Nita Simpson has lived more lives than many.
She’s coached basketball. She’s coached volleyball. She’s coached boxing. She’s run a record label. She’s been a radio personality. All of these phases of her life have allowed her to find her purpose.
Simpson is the founder and CEO of Battle Tested Kids, a non-profit organization that formed in 2019 and provides mentorship and sports training for low-income and underserved youth in Oakland. During the fifth annual Juneteenth in Oakland’s Town Jubilee, Simpson was recognized with the Town Hero award for her efforts.
Through East Bay Times’ annual Share the Spirit campaign, Battle Tested Kids is aiming to raise $25,000. That money won’t just allow 150 underserved youth in at-risk areas around the Bay Area to attend camp, but it will also support three internships for those wanting to pursue careers in sports, social media management, photography, web design, entrepreneurship or marketing.
“It’s being able to see what a person is lacking and what a situation is lacking,” Simpson said, “and then being able to fill those gaps. That seems to be my gift. Giving people my work ethic, tapping into the mind, that seems to be the gift that God gave me.”
With that gift, Simpson and her organization have been able to influence members of the next generation.
Like Jamahl Foster, one of the first people who Simpson ever mentored. Simpson, having shared a church with Foster’s parents, has known Foster his entire life. When she began coaching him in basketball when he was in the eighth grade, she wasn’t afraid to challenge him. Foster recalls learning the importance of “extreme numbers” like making 1,000 shots per day and, on one occasion, running around a gym while carrying a rice bag.
Simpson connected the work ethic needed to succeed in basketball with the work ethic necessary to succeed academically. Upon graduating from KIPP King Collegiate in San Lorenzo, Foster graduated with a degree in kinesiology at Cal State East Bay. Currently, the 29-year-old works as a financial consultant and personal trainer while serving as an assistant coach for Battle Tested Kids.
“Some of these kids don’t really know work ethic,” Foster laughs. “So, we really try to teach these kids work ethic. They think they know with their little big heads, but then they get into our program. Then, they’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’”
Like Shariff Salzman, who was, by his own admission, “going down the wrong path” when he met Simpson at 16. Before working with Simpson, Salzman recalls “not really doing anything with my life.” He relied on marijuana to deal with childhood trauma. What Simpson provided, then, is structure. Fresh off graduating high school, Salzman has his hand in several businesses and makes music under the moniker Young Legend.
“I would just be hanging out, not taking school seriously,” Salzman said. “I was failing my classes. When I joined the program, now I had to do (well) in school. She helped me get more laser focused, not just in basketball, but in life.”
Like Yuniqque Robinson, who won a state championship under Simpson last season at Oakland High. If not for Simpson, Robinson might have quit on basketball entirely.
Robinson recalled having a lack of motivation as she entered her senior year of high school. She didn’t want to play basketball. She didn’t want to run track. During early-season basketball practices, Robinson would storm off the court when she felt frustrated. Simpson, an honorable mention selection by this publication last season for coach of the year, was always there to provide equanimity, and Robinson believes she would’ve quit if not for Simpson’s influence.
“She would sit me down and talk to me and tell me, ‘It’s OK, you’re not going to be perfect the first time you try it. Just keep going,’” said Robinson, who’s in her freshman year at Alabama A&M. “She motivated me to do better and keep trying and not give up on myself, because there was a time I wanted to quit basketball because I felt like I wasn’t good enough to play.”
The path to forming Battle Tested Kids started, in essence, when Simpson was entering high school.
Simpson grew up in East Oakland, but instead of attending an Oakland-area high school, she elected to attend Marin Academy, a private college preparatory school in San Rafael. Simpson, who attended public schools leading up to high school, knew that attending high school in Marin County would be starkly different compared to Oakland. But even as a preteen, she understood the value of branching out.
“I remember my parents asked, ‘Are you sure you want to go there? This is the one?’ I told them, whoever offers the most money, that’s the place I’ll go,” Simpson said. “The reality was when you look at the population at the time, it is predominantly white. So, for me, as someone who wanted to operate in high places, it was a replica of what I would be dealing with in the real world.”
From Marin Academy, Simpson attended Whittier College. Along with majoring in business, Simpson started her first business, Prime Dymes Entertainment, with her friend, Rita Forte, formerly known as DJ Backside who now owns Olive Street Agency. Simpson served as a personality on Whittier’s college radio station, which allowed her to become familiar with working with record labels. That experience set the stage for her to run Rah Muzik, otherwise known as Black & White Entertainment, from 2004 to 2007, their main artist being legendary Oakland rapper Keak Da Sneak.
Following her time in the music industry, Simpson found her way back to the sporting world, spending time coaching basketball at Marin Academy, AIMS College Prep (both boys and girls) and, now, Oakland High School, which Simpson led to a state title in her first season as head coach.
It was the totality of these lived experiences, then, that set the stage for Battle Tested Kids to come into formation. Simpson’s ambitions, though, only begin here. She envisioned one day having a dedicated facility, one that will allow the organization to stop renting out other spaces. From there? She wants a full-blown campus.
“I want so much technology in (my facility). People will probably think, ‘She’s crazy.’ I am a little bit of that,” Simpson says with a smile. “There’s not even a professional facility that has what I want in mind. But this is the mecca of technology, so why can’t I have it? It’s just a matter of getting in the room with the right people to be able to make it happen.”
If history is any indicator, doubt Simpson at your own risk.
