Todd Jochem

Todd Jochem, Ph.D. grew up in Huntingburg, Indiana, where packed gymnasiums, cornfields, and a community built on hard work shaped everything that followed.

He played basketball on Southridge teams that reached back-to-back Final Fours in Indiana's legendary single-class tournament, then played football at Indiana State University before arriving at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute — and into a world he never knew existed. He helped drive a car across America with no hands on the wheel, led groundbreaking autonomous vehicle demonstrations, and then left academia to build companies that brought robotics and computer vision into real-world use.

But the most demanding work happened off the clock — raising three children, coaching high school football teams to state championships, and learning that persistence matters more than brilliance when the stakes are no longer grades or publications, but people.

Dare to Be Great is his five-volume memoir exploring what it means to live fully — from the basketball court to the conference room, from a young marriage to watching his children build lives of their own.

He splits time between Gibsonia, Pennsylvania and Bloomington, Indiana with his wife Barb.