National Football Foundation

Jason Whaley leads by example at Western Carolina University with his athletic prowess, academic excellence and community leadership.

A three-time Academic All-Conference Honor Roll member and two-time Academic All-America District III selection, Whaley was named to the Division I-AA Athletics Directors Association Academic All-Star Team in 2002. An eight-time Dean's List member, he is a member of the WCU Honors College, the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society and was named Male Student-Athlete of the Year three consecutive years. 

A Second Team All-Conference selection, Whaley was an integral part of an offensive line that gave up only 15 sacks in 370 pass attempts in 2002. Bolstering the line, his efforts helped WCU to lead the conference and rank 25th nationally in passing offense in 2002. Seeing action at both guard and tackle in his career, Whaley was named 2003 Preseason All-America by Street & Smith's. 

Named 2003 Team Co-Captain, Whaley helped build a recreation park for area youth in Sylva, NC. Eager to visit children in various area hospitals, he has also prepared and served meals at The Community Table of Sylva, which provides free meals for people in need. 

Whaley earned his master's in information technology from Charlotte in 2008, and subsequently had stops working as a software engineer and developer for Appcelerator, Xinova and The Linux Foundation. In 2019, he became a senior software engineer at Twitter.