Jon Metzler, Ph.D., CMPC®
Dr. Jon Metzler provides strategic thought leadership on systems, resources, and processes that help organizations optimize performance, enhance resilience, and sustain readiness in their executives, leaders, and teams. Among his responsibilities are coaching innovations, strategic partnerships, product development, as well as recruitment, retention, and growth of a highly specialized staff of Cognitive Performance Coaches who have delivered over 2.7 million training and coaching engagements across the United States Army in the past 5 years.
Dr. Metzler joined the United States Army’s mission of enhancing mental readiness in January of 2010 at Fort Hood via the Army Center for Enhance Performance contract where he served as Senior Researcher to lead the “Enhancement of Training Combat Life Saver Skills through Performance Psychology” project funded by the Office of the Surgeon General and the Military Operational Medicine Research Program. Dr. Metzler served 10 years in direct contract support of cognitive performance and resilience in the US Army via Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness and the Army Resilience Directorate (ARD) contracts. He assisted in revising the Master Resilience Trainer (MRT) Certification course to incorporate principles of mental performance for motivation, goal pursuit, and energy management. Dr. Metzler and his staff successfully transitioned MRT Level 3 and MRT Level 4 certification course implementation from the University of Pennsylvania to the ARD-Training Support contract. He also led the development of Engage, prosocial behavior training based on vignettes, and wide-scale implementation of the Sergeant Major of the Army’s “Not In My Squad” initiative co-developed by the Center for Army Professional Ethic and the Army Research Institute.
He is a Past President and Fellow of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) and currently serves as Chair of the Council for Certified Mental Performance Certification® (CMPC). Dr. Metzler has served on the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Exploratory Committee on Applied Psychology, Advocacy Coordinating Committee, and Coalition for the Psychology of High Performance. He was recently appointed by the APA President to a three-year term on the inaugural Committee for the Advancement of General Applied Psychology. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Joint Commission on Sports Medicine and Science. Dr. Metzler’s breadth of expertise and experience across military, sport, and corporate domains afforded him the unique opportunity to provide feedback on the US Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-being prior to its launch in October 2022.
Dr. Metzler is a published author and co-author for peer-reviewed articles in a broad array of professional journals including Military Psychology, Health Education & Behavior, the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science, and Structural Equation Modeling. He co-authored a graduate level book entitled Training Professionals in the Practice of Sport Psychology which is in its second edition.
As a CMPC and member of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry, Dr. Metzler has extensive experience over two decades providing direct performance psychology consultation to teams and athletes representing many different sports of various competitive levels including intercollegiate athletes, Olympians, Paralympians, and professional athletes. He holds three bachelor’s degrees from Concordia University – Portland, a Master of Arts in Sport Psychology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Kinesiology with a specialization in Psychology of Movement and Sport from The Pennsylvania State University.
