John Zabasky on why he still reads history books every week

Los Angeles, California Sep 24, 2026 (Issuewire.com) - John Zabasky grew up in Burtonsville, Maryland. He had a strong bond with his parents and his maternal grandparents, and an early love for sports, especially baseball. A serious injury ended any chance of a career in the game.

School filled some of that gap. Largely because of his great aunt, Zabasky developed a love of history and reading that has stayed with him since childhood. Both his father and grandfather were career firefighters in Washington, DC, which let his mother and grandmother raise him and his sister full time. He credits that steady home life with giving him room to read as much as he wanted.

That interest never really left. He holds a BA and an MA in history from UMBC, alongside an MBA from Pepperdine and a PhD in information systems from Concordia. He is currently a PhD candidate in Health Sciences at Liberty University. History was where his academic life started, not a detour from it.

Why history, specifically

Zabasky says the pull toward history was never about memorizing dates. It was about watching how people solved problems with the tools they had at the time.

"I think what draws me to history is seeing how differently people approached the same basic problems," he says. "Access to food, access to safety, access to care. The tools change. The problems repeat."

He says that pattern is part of why he is comfortable building something in health care now, even though his degrees moved from history into business and information systems and, eventually, health sciences.

"You spend enough time reading about how systems were built and rebuilt over centuries, and you stop being intimidated by the idea of building one yourself," he says.

Reading as a working habit, not a pastime

Zabasky treats reading less like a hobby set apart from work and more like part of how he thinks through problems day to day.

"I don't really separate reading for fun from reading for work," he says. "A biography of someone who ran a hospital in the 1800s and a report on plan administration today are answering versions of the same question: how do you get people the care they need with what you actually have."

He says the habit also keeps him honest about how slow real change tends to be.

"History is a good corrective for impatience," he says. "Almost nothing that mattered happened quickly. That's useful to remember when you're trying to build something that's supposed to last."

What carries over from baseball

Zabasky does not describe his early baseball years as a loss he had to get past. He talks about it more plainly, as a period that taught him something about effort that outlasted the injury.

"Baseball teaches you to focus on the next pitch, not the last one," he says. "That's stuck with me longer than the sport did."

He lists golf, bodybuilding, and boating among the things he does now, alongside baseball as a continuing interest. He says the common thread across all of them is the same one from his reading: paying attention to fundamentals instead of shortcuts.

"None of those things reward doing it once," he says. "They reward showing up and doing the basic thing correctly, over and over. I think that's true of building a company too."

The through-line

Zabasky is careful not to overstate the connection between a childhood love of history and the work he does now. But he says the discipline of one habit tends to show up in others.

"I don't think reading history made me a better executive in some direct way," he says. "But it made me someone who's comfortable sitting with a problem for a long time before deciding how to act on it. That's been useful."

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About John Zabasky

John Zabasky is the CEO of WorXsiteHR Insurance Solutions, Inc., based in California. He co-founded the company with Sharon Rowell in 2013 as the exclusive third-party administrator for the HealthWorX Plan, a no-cost medical plan for lower income, part-time, and seasonal workers. HealthWorX is the originator of the nonprofit-TPA healthcare model.  He holds degrees in history, business administration, and information systems, and is a current PhD candidate in health sciences.

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