Operation Elevation, Public Benefit Corporation
On May 1, 2026, on the day of his induction into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame, Tony Sanneh announced the July 2026 release of his first book, On the Assist, alongside the launch of Operation Elevation, a new Public Benefit Corporation. This page is the next layer of context.
The First Book
How Significance Finds Us When We Invest Ourselves in Others
Releasing July 2026On the Assist is the story of one man's life told through the people who showed up for him at every critical stage. It traces the arc from a kid in St. Paul who received the patient investment of his mother, his coaches, and the adults who chose to stay in the room, to a player in two MLS Cups, 43 caps for the United States Men's National Team, a starting role on the 2002 World Cup squad, and induction into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
The book reframes that arc. The trophies, it argues, were never the point. The point was the assist: the moments when someone older, more experienced, or simply more present chose to invest of themselves in a young person whose path was not yet set. On the Assist is the case for what happens when a life that received those investments turns around and offers them to the next generation, and what that pattern, repeated at scale, could begin to mean for the rest of us.
"Looking back on my life, what I see is 'the assist' over and over again. The people who showed up for me made me who I am. This book and this company are about spreading that further." Tony Sanneh
What Operation Elevation Is
On one side, capable adult professionals are reaching the stage of life where the next round of personal achievement no longer answers the question they are quietly asking. On the other, young people in under-resourced communities are growing up without sustained access to the kind of adult network most well-resourced young people grow up inside. The two sides need each other. There is no infrastructure connecting them at scale.
Operation Elevation exists to build that infrastructure. The matchmaking program at the operational core connects adult professionals with young people in mentorship pairings designed to benefit both. The young person gains sustained exposure to the attitudes, habits, and ways of thinking that produce success in professional contexts. The adult gains the structured pathway to significance that achievement alone has never delivered.
We are not asking the institutions in either life (the schools, the workplaces, the foundations) to carry developmental work they were not built to carry alone. We are reaching the people inside them. The institutions are partners. The people are the work.
01
Books, films, and long-form work that establish the framework in cultural circulation. On the Assist is the first of these.
02
Programming materials calibrated to four audiences: under-resourced young people, the youth-serving organizations around them, capable adult professionals, and the workplaces that employ them.
03
Corporations and professional firms reach the adult side of the program. School districts, foundations, athletic organizations, and faith communities reach the youth side.
04
Gathering structures and convening rhythms that connect those who have adopted the framework and sustain the practice over time.
The Framework
The wisdom traditions have carried it for centuries. The empirical literature converges on it from multiple directions. The conditions of our time have made it urgent. We did not invent the pattern. We named it.
Doing produces being. Being produces having. The deepest things people want do not come by direct pursuit; they come back through the lives we have shaped.
The doing is the foundational work of building a life: the studying, practicing, training, and reflecting through which discipline, capability, and character are built. From that work, what follows is real and worth pursuing: skill, opportunity, the capacity to stand on one's own. This is how a life is built, not all at once, but through the quiet accumulation of small choices most people never see.
The doing matures into something less obvious. Many adults have already built careers and reached versions of having that took years to earn, only to discover that what they were ultimately reaching for has not arrived with what they have. The work that closes the gap is the work of investing ourselves in others. Significance, when it arrives, arrives through them.
Founders
Operation Elevation is co-founded by a former professional athlete whose life demonstrates the framework, a strategist who has worked alongside him for over a decade, and a philosopher who carries the scholarly weight.
Co-Founder · Anchor
Inducted into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame in 2026. Two MLS Cups, 43 caps for the United States Men's National Team, and a starting role on the 2002 World Cup squad. Founded The Sanneh Foundation in 2003; over two decades it has worked with thousands of young people in under-resourced communities. The living demonstration of Do. Be. Have. and the public face of Operation Elevation.
LinkedIn ↗Co-Founder · Architect
Founder of LENKER LLC. Architect of the Do. Be. Have. framework, developed across more than a decade of partnership with Sanneh and the work that became Operation Elevation. Brings the strategic and conceptual scaffolding that turns lived practice into transmissible content, curriculum, and the institutional infrastructure that carries the work forward at scale.
LinkedIn ↗Co-Founder · Academic
Philosopher. Former Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University. Brings the scholarly grounding for Operation Elevation's published work and serves as executive editor for academic integrity, ensuring the framework holds up under the weight of what it claims about how human lives are formed.
LinkedIn ↗Latest News
Hall of Fame inductee Tony Sanneh announces the July 2026 release of On the Assist alongside the launch of Operation Elevation SBC, a new Minnesota Public Benefit Corporation.
Read on PR Newswire ↗The National Soccer Hall of Fame names Sanneh among the six members of its 2026 induction class, elected from the Veteran Ballot with the highest share of any candidate.
Read the announcement ↗Stay Connected
Sign up to follow Operation Elevation as the work develops: the release of On the Assist, partnership openings, the launch of the matchmaking program, and the milestones worth your attention along the way.