University of Northern Iowa Athletics
Celebrating Black History Month 2023: Adrien Harraway
2/6/2023 11:00:00 AM | General
Former Panther football player served as an athletic administrator at the University of Virginia, and is currently the Vice President of NACDA.
From the moment he stepped on the UNI campus as a prospective student in the late 1990s, Adrien Harraway knew he had found the right fit. A former Panther football player, Harraway turned his passion for sports into a career as an athletic administrator, and now as a leader for one of college sports' biggest professional organizations and scholarship opportunities.
A native of Columbus, Ohio, Harraway experienced a highly active upbringing in sports, particularly in football. His skills on the gridiron were enough to garner attention from the offensive coordinator at the University of Toledo, Mike Dunbar, who a few short years later would go on to become UNI's head football coach in 1997. With a number of opportunities to play college football at his feet in his home state, Harraway chose UNI for its family atmosphere and for the opportunity to play alongside a trio of fellow Columbus natives in Cedar Falls.
Despite playing only a handful of games for the Panthers, Harraway broke into the starting lineup as a redshirt sophomore, and helped play a role in UNI's national semifinal appearance under Mark Farley in his first season in 2001.
After graduating from UNI with a degree in management: business administration, Harraway joined the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) as an intern, where he worked closely with the organization's executive director Michael Cleary. While with NACDA, Harrawy learned more about the McLendon Foundation, which provided access and opportunities to minority students through its scholarship program and leadership initiative. With the help of the McLendon Foundation's scholarship, Harraway was able to enroll at Arizona State University in 2003 and earn a master's degree in higher and post-secondary education.
Following graduate school, Harraway moved back east, this time to Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, where he spent 13 years in sports administration with the Cavaliers athletic department. He served one year as an academic coordinator before moving up to work for 6 years as an academic advisor for UVA's football program, and later the Associate Athletic Director for Student Services. Many of his duties included overseeing and planning academic support systems for all of Virginia's student-athletes evaluating and designing content for athlete programs, as well as serving as a sports administrator for the Cavalier track and field teams.
Harraway returned to NACDA in 2018 where he assumed the role of Vice President. Sixteen years after becoming a recipient of the McLendon Foundation's
scholarship program, he also took on leadership responsibilities as NACDA's vice president.
"I really wanted to carry on what Mr. Cleary and Coach John McLendon started with the foundation in 1999," Harrayway explained. "Now I get to help touch a lot more people and give real-life experiences for the historically marginalized pool of talent."
"My goal is to make the foundation the preeminent place where young professionals who want to get into sports come. I want organizations to know that if you see the name 'McLendon' next to somebody's name, you know they've been through a great program and that they are ready for any job."