Vanessa Summers-Gyulai.
Top-20 Florida junior tennis player. Stockbroker in Hong Kong at 23. Author of two books on money. Co-founder of the club, with Coach Andor.
“Hi, I’m Vanessa Summers. I’m co-founder of St. Johns Volleyball Club.”
Filmed at a grass practice at Nocatee Fields. What she says the club is for: girls in grades 4 to 8 having fun with their friends playing volleyball, and getting more touches on the ball than any gym allows.
She and Andor built Volleyball1on1 and then the club together. The part of the program she says she is most passionate about is It’s Bigger Than Volleyball®.
Her life, in order.
Miami, Paris, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Nocatee, St. Augustine.
- Miami
A top-20 Florida junior tennis player.
She grew up in Miami and was a top-ranked Florida teen tennis player, in the same junior draws as Jennifer Capriati and Mary Joe Fernandez. The tennis never left: in 2023 it was her coaching that fixed Thor’s serve before he and Andor won a father-son beach title.
- Paris, New York
When the tennis chapter closed, modeling.
High-fashion work in Paris and New York, in the same years as Charlize Theron and Tyra Banks. By her own account she had little idea then what the time value of money was. That changed fast.
- Her 20s
A stockbroker in Hong Kong at 23.
She started her finance career in Hong Kong as a securities broker, trading Southeast Asian equity for US funds including Soros, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, and later ran sales for a women’s equity fund.
- California
Registered Investment Advisor, money coach, and the Sutra Foundation.
Licensed in California, she taught seminars for young women on taking charge of their money and founded the non-profit Sutra Foundation to put financial education in front of them.
- 2001
Get in the Game! The Girls’ Guide to Money & Investing.
Published by Bloomberg Press: how to start investing in your twenties, written to be read in one sitting. CNBC called her the “Financial Guru” of the MTV generation and Glamour named her its “Money Model”. She was on CNBC, CNNfn, Fox News and MSNBC, and profiled on NBC and CBS.
- 2005
Buying Solo: The Single Woman’s Guide to Buying a First Home.
Published by Perigee. Her second book, written in her thirties, for the woman buying a house on her own.
- Los Angeles
A seminar and consulting company, with Andor.
Before volleyball the two of them ran a Los Angeles business seminar company: workshops, and consulting with 25 to 50 business owners a month on how to grow. They built it into a multi-million-dollar business in partnership with Jairek Robbins, son of Tony Robbins. What they learned there about systems is what became Superior Coaching Systems®: when they consulted, the businesses that failed were the ones without one.
- 2009
Volleyball1on1.
She and Andor launched Volleyball1on1.com, a video coaching library filmed with Olympians, NCAA MVPs and AVP champions. Her titles there: co-founder, executive director and camp coordinator.
- 2014
Coaches camps and high school summer camps.
The two of them added camps for coaches alongside the player camps, and for years she travelled the state coaches clinics with Andor.
- 2015
The franchise coaching system.
With Andor she built Volleyball1on1 into the first franchise coaching system in volleyball: camps and clubs around the country running their practices, their standards and their language, the same way every time.
- 2017
What Great Looks Like®, trademarked.
The standard for every skill, written down in detail, registered in her company’s name with the rest of the systems the club still runs on.
- 2020
On the sand in Playa del Rey.
Beach volleyball together in Los Angeles, the game that became the club’s high school track.
- December 2021
The move: Marina del Rey to Nocatee.
They moved their family of five from California to St. Johns County, for the schools and for what they saw here: a place where girls’ volleyball was about to grow.
- 2022
St. Johns Volleyball Club, on the grass.
The club opened on the grass at Nocatee Fields. That May, Olympic gold medalist Phil Dalhausser came to a class and stayed for the parent seminar, Better Parenting Through Sports.
- 2024
Two parks, and the first club teams.
Classes at Nocatee and Fruit Cove, and the first Gold travel teams formed out of the Silver classes.
- May 2025
The county’s new sand courts at Nocatee.
When the beach courts opened beside the fields, she told the Ponte Vedra Recorder what she tells the moms: what is happening for girls in volleyball has never happened before, and you do not need crazy height to have a huge trajectory.
- June 2025
AAU Junior Nationals, Orlando.
Three years after the first grass class, the club took its 13U team to AAU Junior Nationals, most of them in their first or second year of club volleyball. The whole club went.
- 2026
The club’s own building.
“This community has been so welcoming,” she told the Recorder in April 2026, before the doors opened at 6940 US-1 North. “My life’s mission has been to empower women, and we choose to do that through our female youth.”
- Next
A fourth book.
Smart Women LIVE Fit & Rich: The Seven Timeless Codes of Vitality is on the way. Money and health, the two things she has spent her life teaching women to take charge of.
The books, and the TV years.
Two guides to money for women, written in her thirties after a decade in finance, and the networks that had her on to talk about them.
CNBC
CNNfn
Fox News
MSNBC
Half of the club.
Volleyball1on1 in 2009, St. Johns Volleyball Club in 2022, the building in 2026: she and Andor built all three together.
Volleyball is mostly a girls’ sport, and she and Andor are clear about what that means for the role they play. Her career before volleyball was spent putting money and confidence in front of young women; the club is the same work with a ball.
“I tell the moms we work with that what’s happening for volleyball for girls has never happened before,” she said when the Nocatee sand courts opened. “It’s bigger than volleyball because we’re teaching them life skills to thrive no matter what they choose to do.”
The lessons at the end of practice are hers as much as his.
Every practice ends with a few minutes on something that is not volleyball: communicating, setting goals, asking for what you want, learning from mistakes. She calls it the part of the program she is most passionate about, and it is the line she repeats to parents: the club is teaching their daughters how to navigate their world the moment they leave a practice.
It is the same work she did for twenty years with young women and money: take the thing people are afraid of, make it plain, and hand them the tools. The mindset room in the building is where that side of the club lives.
A family club, literally.
She and Andor have three children. Thor played high school volleyball and won a father-son beach title with his dad on a serve his mother fixed; Veda plays for the club. The whole family is in the building most nights, and the words over the front door are the ones they chose for it.
They moved here in December 2021 from Marina del Rey, and she says the same thing about it every time she is asked: the community has been welcoming, and this is their small ripple in the pond.
The club she co-founded.
Eighteen club teams for girls in grades 5 to 9, grass and beach classes in Nocatee and Fruit Cove, and a three-court building on US-1 in St. Augustine.