Details
Nexa Tax
Nexa is a fintech app helping college athletes manage taxes under NIL rules. It's a category that didn't exist three years ago and a customer who has never been treated as one. I joined pre-launch and built the brand function from zero: visual identity, voice, social strategy, content engine, motion system, investor materials, and the campaign architecture that took Nexa from idea to a live brand with 300+ onboarded athletes and a real position in the culture.
Services
Brand guidelines
Brand strategy
Brand assets
Year
2026
ROLE
Head of Marketing & Brand · Operated as de facto CMO
The Challenge
The Challenge
The challenge was never how to outpace a legacy company like TurboTax, but rather how can we capture the attention of the athlete without sounding too corporate or too casual to where it discredits us. A sophomore wide receiver has seen enough blue gradients and handshake stock images telling him to file taxes. They know they have to do it, but how to we make them want to?
The Approach
The Approach
Before designing anything, I built a psychographic profile of the athletes. What they watch, who they follow, what their group chat looks like. The brief wasn't "design for college athletes." It was "design for a 20-year-old's feed." From there the positioning got specific: Nexa isn't a tax service that talks to athletes. It's a brand inside sports culture that happens to do taxes. Flip that order and you get another fintech app with a basketball metaphor in the headline. Fintech references made it a Chime knockoff, sports media stripped the credibility, so every decision got made without a reference and tested in market. A year of try, fail, watch the engagement, adjust.
The Result
A year in: 300+ onboarded athletes, ambassador partnerships across multiple schools, two business-journal features, and Instagram engagement above every competitor in the category… including legacy tax brands with budgets way larger. Nexa didn't outspend anyone and didn't out-feature anyone. It out-positioned them.
