Meet Nuri Robinson
I’ve moved six times and lived in five states, which forced me to learn how to adapt quickly, read people, and build trust from zero. Every new city, school, and team made me realize one thing very clearly early on: first impressions shouldn't be as important as people make them out to be.
Football was the constant through all of it. Competing taught me discipline, preparation, and how to perform under pressure, but more importantly, it put me in rooms and relationships most people never see. Many of the people I grew up playing with or around are now playing professionally. Some are well-known and will have long careers. But many aren’t. All of them face the same reality: careers built on performance and visibility don’t last forever.
Being close to that reality; combined with family and friends who’ve built large social platforms, gave me a front-row seat to the same problem playing out in different forms. When attention is high, opportunity is everywhere. But when you look past the present moment, it’s often unclear what comes next.
Experience at Colby College
I picked Colby because I wanted to be around people who actually care about getting better. I also knew I wanted a small school where I could actually get to know my professors and staff, and where that would turn into opportunities instead of just being another face in a lecture hall. That part turned out to be true: I got to do a lot of cool things on campus because my relationships were everything.
At Colby, I studied Sociology while competing as a varsity athlete, which sharpened my understanding of growth at both the individual and organizational level. Sociology taught me to look beyond outcomes and focus on systems; how incentives shape behavior, how culture creates momentum, and why some structures endure while others collapse once attention fades.
Off the field, I took on leadership roles that taught me how to build community and run real operations, working as a Research Assistant in the Education Department, founding and leading Colby’s First PowderPuff Flag Football Event, supporting the Women’s Basketball program as a Practice Squad Manager, helped to build and run the Center for Teaching a Learning peer study session program, and being the self-proclaimed Basketball Student Section Leader.
Post-graduation, I joined the NESCAC Sports Business Group Junior Advisory Board, where I support sports business event programming by coordinating alumni speakers, panels, and networking sessions across sports, marketing, and entertainment, while researching trends like NIL, sports tech, and athlete-driven content, and facilitating connections between Colby students and alumni to strengthen the sports business network.
