My Brother's and Sister's Keeper Colorado

Meet Alumni Robby Turk
By Lisa Walton

When 21-year-old Robby Turk joined the Brotherhood in ninth grade, he was at the top of his game. Excelling personally and academically, he didn’t necessarily need any extra support or encouragement from the Brotherhood.

Nonetheless, he attracted the attention of Brotherhood founding advisor Bill Richardson, who saw leadership material in Turk and influenced him to blaze a path to success not just for himself, but for–and with– his peers as well.

“ I loved what the Brotherhood stood for and the goals it outlined for the future,” says Turk, who graduated from Aurora’s Smoky Hill High School in 2010. “From the Brotherhood I learned how the dynamic of a group really has a much stronger influence than any single person.”

His growing commitment to the unity created by shared goals was underscored by his new found understanding of the educational achievement gap between blacks and whites, and what it would take to overcome it.

“The Brotherhood has really impacted my life by being the very beginning of my understanding of race and how it works in the American society that we live in today, and how each person, black, white yellow or whatever, owes it to themselves and to each other to improve these relationships in the future.”

Since graduating from the Brotherhood, Turk continues to lead by example and cultivate a culture of success with his peers at the University of Redlands in California, where he studies biology and business and plays point guard for the Bulldogs.

And if that doesn’t keep him busy enough, he’s president of the Alpha Gamma Nu Fraternity, president of the African American Association, and a member of both the pre-med and student investing clubs.

His experience with the Brotherhood, he says, laid the foundations for his role as president of the African American Association on campus, which he describes as an outlet for talking about shared experiences and a place to brainstorm ways to increase awareness of the African American presence on campus.

Turk, who just took his MCAT, will graduate from the University of Redlands next spring.