{"id":897,"date":"2020-07-02T15:05:30","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T19:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp.sunypoly.edu\/stories\/?p=897"},"modified":"2020-07-02T15:24:16","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T19:24:16","slug":"nicole-watson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp.sunypoly.edu\/stories\/nicole-watson\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Watson, MBA, Business Administration BS \u201983: SUNY Poly\u2019s Business Administration Program is \u2018A Great Foundation for being Anything You Want\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
From SUNY Poly to the South (Atlanta, GA), Nicole Watson \u201883 has made the most of her college experience by channeling an extraordinary career. As an award-winning media professional, she has worked for most of the top names in the broadcast industry, including Turner Broadcasting, HBO, ESPN, BET, and CBS. Her career has taken her around the globe covering over 28 different sports in 10 different countries while interviewing champions like Muhammed Ali, Pat Riley, Kobe Bryant, Carl Edwards, Jackie Joyner Kersee, and many more. Watson has also written and produced content in the areas of news, public affairs, business, entertainment, and travel.<\/p>\n
According to Watson, \u201cIt was such a blessing for a small-town girl who started out not really knowing what she wanted to do but understood that being a business major would lay the ground work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watson, a native of Rome, N.Y., has been a sports fan since her childhood and began her journey to SUNY Poly, known as SUNYIT at the time, in the early \u201980s after graduating from Rome Free Academy (RFA). While at RFA she was a standout sprinter and part of an accomplished track and field team that went on to win many regional and state competitions. She also took an interest in golf at the age of 15, which allowed her to have cherished moments with her dad who taught her the ins and outs of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ran track for RFA and had the chance to go to a couple different places, but decided to stay close to home,\u201d Watson said. \u201cI just knew that, as a young person coming from a small city, there was a bigger world out there, and I wanted to experience it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unsure of which career path she wanted to venture into, Watson decided upon SUNY Poly\u2019s Business Administration program because of the vast career opportunities it affords to students, offering the chance to hone in on several aspects of business, from finance to entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to take what was offered in business and knew that there was something bigger than myself, study close to home, and still have all the comforts of it,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew that I could be part of a bigger picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
After enrolling, Watson became less focused on track and more focused on her coursework. She also found her voice as an activist as part of what was then SUNY Poly\u2019s Black Student Union \u2013 now the Black Latino Asian Student Union (BLASU), for which she served as vice president.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a phenomenal experience, especially at the time, we needed a voice and we organized to get things done and be supportive of each other,\u201d Watson said. \u201cIt was an organization that allowed us to support students who looked like us, but also coordinate our efforts to do things with other organizations on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watson also remembers former business instructor Robert Orillo, whom she said would always go above and beyond to prepare his students for the \u201creal world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a casual, yet collected way of teaching finance and teaching us the world of business,\u201d Watson said of Orillo. \u201cHe wanted to make sure we had an understanding of what the work would be like and also tried to incorporate real-life circumstances and situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having enjoyed writing in addition to her business courses, Watson applied to and landed a job at Cosmopolitan <\/em>magazine upon graduation in 1983. Ironically, she passed up the opportunity on the first day she was to report to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have five sisters and three of them lived in Washington, D.C., at the time and they were like \u2018No, don\u2019t go to New York, come here to D.C. with us,\u2019 she recalls.\u201d \u201cThey asked, and I listened.\u201d<\/p>\n
It resulted in her finding work on Capitol Hill as an office manager for the Research Council of Washington where she worked her way up to the firm\u2019s marketing department. Her yearning for a writing career lingered and, one day, Watson found herself browsing the newspaper\u2019s classified advertisements to help her sister find a job in banking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw \u2018B,\u2019 business, banking, and Black Entertainment Television,\u201d Watson said. \u201cThey needed an administrative assistant to work for the vice president of production.\u201d<\/p>\nNicole with former NBA players and sports analysts Dennis Scott and Rick Fox.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Although she had not been anticipating a career change, she applied and got the job at BET. She quickly soaked up everything BET had to offer during their formative stages. After months of being there she oftentimes helped the crew in the sports department with their production work. It wasn\u2019t long before a job opened up in their department. Reluctant to lose his assistant, her supervisor gave his blessing, and she then switched over to her first love\u2014sports. She produced black college football and basketball and was then charged by her executive producer to come up with a program for the off season. She worked diligently with her coworker to create a new concept for a round-table discussion with beat writers to talk about sports. The program was called \u201cThe Sports Report,\u201d and it wasn\u2019t long before the show was a network hit. It introduced several of today\u2019s top sports reporters, including James Brown (CBS Sports), David Aldridge (NBA Analyst and sports reporter), Bill Rhoden (The NY Times) and Mike Wilbon (PTI on ESPN).\u00a0 Watson was the first to put all of these journalists on a national broadcast and developed the popular program which later catapulted her to other opportunities as well. The show garnered so much hype that it got the attention of the executives at ESPN.<\/p>\n
\u201cESPN copied it and called it, \u2018The Sports Reporters,\u2019 and that\u2019s how I got the job at ESPN,\u201d she said. \u201cI only stayed at ESPN for six months and, meanwhile, had another offer at Turner at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
After being an associate producer on ESPN\u2019s \u201cSportsCenter,\u201d Watson left the network for a career with Turner where she became both a producer and reporter who covered the NFL, NBA, Super Bowls and Olympic sports. Her time at Turner (TBS and TNT) also allowed her to travel extensively both domestically and internationally, covering sports around the world in places like St. Petersburg, Russia; Barcelona, Spain; and Havana, Cuba. She spent close to seven years with Turner Broadcasting and then moved on to HBO where she was a producer\/reporter on the Emmy Award winning program, \u201cInside the NFL.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Watson has used her vast experience to hold many positions in the media and digital communications industry. She has worked for many Fortune 500 companies with her own consulting firm and has recently held the position of Senior Regional Marketing Director for United Way of Greater Atlanta. Her comprehensive career allows her to teach the next generation of journalists and marketing communications professionals as both a college professor and mentor to many.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s all about putting out the good word about your particular product or service,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple because you just want the best for all those that you write about or talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she considers the possibility of being a travel writer at some point\u00a0 in the future, combining all of her favorite things into one career, \u00a0Watson says her opportunities can be credited to her beginnings at SUNY Poly.<\/p>\n
\u201cSUNY was a great start and taught me to expand my thought process for what could potentially happen in the future,\u201d she said of the business field. \u201cI believe it gave me a great foundation to know and understand how businesses operate at their core.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From SUNY Poly to the South (Atlanta, GA), Nicole Watson \u201883 has made the most of her college experience by channeling an extraordinary career. As an award-winning media professional, she has worked for most of the top names in the broadcast industry, including Turner Broadcasting, HBO, ESPN, BET, and CBS. Her career has taken her … <\/p>\n
![\"Nicole](\"https:\/\/webapp.sunypoly.edu\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Nicole-Watson-headshot.jpg\")
From SUNY Poly to the South (Atlanta, GA), Nicole Watson \u201883 has made the most of her college experience by channeling an extraordinary career. As an award-winning media professional, she has worked for most of the top names in the broadcast industry, including Turner Broadcasting, HBO, ESPN, BET, and CBS. Her career has taken her around the globe covering over 28 different sports in 10 different countries while interviewing champions like Muhammed Ali, Pat Riley, Kobe Bryant, Carl Edwards, Jackie Joyner Kersee, and many more. Watson has also written and produced content in the areas of news, public affairs, business, entertainment, and travel.<\/p>\n![\"Nicole](\"https:\/\/webapp.sunypoly.edu\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/nicole-sports-casters-1.png\")