a different skill set, a different responsibility. That's no different from an organization, and a large part of organizations have remained pretty homogeneous. That would be equivalent to only playing with your quarterback in a football game."
The way to succeed is to have people playing the roles that best suit their abilities and interests.
"Now what we're trying to do is figure out how to get all these amazing pieces from across the world, across every demographic, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, learning capability, and how do we combine that in ways that create a really unique competitive advantage in your organization," he said. "In doing so, not only do you create a dynamic working environment for your people, you enhance engagement, you enhance the output and productivity. And you create an environment where people actually love to be a part of it."
In 2018, the same year he started Vessol, Massaquoi was a member of the University of Georgia 40 under 40 class — a year after another 2022 Arch Award recipient, former GymDog Katie Jacobs, received the same honor.
When asked what his favorite memory is from his Georgia career — maybe the 84-yard touchdown catch against Florida or the game-winning TD catch against Georgia Tech — Massaquoi said what stands out all these years later are the people, not the games.
"It's the bonding that happens in the locker room, the cookouts that you go to with your teammates, the nights when a lot of funny stuff happened," he said. "It's the life experiences. ... You have brothers and sisters that you developed over those years, across all sports and across the campus."
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
As former Georgia wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi talked about his business, Vessol, which helps organizations figure out how to best utilize and maximize their talent, it often sounded like he was talking about football.
"I help with talent strategy within organizations," said Massaquoi, one of three 2022 recipients of the Arch Award presented by the UGA Athletic Association and Piedmont Bank.
"More specifically, how teams interact in organizations. There are a lot of global organizations that are trying to figure out how to best coordinate efforts across time zones, geographies, responsibilities, state lines, and sometimes that can be challenging, figuring out how all of those moving parts work together."
Like a football program with all of its different aspects - coaches, players, analysts, trainers, nutritionists, video personnel, recruiting staff and equipment managers among them — large businesses and organizations have to figure out the best way to get all of those moving parts operating most effectively and efficiently.
Vessol, as it says on its website, "is a team of organizational psychologists, consultants, analysts and leadership coaches." Massaquoi started the business in 2018, long after catching his last pass, and a year after a life-changing accident.
During his great Georgia career (2005-08), Massaquoi caught 158 passes for 2,282 yards and 16 touchdowns. A second-round pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, Massaquoi spent four years with the Cleveland Browns, catching 118 passes in 54 career games.
Always a good student with an eye on what he wanted to do after football, Massaquoi graduated from Georgia with a Psychology degree and went on to attend Harvard Business School, completing the Program for Leadership Development. He also recently earned a Master's in Industrial-Organizational Psychology.
In 2017, Massaquoi was in an ATV accident and eventually had four fingers on his left hand amputated. Massaquoi had worked at Morgan Stanley before the accident, but afterward, he realized that his passions and talents lie elsewhere.
The accident, Massaquoi said, inspired the creation of Vessol "because it kind of had me sit down and re-evaluate what I wanted to spend time on. ... Functioning as an organizational psychologist is probably where I always wanted to be, and the accident helped accelerate that."
Massaquoi, a first-generation American, said he's always been "fascinated with how people come into the world." And as an athlete, he's always been "fascinated by performance and how you compete and how you continue to develop and ascend to the highest levels of whatever you're interested in."
If you pair those two things together, he said, "the natural fit is how you get people to perform in areas that they care about."
Vessol also helps organizations improve team culture through diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
"When you talk about culture, when you talk about diversity, inclusion and equity, you're trying to get whatever your team composition is, you're trying to make that the best that you can and you're trying to get those pieces to work together for a desired angle," he said.
"When you think about football, each player has a different position, a different skill set, a different responsibility. That's no different from an organization, and a large part of organizations have remained pretty homogeneous. That would be equivalent to only playing with your quarterback in a football game."
The way to succeed is to have people playing the roles that best suit their abilities and interests.
"Now what we're trying to do is figure out how to get all these amazing pieces from across the world, across every demographic, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, learning capability, and how do we combine that in ways that create a really unique competitive advantage in your organization," he said. "In doing so, not only do you create a dynamic working environment for your people, you enhance engagement, you enhance the output and productivity. And you create an environment where people actually love to be a part of it."
In 2018, the same year he started Vessol, Massaquoi was a member of the University of Georgia 40 under 40 class — a year after another 2022 Arch Award recipient, former GymDog Katie Jacobs, received the same honor.
When asked what his favorite memory is from his Georgia career — maybe the 84-yard touchdown catch against Florida or the game-winning TD catch against Georgia Tech — Massaquoi said what stands out all these years later are the people, not the games.
"It's the bonding that happens in the locker room, the cookouts that you go to with your teammates, the nights when a lot of funny stuff happened," he said. "It's the life experiences. ... You have brothers and sisters that you developed over those years, across all sports and across the campus."
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
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