PITTSBURGH - Duquesne University Athletics has named Jordon Rooney Personal Brand Coach in an innovative move designed to place DU at the forefront in preparing student-athletes for impending changes to NCAA name image and likeness (NIL) rules.

As Personal Brand Coach, Rooney will begin by working with individual members of the men's basketball team on brand strategy, improving marketability, content creation, social activism and understanding NIL rules. His work with men's basketball will extend to all teams and student-athletes through his program, Slash Athletes via Duquesne's PNC Leadership Academy.

With guidelines and rules currently proposed by groups ranging from the NCAA to members of Congress, it is expected that student-athletes will soon have opportunities to generate income by selling their NIL rights while competing in college. The hire of Rooney will not only help Duquesne student-athletes prepare to monetize and grow their personal brands through avenues such as third party endorsements and compensation through business activities, but will also provide an educational component on the positive use of social media platforms.

"As the NIL landscape evolves, we will learn more about the rules and key issues that we will adapt to and execute," said Duquesne Vice President of Athletics Dave Harper. "In the meantime, it is critical our student-athletes learn the real drivers and that begins with their personal brands and positioning themselves for successful networking, profile building and accompanying frameworks to pursue jobs and market their person and skills. For those athletes that choose to pursue the NIL realm, this builds the foundation and basics for success. We are educators and teaching our students to be successful personal brand builders is complimentary to the outstanding education they will receive at Duquesne."

While most universities look at developing programs and a curriculum to embrace the NIL era, Duquesne men's basketball coach Keith Dambrot took it a step further by being the first program to bring a personal brand coach on staff.

"It is important to us to be at the forefront of the name, image and likeness and branding model and that is our motivation for making this move," said Dambrot. "It is imperative that we educate our players about cultivating their brand and position them to capitalize on it if presented the opportunity. Investing in our players' well-being - both on and off the court - has been, and will continue to be, a top priority of our program."

Rooney, a Western Pennsylvania native, brings an extensive background in branding and social impact to Duquesne. His creative agency, Built Different Creative (Builtdifferent.co), which earned seven international creative awards this year, works with several brands, including the Pittsburgh Region brand, as well as several others. His nonprofit, NFBD, started one of the first-ever social media marketing agencies run by high school students.

Rooney also founded one of the largest high school all-star football games on the East Coast which has been teaching athletes effective online leadership for the past six years. This prompted him to start a program, Slash Athletes (slashathletes.com), that provides personal brand coaching to athletic programs.

"I couldn't be more thankful to Coach Dambrot, Director of Men's Basketball Operations Steve McNees and Duquesne University for bringing me on board. It shows tremendous foresight to be the first to create this role. It also shows the extent this program will go to so they can give their players the best chance to succeed. I believe this will start the trend of every D-1 program having a personal brand coach on staff. This is positive institutional disruption"

Rooney grew his online platform as a speaker and content creator. He's received over 20 million video views with over 130,000 followers. "The goal isn't just monetization. It's access, influence and network. I'm going to help these student-athletes build the communication and branding skills to be in the position to obtain the career paths they're most passionate about. We are going to focus on amplifying their impact."