Otis Roberts will be joining our ‘Business of sport‘ panel at Birkbeck, University of London on Saturday 30th June.
Otis was born in London in 1968 to Grenadian parents and is the youngest of 6 children. Otis joined the Fulham’s Youth Team where he spent his trainee years under the stewardship of Alan Taylor.
At 19 Otis won a scholarship to Essex College in Baltimore where he undertook a Sports Science Course. Following the successful completion of his course Otis returned to England where for a short period he played for Crystal Palace reserves.
Otis moved to Belgium where he played for 3 seasons as a professional player. It was in Antwerp where he first got the bug for developing community-based programmes and where he established and delivered his first soccer school.
In 1994 Otis moved to the Far East where he played for a number of Hong Kong clubs over a 7-year period and for a short stay in Malaysia – his highlight playing against England before their Euro ’96 campaign. It was while in the Far East that Otis was first capped for Grenada. His successful international career resulted in a total of 35 caps for the Spice Isle playing in several World Cup qualification campaigns.
Otis returned to Belgium and then back to his home town of London where he joined non-league club Hendon & Harrow Borough FC, where he also gained his coaching qualifications and developed a Football in the Community Scheme. He subsequently moved on to Fulham FC where he spent some 2-years developing and delivering schemes in both Fulham and Lambeth.
It was while at Fulham that Otis came to the attention of Proactive the leading Manchester based sports agency. Otis spent 6 years as part of the Proactive football division where he played a critical role in player representation. With his in depth knowledge he led on the development of the Company’s London Market.
In his role as CEO of the Jason Roberts Foundation, Otis has undertaken a new direction while maximising and building on his experience and knowledge gained across a number of years and continents. The Foundation benefits from Roberts’ drive to achieve.
He spends his time working between Grenada and the UK, running programmes to help young people benefit from football, as he and his nephew Jason, currently with Reading FC, have.
Otis’s hard work and dedication was recognised when he was chosen as the first Barclays Community Sports Award winner of the 2011/12 season.
Roberts’ joined Impact Sports Management which represents a host of players in the UK, in 2007, and he divides his time between his role as CEO of the Foundation and representing and advising a number of players across the pyramid of football, in the UK and the Caribbean.
