NCAA internship helps pave way to NBA

Kelsey Boyd reflects on impact of experience at the national office

When Kelsey Boyd began her role as the NCAA postgraduate intern for public and media relations (now external engagement) in June 2018, she knew she wanted to diversify her experiences to make herself as marketable as possible after the end of her internship.?

"I was able to come into the role and take advantage of every opportunity that the department had for me," said Boyd, now manager of corporate, social impact, and diversity and inclusion communications for the NBA. "I raised my hand to volunteer to take on projects. I asked questions. I asked if I could participate in certain things, just so that I can get as much experience, as I wanted to be a more well-rounded intern coming out of the program and prime for a corporate communications role in sports, as I wanted to do."

Boyd came from Temple with a master's in sport business. She also had experience in Temple's athletics department as an athletics communications graduate assitant.

During her time in the NCAA Postgraduate Internship Program, she got valuable experience on a variety of projects, including drafting news releases, writing public statements for the NCAA PR Twitter account and supporting the Women's Final Four. In addition to the relationships she gained in communications, she formed valuable relationships in her cohort.

"I made 29 new friends, and we're still all friends to this day and consider each other lifelong career partners, colleagues, if you will, just in terms of the relationships that we were able to build during that time that we were all there together experiencing the same things and helping each other through those different changes and challenges of kind of starting your career," she said.?

Nine months into her internship, those experiences prepared her for a job with the NFL's public relations team in New York City. In 2020, Boyd was recognized as part of The Athletic's "40 Under 40: Rising stars shaping the direction of the NFL." While at the NFL for two years, she planned and executed media interviews and news releases and developed and implemented communications strategies for a variety of league initiatives, including the "Inspire Change" initiative.?

"I think one of the biggest things I did at the NFL was work on the Inspire Change initiative, which was the NFL’s social justice program," Boyd said. "I think that catalyst of what occurred in 2020 after George Floyd was murdered created a sense of urgency for this to be woven into everything that we were doing. I really helped educate colleagues and share the messaging about what Inspire Change was to aid in efforts to, to get our business partners on board to support it. We were able to get more digital and social media promotion about it and I helped our marketing team’s promotion of it."

While coming up with one of the taglines to be used alongside?the "Inspire Change" initiative in effort to help fans understand its mission, Boyd leaned into something she learned while at the national office.

"In kind of helping them get to that point, I thought about something that I learned in my internship at the NCAA, which was making sure that in anything that you do, you're providing clear and concise communication," Boyd said. "To me, ‘advance social justice’, among all the different words and phrases and buzzwords that people were using, was the most clear and concise way to say what we were trying to do and what we wanted other people to join us in doing."

In her current role with the NBA, she manages speaking requests, identifies speaking engagement opportunities for the league's leaders, and provides communications supports for their diversity, equity and inclusion and social responsibility departments.

When asked what advice she would give to current and future interns, Boyd pointed to the importance of being curious.

"Ask questions, volunteer, raise your hand, and don't be scared to do so," Boyd said. "Take advantage of all the opportunities in front of you, even when you think there might not be an opportunity, and really build those relationships with the other interns in your cohort, as well as folks across the office."

The NCAA Postgraduate Internship Program annually provides on-the-job learning experiences at the national office in Indianapolis to college graduates who are passionate in their pursuit of a career in college sports administration. With a focus on ethnic minorities, women and former student-athletes, this yearlong program gives insight to the inner workings of college sports from the national perspective. Interns over the past 25 years have taken their experience and institutional knowledge onto campuses and into the conference offices as full-time administrators.?

Learn more about the Postgraduate Internship Program at its?webpage, including how to apply, types of internships available and more.?