'Random' choice led new COE development officer to dream job

People from all over the world come to Gainesville to get a fresh start in a place of real opportunity. But there are probably very few who get here the way Nekita Robinson did.

Knowing she had more potential than could be realized in a mill town of less than 20,000 in eastern North Carolina, Robinson decided to force herself to move on – by writing down the names of all the states, putting them in a hat, and promising herself that she would move to the state she drew out of the hat.

Perhaps it wasn’t the most scientific way to pick a place to live. But there was nothing random about her selection of Gainesville – Florida’s intellectual capital – as her eventual destination.

“Once I settled on Florida, everything else seemed to fall into place,” she said. “I knew I wanted to work on a graduate degree eventually, and being near UF seemed like a good idea.”

She visited Gainesville for one weekend in 2003 and returned with a job offer and a lease. A month later, she started her job UF’s Levin College of Law – where over the next three years, she would work her way to a slot in the law school’s development office where she would get a real sense of the importance of development. Then she made the leap to the UF Foundation, as a Development Associate.

Marshaling support for a worthy cause, she says, is a job anyone would envy.

“I guess I’m a good Samaritan at heart,” she said. “It makes me happy to give people a chance to do something good with their money. If I had a million dollars to give, I’d give it to the College of Education. This job is the next best thing.”

Robinson officially assumed her permanent post as associate director of development in November, but to many readers of Alumni coE-News, she’s already a familiar face. Known as an up-and-coming “star” employee at the University of Florida Foundation, she spent most of the summer at COE as an interim staffer, helping Education Dean Catherine Emihovich launch the college’s new $20 million dollar capital campaign.

Despite her unorthodox way of getting here, Robinson says she won’t be picking a new community out of the hat any time soon. She now has a family here: 16-month-old daughter Autumn and fiancé Michael. And she has exactly the career she hoped to find.

“I see this as the true beginning of my professional career,” she said. “This may not be where it ends, but I definitely want my career to start with success in the Florida Tomorrow Capital Campaign.”