Refinement, Not Rescue”: How Nicholas Crawford Learned to Name His Path
In the spring of 2020, when graduation caps sat in closets and New York went quiet, Nicholas Crawford finished high school and stepped into two lives at once. At home he became a primary caregiver. In his head he was trying to become the kind of young man with a plan.
College could wait, but not forever. A Sunday school teacher — Alvin Bragg, now Manhattan’s district attorney — urged him to try Borough of Manhattan Community College. Bragg connected him to Ron West, and soon Crawford was in ASAP, the support program that points students toward tutoring, mentors, and the kind of structure that makes ambition less fragile. One of the names that kept coming up was The City Tutors.
His first City Tutors event was with a Bain consultant talking about AI. It wasn’t the topic that stayed with him — it was the room: peers leaning forward, trying to figure out where they might fit. “It was the first time I felt surrounded by people asking the same questions,” Crawford said.
He took his time with mentorship. After a few touchpoints — a City Tutors meetup at Stout (the bar) where he met the Executive Director, mentors, and other mentees; a Mets game where he met a mathematician who invited him to sit in on a class; and a visit to The Marcy Lab School, where he spoke with young professionals breaking into tech — he finally selected Vin Lee from a list City Tutors sent over.
Lee’s bio aligned with where Crawford hoped to go. They began meeting on Fridays.
Lee didn’t try to solve Crawford’s life. He made him sharper inside it. They walked through a résumé line by line, tuning each bullet to fit a posting without losing the truth of the work. They talked about interviews, clarity, and consistency — how to make what you say and what you show align. He kept pressing the same quiet question: What do you actually want to do?
“The word is refinement,” Crawford said. “I came in with a lot of interest and not a lot of language. Now I can say it plainly.”
The social side of City Tutors helped more than he expected. At a picnic on the Upper East Side, he tossed a ball with a mentor’s son and realized something simple most students forget: mentors are people first. Conversations about baseball and school turned into easier conversations about work. “It’s not always about the career move,” he said. “It’s about building the kind of environment where work can happen.”
He learned that the job search is iterative. If the front door is closed, try the back. If the back is closed, look for a window. Reach out because you’re curious, not because you need a favor. And if you have to cancel a meeting, say so early and clearly. “It sounds small,” he said, “but it’s how you build something that lasts.”
Asked to introduce himself now, Crawford doesn’t hesitate:
“I’m Nicholas Crawford, a junior studying statistics and quantitative modeling. I want to work in risk management, especially around mortgage securities. My view is simple: we only make decisions in the present by understanding how to read the past. I like sorting signal from noise and applying probabilistic models to complex systems.”
He’s quick to add that he didn’t arrive at that sentence alone. “Vin is motivational, analytic, concise,” he said. “He asks, ‘Is this really what you want to say, and is this how you want it to land?’”
City Tutors didn’t hand him a script, and it didn’t remove the weight he carries at home. It gave him rooms to practice in, people who ask specific questions, and the rhythm to keep going.
“Agency is real,” he said. “You have to choose. But the environment matters. It’s easier to build skills when you’re in a community that expects you to build them.”
He still goes to events. He still edits the résumé. He still practices the short version of who he is. The work is slower than he imagined in 2020. It’s also sturdier.
“What changed,” he said, “is that I can name the path I’m on — and I can keep refining it.”