Her Story
About Jacqueline
Jacqueline Keagy serves as operations manager for Academy Sports and Outdoors in Altoona, Pennsylvania. She brings 16 years of retail experience to the role, having spent 13 years progressing from cashier to store manager in the grocery sector before moving to Sportsman's Warehouse for two years and joining Academy six months ago. Keagy's primary focus is people management, where she develops team members, learns individual working styles, and builds a unified store team. Without a college background, she credits hands-on training from each retailer she has worked with for her professional growth. She attributes her success to determination, particularly as a woman navigating a male-dominated field, and emphasizes that work ethic and integrity should remain consistent regardless of employer. Keagy advises young women entering the industry to stay confident and persistent, noting that only they can decide when to stop. Her core values center on integrity, responsibility, and reliability to foster trust among teams and customers.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jacqueline
01What do you attribute your success to?
Determination. Being a woman in the field, there's always some kind of notation or something that goes with it, you're playing in a man's field, so I think determination just to make a name for myself.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Your work ethic should not be dependent upon who you're working for. The work you put in every day should be the same regardless of who you're doing it for, because that's your integrity.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Be confident. Don't let someone shake your confidence. And just keep going. Because no one can tell you when it's your time to stop, except for yourself.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Competition. Just learning your competition and knowing how to beat them and to make it better for your customer. So not necessarily just beating your competition, but taking what they're doing and tailoring it to your customer to make it better for them.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity first, always, and that goes in so many different ways, so my team needs to be able to trust me, I need to be able to trust them, but our customers need to be able to trust us and know that we're doing the right thing for them. And then also the responsibility factor and the reliability factor to be able to trust each other and know that the job's gonna get done.
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