Check Out Greg Jankowski’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Greg Jankowski.

Greg , we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My story has always centered around one question: **How can we help people become more confident, capable, connected, and purposeful human beings?**

My professional journey began in fitness, movement, and human performance. Over the years, that work evolved into my identity as **The Balance Professor™** and the development of **BACE™ — Balance Awareness Cognitive Engagement**. What began with physical balance became something much larger for me. Balance requires the brain and body to communicate continuously—requiring awareness, concentration, decision-making, adaptation, and confidence. I became increasingly interested in how those same principles could support mental focus, human performance, communication, collaboration, socialization, and lifelong learning.

That philosophy eventually expanded beyond fitness and into education, community engagement, media, and storytelling.

I created **IMAGiNE FiTTiNG IN™ — The Balance Professor’s Conversation Canvas™**, a podcast built around conversations with mentors and people working toward healthier lives and stronger communities. I later expanded that platform with **W.O.N. — WARRiORS OF NOW™**, with a particular emphasis on athletics, perseverance, leadership, personal development, and the lessons we learn through competition and life.

Underlying all of these endeavors is my belief that we need to think differently about how we prepare young people for adulthood. Education should certainly teach academic knowledge, but I believe we also need greater emphasis on **self-care, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, history, civics, personal responsibility, and community involvement**.

Creative arts are particularly important to me. Music, visual art, writing, theater, and storytelling give young people opportunities to discover their voices and develop the confidence to express what they think and feel. At the same time, understanding our history and civics can help young people appreciate both the freedoms they inherit and the responsibilities that come with them—including voting, participating in their communities, helping their fellow citizens, and understanding the meaning behind the words **“We the People.”**

Those ideas have now led me into perhaps the most unexpected chapter of my life.

As **IMGN The ARTiST™**, I have become a songwriter and producer creating primarily Alternative Americana music built around inspirational, reflective, and purposeful storytelling. I have always loved music—as a fan, singer, drummer, writer, and storyteller—and songwriting has given me another canvas for communicating many of the ideas I have spent years exploring.

My songs touch on identity, love, loss, gratitude, country, community, imagination, human potential, and the responsibility we share for the world we leave behind. I want music to entertain, but I also believe a song can make someone stop, think, remember, question, smile, heal, or become inspired to do something meaningful.

Ultimately, I don’t really see fitness, BACE™, podcasting, education, community advocacy, and music as separate careers. They are different expressions of the same mission.

Whether I am helping someone find physical balance, encouraging a young person to believe in their creativity, sitting across from an inspiring guest with a microphone between us, advocating for stronger education, healthcare and voting access, or telling a story through an IMGN The ARTiST™ song, I am trying to contribute to something larger than myself.

At this stage of my life, that has become increasingly important to me: **use what you have learned, create what you can, tell meaningful stories, help your fellow human beings, and leave something worthwhile behind.**

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No, it certainly has not been a smooth road—and in many ways, I think that is part of why I am doing what I am doing today.

Like most people who have pursued several different creative and professional paths, I have experienced periods of uncertainty, rejection, financial limitations, changing directions, ideas that took longer than expected to develop, and moments when I had to ask myself whether something I believed in would ever gain the traction I envisioned.

One of my greatest challenges has been trying to communicate ideas that do not always fit neatly into one traditional category. My work with **The Balance Professor™ and BACE™ — Balance Awareness Cognitive Engagement** is about much more than physical fitness. It connects movement with concentration, decision-making, confidence, communication, collaboration, socialization, and human performance. Helping others understand that broader vision—and demonstrating how it can complement fitness, education, athletics, healthcare, and personal development—has required persistence.

The same has been true creatively. Podcasting, writing, producing music, and developing **IMGN The ARTiST™** later in life meant being willing to become a beginner again. That can be humbling. Technology changes rapidly, the media and music industries are incredibly competitive, and independent creators often have to learn everything from production and distribution to marketing and audience development.

But I have come to believe there is tremendous value in remaining curious enough to be a beginner.

I have also learned that balance does not mean life remains perfectly still. Real balance is the ability to recognize change, make adjustments, recover, and continue moving forward. That principle applies physically, mentally, professionally, and creatively.

Those experiences have strengthened my belief that we need to give young people more opportunities to develop resilience, self-care, creativity, critical thinking, and confidence—not simply teach them how to pass a test. We need environments where young people can discover what they care about, learn from failure, understand their responsibilities as citizens, participate in their communities, and realize that their ideas and voices matter.

My struggles have also made me more conscious of time. As I have gotten older, I have become less interested in asking, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” and much more interested in asking, **“What can I still do now?”**

That question has helped fuel my podcasts, my advocacy, my continued development of BACE™, and especially my songwriting as **IMGN The ARTiST™**.

I don’t believe success is defined by having a perfectly smooth road. Sometimes the detours become the most meaningful part of the journey. For me, the objective has remained remarkably consistent: keep learning, keep creating, keep contributing, and use whatever platform I have to encourage healthier lives, stronger communities, greater creativity, responsible citizenship, and a renewed sense that **“We the People” still means all of us.**

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My work is probably best described as being at the intersection of **movement, human performance, education, conversation, creativity, and community**.

As **The Balance Professor™**, my foundation is fitness and human movement. I developed **BACE™ — Balance Awareness Cognitive Engagement** around the idea that balance is much more than standing on one foot. Maintaining balance requires constant communication between the brain and body—awareness, concentration, sensory processing, decision-making, adaptation, and physical response. My goal has been to use those principles to encourage not only better physical performance, but greater mental focus, confidence, communication, collaboration, and social engagement.

That work naturally led me toward education because I believe we should be preparing young people for more than academic achievement. **Self-care, critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, creativity, civics, history, and community responsibility** should all have meaningful places within education. I am particularly passionate about strengthening creative arts programs so students have opportunities to discover and confidently express their individual voices.

Another important part of my work is conversation and storytelling. Through **IMAGiNE FiTTiNG IN™ — The Balance Professor’s Conversation Canvas™**, I speak with mentors, educators, health professionals, artists, entrepreneurs, community advocates, and others whose experiences can help people think differently about their own lives. **W.O.N. — WARRiORS OF NOW™** extends that conversation into athletics, leadership, perseverance, teamwork, and the lessons competition can teach us about life.

Most recently, those same ideas have found another voice through music.

As **IMGN The ARTiST™**, I write and produce Alternative Americana music centered on inspirational, insightful, and purposeful storytelling. Music allows me to explore love, gratitude, identity, aging, country, history, imagination, community, and our responsibilities to one another. I want people to enjoy the songs first—but hopefully walk away thinking or feeling something as well.

What sets me apart may simply be my willingness to connect things that are often kept separate.

I see connections between **physical balance and mental balance; movement and learning; athletics and character; creativity and confidence; storytelling and empathy; history and citizenship; music and social connection; individual responsibility and community responsibility.** To me, they are all parts of developing healthier and more engaged human beings.

What I am most proud of is not any single title, program, podcast episode, or song. I am proud that I have continued creating and evolving—and that I am increasingly bringing everything I have learned into one larger purpose.

At a time when it can feel as though people are being encouraged to choose sides, retreat into categories, or focus primarily on their differences, I want my work to move in the opposite direction.

I want to encourage people to **move, think, create, communicate, participate, vote, care for themselves, care about their neighbors, understand where we have been, and take some responsibility for where we are going.**

Whether the vehicle is BACE™, a podcast conversation, a classroom idea, an athletic challenge, or an IMGN The ARTiST™ song, the underlying message is essentially the same:

**Find your balance. Find your voice. Find your purpose—and then use it to contribute something meaningful to the lives of others.**

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
What I like best about **Dayton, Ohio**, is very simple: **it is home. It has been home from the very beginning.**

But Dayton also represents something much larger to me. This is a city with an extraordinary history of imagination, invention, perseverance, and people willing to believe that what seems impossible today might become possible tomorrow. From aviation and the Wright brothers to the generations of innovators, engineers, educators, artists, healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens who have contributed far beyond the boundaries of our city, Dayton has always represented the power of ideas.

That spirit became personal for me through my parents, **A. Ivan and Irene Jankowski (Borgert)**.

My father helped support America’s Apollo Space Program and the remarkable national effort that ultimately took human beings to the Moon. As a child, that gave me an extraordinary example of what it meant to contribute to something much larger than yourself. He demonstrated that there should be no artificial limits on curiosity, imagination, responsibility, or what an individual citizen might contribute. He approached his responsibilities with grace, charm, diligence, attention to detail, and a tremendous sense of purpose.

My mother provided an equally important foundation of moral strength, reasoning, responsibility, and compassion. Together, my parents taught me that citizenship isn’t simply where you live. **Citizenship is participation.** It is caring enough about your family, neighbors, community, and country to contribute.

That lesson continues to influence virtually everything I do today—from **The Balance Professor™ and BACE™**, to my podcasts and community conversations, to the stories I now tell through music as **IMGN The ARTiST™**.

When people ask what I like least about Dayton, I really don’t spend much time making that list. I’m too busy thinking about creative solutions for the things that all proud citizens would like to see become better.

Every community has challenges. The question is what we choose to do about them.

For me, it starts with **justice, opportunity, education, health, creativity, civic participation, respect for one another, and pride in everything we do and for everyone who calls this community home.** I want young people especially to understand that their hometown is not simply someplace they inherit. It is someplace they can help shape.

Dayton helped teach the world to fly. People from this community contributed to taking humanity to the Moon. That history should remind us that imagination followed by action can accomplish remarkable things.

I remain enormously proud to call Dayton home, and I believe our greatest responsibility is not simply celebrating what previous generations accomplished, but asking ourselves what our generation will contribute next.

**United We Stand.
We The People.**

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thebalanceprofessor.com
• Instagram: @balanceprofessor
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greg.imgn.jankowski/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-jankowski-1b1aa236b/
• Twitter: https://x.com/IMGNTheARTiST
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@IMAGiNEFiTTiNGIN
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/@IMGNTheARTiST