Executive Director, Wellness Council of West Virginia
by Dawn Nolan
WHEN SHARON COVERT was a little girl, she had big dreams for her future. “I wanted to be a teacher or an attorney—or to rule the world.” Although her aspirations of world domination didn’t pan out the way she planned (she blames lack of military support), Covert is still a leader—of both a state and national organization. She is the executive director for the Wellness Council of West Virginia, where she works with a variety of companies and organizations to implement wellness initiatives and worksite wellness programs, and she serves as the president of the National Network of Wellness Councils.
Covert says she changed her mind about teaching because of her father. “My father taught for over 30 years. He told me if I majored in education, he would not even give me gas money.” She received her bachelor’s degree in English at Marshall University and then took another direction when she completed her master’s in exercise physiology. Despite the change, she didn’t quite shake the teaching bug. Her first job was at the Rehab Center in Institute where she worked in the deaf unit as a teaching assistant.
Mentors for Covert came in the form of her parents. She credits them as being the voices in her head when she is need of guidance and has spread their words of wisdom to her children. “My mother told me things like, ‘When you die, the only things that matter are who you loved, who loved you and what you did for God.’ My dad’s advice was more along the lines of ‘Show me a good loser and I’ll show you someone who is good at losing’ or ‘Babe, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’”
The motivation that keeps Covert going every day is the chance to be an example to those around her. “I don’t want my kids to see me stop. I cannot in good conscience take them to football practice or wrestling practice and tell them to try harder, do their best, don’t give up—then turn around and watch them while sitting on my can in the stands,” she says. “I can’t ask them to bring home their best work from school if I’m just giving a half effort. They may be able to say a lot of things about their mother, but they will never be able to say she asked us to do things she was not willing to do. That’s true with my co-workers, too. No one gets held to a standard that I am not trying to reach myself.”
In her hometown of Winfield, Covert takes the commitment to public service that she practices every day and applies it to her community. She has served as fundraising coordinator, football coordinator and president of Winfield’s Midget Football League, and she assisted in re-instating the organization’s lapsed non-profit status. Covert has also acted as president of the Putnam County Kiwanis, where she worked with the Putnam County Board of Education on the Pre-K Planning Committee. In addition, she has served on the review team and allocations committee for the United Way of Kanawha Valley and is a member of the Kanawha Valley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Although she has lived in Virginia and North Carolina, Covert calls West Virginia her home. She supports the importance of coal and is proud to live in a state that appreciates and supports the armed forces. “This state still values the military and appreciates our armed forces. My brother is career Army and on his third tour in the Middle East. My father was a captain in the Army and Army Reserves. My grandfather served on the U.S. Arizona prior to WWII. I can trace my mother’s family back to service in the American Revolutionary War. I don’t think I could stand living somewhere that did not value that kind of service.”
Photography by Tracy Toler
