Athlete to Alumnus: Nicholas Rhodenizer Talks Football and Mentorship

Born and raised in Halifax, Nicholas Rhodenizer, BCom/17, always looked up to the Saint Mary’s University Huskies football coach, Steve Sumarah. When Steve accepted a position as Carleton University’s football team head coach, Nicholas started looking into the business programs at Carleton.

The Ravens football team returned in 2013 after a 15 year hiatus. Playing as a defensive back, Nicholas was part of this new team. Although he said the early years of the program were rough, his favourite moment was beating the University of Western Ontario in the 2016 season home opener.

“The whole week leading up to that we were basically on lockdown. We didn’t talk to anybody outside of the team, we spent all of our time together, and were just doing everything we could to stay focused for the game. Western had welcomed us to the league in our first game back as a program, and they didn’t pull any punches. The game went right down to the final seconds and winning it felt like we had finally overcome a mountain we had struggled to get over. It was an amazing feeling,” expressed Nicholas.

It was through the football team that Nicholas learned about the Alumni Mentors Program. During his fourth year, he signed up as a mentee as was paired with an alumni, Mike Philbrick, who was working as a portfolio manager. During Nicholas’s fifth year, he was paired with Sprott alumnus and former Carleton football player, Steve Doswell.

Nicholas is pursuing a career in investment management and said that Mike was great to learn from about the specifics of that line of work. Steve helped Nicholas understand how he had to position himself to meet certain people that could help him on that journey. In order to get him started, Steve set up over eight meetings for Nicholas to meet some of these contacts.

“If you really involve yourself and you express an interest in your mentor and what they do, they can open up the world for you. That is how it felt for me,” Nicholas said.

On top of being a mentee in the Alumni Mentors Program, Nicholas took on the role of academic mentor for some of his football teammates. Nicholas remembers the transition from high school to university student-athlete being a challenging one. In addition to his business courses, he had a 40-hour work week playing football.

Perseverance and time management were the two biggest takeaways from Nicholas’s time at Carleton. These are traits he has brought with him into his work life. After graduation, he moved to Toronto and began working at RBC Capital Markets. With his sights set on becoming a portfolio manager, he made the move to work for the Portfolio Management Association of Canada earlier this year. Nicholas is in the process of getting his CFA and plans to write his level III next year.

While Nicholas has since stopped playing football competitively, he can still be found playing indoor recreational football in Toronto. When he was at Carleton, football did not leave much time to join other extracurricular activities, but Nicholas’s advice to new Sprott students is to get involved.