Isaiah J. Kacyvenski ( ; born October 3, 1977) is a former American football linebacker of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in the fourth round of the 2000 NFL Draft. He played college football at Harvard and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School after he retired. Kacyvenski also spent time with the St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders. After spending the 2007 season out of football trying to return from microfracture surgery, Kacyvenski officially announced his retirement in 2008. Isaiah is currently the Founder and Managing Partner of Will Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on sports technology opening up large, adjacent markets. Early years Isaiah Kacyvenski was the youngest of five children growing up in upstate Endicott, New York. He grew up at times homeless and without food with his parents; his caring mother and his alcoholic and sometimes abusive father until their divorce when he was nine. When he was thirteen, his mother left to do missionary work, leaving the care of him and his siblings back with their father, now sober. Kacyvenski attended Union-Endicott High School where he was an honors student and served as captain of the football team. His ultimate goal was to earn a football scholarship to University of Notre Dame to play with the Fighting Irish. His mother was killed by a truck as she walked along the road on the same day of Kacyvenski's biggest high school football game in his senior season. Upon hearing of his mother's death, he fell "to his knees crying." He ended up playing in the game that night, calling it one of the best games of his life. He received a phone call at the end of his senior year from Harvard Crimson football coach Tim Murphy offering him an academic scholarship. While Kacyvenski was reluctant to go to for fear of not fitting in, his coach convinced him that he would never regret going to Harvard. College career While he was a freshman at Harvard, Kacyvenski came across items that belonged to his mother. Among the items he found a picture of his mother wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and her Bible with a passage highlighted: "Can a woman forget her own baby and not love the child she bore? Even if a mother should forget her child, I will never forget you. I can never forget you! I