A former NCAA Division I baseball player, Nelson Cooper IV enters his third season as a volunteer coach with the Cal U baseball program in 2022.
Cooper played three seasons at North Carolina Central in Durham, North Carolina, from 2013-15. The Eagles qualified for the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Tournament in each of his initial two years with the program. Cooper was a recipient of MEAC All-Academic honors during each of his seasons with the program.
A native of Seattle, Washington, Cooper completed a finance and accounting internship with USA Baseball in Durham during the fall of 2015. He has served as a community liaison and head coach with the Pittsburgh Pirates Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program since 2018. As a U-18 head coach, Cooper has led teams to back-to-back regional championship games to mark Pittsburgh’s first appearances in the championship in over a decade.
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Cooper is also a co-founder and executive director of the Pittsburgh Hardball Academy, which is a non-profit organization that strives to enrich the lives of underrepresented and underserved youth in the Greater Pittsburgh region via the games of baseball and softball. The academy has helped place over a dozen student-athletes with collegiate baseball programs since its inception in 2020.
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In the private sector, Cooper started his professional career at PNC Financial Services as an analyst in 2016. He currently serves as an Assistant Vice President at PNC within Financial Institutions and Professional Sports Finance.
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Cooper has been honored for his work in the Pittsburgh community by several organizations including Who’s Next Pittsburgh: Community Leaders and Activists, Pennsylvania Statewide Afterschool/Youth Development Network, Junior Achievement and Get Involved!.
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He graduated Summa Cum Laude from North Carolina Central with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in finance in 2015.
