N.C. A&T Sports Hall of Famer Reinvents His Life through Engineering

For Darryl Klugh ’00 and ’03 everything in his life starts with a plan that he sticks to faithfully. After graduating from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, he learned a critical lesson about having a vision for his life. 

During Klugh’s time on campus, he was a hard-hitting defensive back who helped lead the football team to the MEAC championship and a first-round NCAA playoff win on the way to a record 11-win season in 1999. In addition, he led the MEAC in interceptions as the Black College Defensive Back of the Year and Division I-AA All American. 

“For years, my identity was always football and when I didn’t get drafted into the NFL, it was one of the biggest disappointments in my life,” said Klugh. “I went through a short depression because my heart was set on going pro and all of my friends and family kept asking me what happened. However, I had to snap out of it and come up with a plan to dictate my success in life.” 

Klugh, a Charlotte native, graduated from N.C. A&T with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and eventually moved to Florida to work at Motorola as an engineer. However, after working for the company for almost a year, September 11, 2001, shook the economy and while his job situation was stable he realized he needed to revise his plan. 

“I knew I had to move back to be closer to my family and I also witnessed a lot of people making the transition to go back to grad school,” said Klugh. “At this point, it was critical for me to get ahead of everyone, so I started grad school at A&T and received my masters in electrical engineering.” 

After graduate school in 2003, Klugh secured a job in government contracting at Lockheed Martin in Washington, D.C. 

“While in D.C., I started to notice that my younger siblings who lived in New York didn’t have college on their radar, and I knew I had to be the influence to get their lives on track,” he said. “I was able to convince my younger brother to attend A&T and major in engineering.” 

While working in corporate America for a few years, Klugh started to put his plan in place to jump into full-time entrepreneurship. He became licensed as a professional engineer and started his business, Axis of Engineering, a company that advises the government on different communication system designs. 

“In my mind, I felt like my family was depending on me to be successful and entrepreneurship was the route to take so that I could hire my siblings,” he said. “Now my brothers and sisters are grown and they have secured employment and my younger brother who attended A&T now has his own software development company.” 

Klugh’s company continues to grow in contracts and employees. With his success, his business has also afforded him the opportunity to travel the world to places such as Spain, Iceland, Singapore and South Africa. So far he has taken 40 international trips. 

In 2014, Klugh was inducted into the N.C. A&T Sports Hall of Fame. He continues to give of his time, talent and treasure to A&T through the Darryl Klugh Endowment Scholarship, serves on the Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering Advisory Board and as a chancellor appointee for the North Carolina A&T State University Alumni Association, Inc. Board of Directors.