From kickoff to commission, former Pitt QB Nick Patti discusses his journey to the workforce

Nick Patti began his student-athlete career in 2018 when he was redshirted as a true first-year for Pitt. Despite spending time as a quarterback, Patti always knew he wanted to pursue business. 

“I was always fascinated by money and, you know, selling products and just managing that type of stuff,” Patti said. “My dad was a CFO, and he still is a CFO of multiple companies … so that’s where I got my love of business to begin with.”

Even with the heavy demands of being a quarterback, Patti pursued a double major in the College of Business Administration. 

“I ended up doing finance [in undergrad],” Patti said. “And then I threw a marketing degree on top of it as well. It just worked out with my schedule that I could do a dual major.”

One of the big moments of Patti’s football career came in 2022 when he played in the Sun Bowl against No. 18 UCLA. The Panthers won 37-35, marking their first Sun Bowl victory since 1989. 

Despite all his success and an extra year of eligibility, the QB decided to forgo his additional year. Patti did not want to risk his health and already felt content with his football career.

“I could have played a sixth year [because of] the COVID year, but kind of where I was at, in part of football too, I got out healthy,” Patti said. “I felt like I had a good career. Five years of college football was definitely a lot, you know, a lot of ups and downs … juggling football and school was definitely tough.”

Patti also graduated from his undergraduate education a semester early. 

“I was in undergrad for three and a half years,” Patti said. “I graduated a semester early because I was taking summer classes, because I had to be there every summer for practice and everything … so right there I was able to make up a semester.”

After all his hard work on and off the field throughout undergrad, Patti was excited to put his knowledge to the test in graduate school where he would not risk injury like his previous years. Despite this, he looks back on his time as a Panther in a grateful light. 

“To be honest with you, I was excited. I had two undergrad degrees … I was going to have a graduate degree. Like I said, I was satisfied with my career, so I was really excited to go do something else, you know, go utilize my degree,” Patti said. 

“I was excited to be healthy and not have any risk of injury as well … I was satisfied with how much I played and the quality that I played on the football field, so I was excited to be done, but definitely looking back on some fond memories for sure.” 

Patti attended the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business from January 2022 to June 2023 where he earned his Master of Business Administration. Patti differentiated between the student-athlete experience in his undergraduate versus graduate education. 

“It’s definitely more taxing time-wise in graduate school,” Patti said. “For the amount of homework that you have, and, you know, projects — spending time doing that — the exams are a little bit tougher, so you definitely want to do 12 credits so you don’t overwhelm yourself. But also, I think it’s just a different dynamic with graduate school, because everyone there’s such a wide variance in terms of ages. 

Patti now works for the company Stryker, which creates medical technologies for the healthcare system. He works in the Sage business unit as an associate sales representative. 

“They’re a large medical company, and I do sales for them. I sell out of our Sage business unit … my business unit, the products that we sell, were actually their own company, and Stryker bought them. So I sell all disposable products for patients in the hospital. And, yeah, I love it.”

Patti says that the connections he made at Pitt and within the football team were important in the post-graduate sphere. 

“There’s a lot of Panthers that work within Stryker, a bunch that work within Sage specifically,” Patti said. “So it’s really cool to be able to, even though I’m away from Pittsburgh and live in New Jersey, and I work in New York City … in Manhattan, I’m still able to stay connected through work with people from Pitt, as well as stay in touch with a bunch of my teammates that hopefully will be coming over and working for Stryker as well.”