#269 Nina Sossamon-Pogue: From Olympic Dreams to Pink Slips—and Back Again — Part One

Hi everyone, welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer.

I'm Viz Chen,

your ambitious human host.

Our show

is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world.

These days, we talk a lot about resilience.

We can discuss the psychology of it all day long.

But who actually walks the walk and talks the talk when it comes to resilience?

Professional athletes.

Today, I'm sitting down with Nina Sussman-Paul,

a former professional gymnast who started her journey at about four years old and went on to join the U.S.

gymnastic team.

In her own words, gymnastics is a perfect example of resilience.

You literally fall down and get back up all day, every day, as you learn new skills.

That mindset became part of Nina's DNA

and it carried her through some incredible twists and turns.

From the heartbreak of not making the Olympic team to leaving the sport for good after an injury, she faced one identity crisis after another.

But she didn't stop stop there.

Nina built a successful journalism career that spent 17 years,

only to be let go despite being a beloved news anchor.

And instead of staying down,

she jumped into technology, starting from scratch, and reinvented herself yet again.

Today, in part one of our conversation, we are diving into Nina's journey, her training, her trials, and her setbacks.

Then tomorrow, in part two,

we'll explore the tools Nina has developed over the years to help others rise above their challenges.

Tools like the reverse resume and successful timeline.

We are are not talking about your typical resume or conventional ideas of success.

We are going beyond that.

So let's begin this incredible journey with Nina.

Thank you so much for having me on, Vince.

It's a pleasure.

Nina, you've had such an interesting and meaningful journey.

Early on, you were a professionally trained gymnast.

But eventually, you had to say goodbye to that world and transition

into TV and journalism.

Then, you privetted again, moving into tech,

and now you are a speaker, coach, and consultant.

A lot of changes.

In my eyes, you truly embody the role of a chief change officer at heart.

We're going to dive into these transitions, the trends you've seen, and everything in between.

But first, let's start with a quick intro.

Tell us about your background and journey.

And then we'll dig deeper into different aspects of your experience.

Excellent.

Thanks, Vent.

Yeah, I feel like I could steal your name and I could be the chief change officer with all the changes in my own life.

I was, as you said, I was a young gymnast and that was from childhood back when I was four or five years old all the way until I was almost 20.

So my big bulk of my childhood was gymnastics.

And I was on the U.S.

team, traveled all over the world.

And then I didn't make the Olympics.

Very crushing blow and very sad time for me to regroup and figure out what's next.

And then I became a collegiate athlete, back on top of my game, happy again, doing my thing.

And then I got injured and another big change in my life.

I had to figure out who I was without gymnastics.

And then I found television and I loved that.

And I had big success in television and became a reporter and then a news anchor and won some awards.

And then I had another big change in my life and had actually a very difficult time at 37 in those years.

And then when I was 48, I changed again and I went from television to tech and then jumped into that space and did that for a dozen years and then changed once again and became an author and a speaker.

And now I'm out here talking about just that.

How does someone change something that very much is part of their life and they identify with?

How do you go from one thing to another and not just survive some of the big changes in our lives, but to thrive through them and really find bigger success on the other side?

People often associate associate change with resilience because,

let's be honest, you need a resilient mindset to get through a transition, to survive before you thrive.

Anina, the reason I invited you to the show is because the kind of resilience you've developed is something truly unique.

Unlike most people, people,

you were in professional sports.

You spent about 15 years in gymnastics in the early part of your life.

And you know that any professional sport requires intense training, like a form of military training in my eyes.

It demands focus, resilience, constant competition, and the ability to bounce back from failure quickly.

Can you share more about your experience in gynastics?

How did you get into it?

Why did you choose gymnastics?

And how did that experience shape your resilience?

I imagine it was a crucial foundation for the resilience you've carried forward into the rest of your life.

Absolutely, It's very much what defined my early resilience.

And I think gymnastics is a great example of resilience.

You literally fall down and have to get back up all day, every day as you're learning new skills.

And I was very young and active when I was little and the youngest of four kids.

And my parents put me in gymnastics as an outlet for all of that energy that I had.

And then I just got really good at it really fast.

I was competing at six or seven.

And then I moved away from home at 13 into an Olympic training center near Washington, D.C.

here in the States.

And I made the U.S.

team.

And I get to travel all over the world, Japan, Hungary, Germany, Australia.

So I'm out there doing it.

And that resilience, that being coachable came in and being coachable and being told, change this, do that.

When you fall, get up, keep going.

That's early, those early seeds of resilience and how to adapt and keep getting better.

That's what gymnastics is.

You just keep adapting and getting better.

You try a skill, you adapt, you get it better, you adapt some more, arms higher, twist sooner, whatever the coaching is, you are continually adapting to get better at the sport.

And so that adaptation honestly helped me very much when it came time to do all the other things in my life.

And when I got didn't make the Olympic team, I had to adapt once again to figure out what was next.

So yes, that resilience definitely was born into me at a very young age.

I remember telling you about my first impression of gymnastics.

It actually came from watching the 1984 Olympics in LA.

I was just a kid living in Hong Kong and it was summer vacation so I was allowed to watch TV every day,

which was rare.

during school days.

I watched those morning broadcasts, which were live from LA in the afternoon, their time.

I was so captivated by the U.S.

gymnastic teams.

They were amazing, incredible, winning all-round medals.

Wow, that looks intense.

That looks magical.

So when you told me gymnastics was your day-to-day life back then, I was seriously impressed.

But as you also shared, there came a point when you had to leave the sport.

Not because of the Olympics, but for other reasons.

Could you tell us more about what led you to step away from gymnastics?

Yeah, I love it that you love the 84 games.

Those are the ones I was training with Mary Lou Retton and Bark Connor.

That whole group was who I traveled all over the world with.

So I blew out.

So I first, I didn't make the games simply because I was not the best.

I bombed a competition going into it.

Only a handful of girls make it.

The U.S.

team probably has 20 girls on it, had about 20 girls on it back then.

And then six make it to the Olympics.

Now only four.

So it was not that I injured myself or anything.

I just wasn't the top.

But then when I got to college and competed, I actually did injure myself.

I bombed the meat not to make the Olympics.

Happened to be a balance beam routine.

And then in college, I did a beam dismount off the balance beam and I blew out my knee.

So I lost my sport altogether at that point.

And it was a very difficult time for me because I had to figure out who I was without gymnastics.

Because as you said, I mean, you watched it on TV.

We all did.

It was such a big sport in the U.S.

and around the world.

And to be a part of that was such a cool thing to be a part of.

And even when I went to college, it was still part of me.

But when I could no longer do the sport, I had to figure out who I was without gymnastics.

One of the biggest changes in my life.

Who is little Nina?

I was only 19 at the time.

Who is Nina without gymnastics?

What was I going to change into, to use your word, change?

What was I going to change into?

What was the next version of me going to be?

And it was very difficult for me to one, accept that I could no longer have that identifier as a gymnast, and two, to figure out what was going to be next for me.

You studied communication in college, then went into TV.

So why communication?

What drew you to it?

And what made it compelling enough for you to turn it into a career?

Yeah, so when I blew out my knee in college, in order to keep my scholarship, and my family didn't have a lot of money, so I had to have a scholarship to go to college.

So in order to keep my scholarship for gymnastics without being a gymnast, I had to work for the university.

And so I ended up working in the laundry room, like not washing cute little leotards, but in an athletic laundry room washing like men's football and basketball uniforms.

Like it was not a fun job.

And I would sit outside that room, I'd switch out the laundry and I would sit outside in the sunshine while the laundry was going.

One day, a person who walked by and I was always unhappy and grumpy and I was on crutches and I was still in a very bad spot.

because I hadn't figured out what was next for me, not being a gymnast.

And one day, an athletic advisor who was an academic advisor, advisor, not light coach or a mental health coach.

They didn't have any of that back then.

But this young guy came by and he flopped down.

He said, hey, how are you?

And I probably said something snarky, great, can't you tell?

But over time, he would stop and he would plop down next to me and talk to me.

And he is the one who finally said, hey, what do you want to do after this?

And no one had ever asked.

And I had never thought about what I wanted to be after this thing, after gymnastics.

And so he got me thinking about it.

And I found journalism.

I ended up working.

I moved from the laundry room to work for the sports information department for the college.

And then I got an internship in a TV station.

And the first time, Vince, that I walked into that TV station, I was hooked.

I loved the energy and the excitement.

I loved that, like you had to get the story done that day.

It was fast.

It was challenging.

No two days were ever the same.

I just fell in love with that concept of journalism.

And this, so I switched my

schooling and went down and through the journalism program and graduated and started my journey into that.

First as a reporter at different small TV stations, and then I got an anchor job and really loved being a news anchor and being part of a community.

So TV was what really sparked your interest.

May you think,

this is it.

That's why you started your career there.

But then, once again, you went through another transition

and eventually moved into technology.

How did that come about?

And by the way, how long were you in the TV industry before making that switch?

And what actually triggered it?

Yeah, so I was in television for 17 years.

It was a long stretch of my life as a reporter and then a news anchor.

And during those years, I had some big changes too.

So in my 30s, when I was on television, I did three shows a day, live TV, three shows a day, every single day, Monday through Friday.

And during those years, I went through some of my own changes.

At one point during that time, I was let go from a TV station in big nationwide layoffs, budget cuts.

They let me go and I had to figure out.

And I had just one favorite news anchor.

I was just voted favorite news anchor for the seventh year in a row, but they let me go and I had to figure out, they just pulled me into the office and said, we're releasing you from your contract.

And so I had to find a new way forward and I went to another TV station.

So that was one really difficult time.

And I also went through a divorce during that time.

So that was a big change in my life.

So I had a lot of changes there.

And I was involved in an accident during my time on television.

And I won't go into all the details for your viewers because you guys don't want to hear all the sad stuff.

But it was really sad.

And I wasn't at fault or anything.

It was just a sad thing to be a part of.

And I had a hard time figuring out like how I was going to be happy again on the other side of it because I was so sad.

And I went through a very dark time then and decided during that rediscovery of who I was and wanting at times to end my life.

It was very difficult.

I realized then that maybe TV was not going to be my forever.

And I started looking for what is the next thing.

And so I decided to get out and I had a friend who had a startup who made me a great offer.

And so I jumped from television to tech.

And that was a huge change.

And I could talk to you more about why I chose this specific team, this specific company.

There was a lot that went into it.

But then I had to learn technology.

I had to learn a whole new world.

And that was a very scary time to make a big change.

I was really excited about this next chapter of my life as I look at it.

That was one of my biggest biggest changes, and that one I made on my own.

That was not a forced change.

That was one where I said, you know something?

I'm going to do something different and bigger now that I've decided that I don't want to be front and center and on TV anymore.

I want to be the next version of Nina.

That was a big change.

Yeah.

Like you said, it wasn't forced on you,

though you were let go despite your performance.

But that also opened up a chance for you to rethink, reposition, and as you mentioned, it was a friend who showed you a new door and you stepped through it.

I'm curious about your choice making in that moment, your thought process.

What was it like when you decided to make that shift?

Why did it make sense for you?

Was it about certain skills you had at that time?

Or maybe the financial prospects?

Perhaps you saw a bigger trend emerging, but I know for most people, it's not just about trends.

Change has to resonate personally too.

So I'd love to understand

more about your thought process and decision making in that moment.

Yeah, and I think this is probably what your listeners can take away from this podcast the most is when you do have something happen or some or you decide to make a big change, there's always a lot of opportunities.

There's always new things you've never even thought of.

And for me, going from television, live TV to anything else, I had to figure out one, like you said, what am I good at?

And then two,

where where's the money?

Obviously, I had three calls, three small kids.

I had to go and figure out where is the money?

Like, I have to go keep working.

So what am I good at?

Where is the money?

And then

what is the industry look like?

So is the industry that I'm jumping into on an upswing or a downswing?

And I wanted to make sure I was jumping into an industry that would be the best space for me.

So what I did was I said, I had coffee and I went to lunch with people who knew me, who I had.

admired, but I didn't work for them.

And they were business owners.

And I said, if you had to hire me for something, what would you hire me for?

You see me on TV every night.

We've known each other.

We've been on some boards together.

We've done some projects together.

But if you had to hire me, what am I good at?

What would you hire me for?

And I listened and I met with someone in marketing.

I met with someone who was in a big law firm.

I met with different people that I respected, women, business owners that I respected.

And so I, from them, came up with a list of what my skills were.

Like the marketing guy said, you don't know marketing.

You just know how to be a product.

You're on TV.

And then the the attorney I was going to work with, I was going to teach his teams how to interact with the media.

He said, I would hire you to help me teach my biggest attorneys how to talk to the media.

So there are a lot of different things I was thinking about.

And then I met with the one friend with a startup and he said, here's what my technology is.

I couldn't even understand it.

I didn't know technology.

So it was hard for me to understand what exactly they did.

It was a software as a service platform for health insurance.

Nothing Nothing sexy, but when I looked at it, it was very lucrative.

That's where the money is.

And in healthcare and in tech, obviously, and that was 2007.

And at that time, Google had just bought YouTube.

And so I could see, oh, video is going to be a part of people's platforms.

People's software platforms are going to have to show video to explain things.

It's going to have to be embedded all over those platforms to keep you in a process when you're signing up for things, to answer questions.

It's going to be a big part of where we're going is going to be video in software online.

And think about this back in 2007 and eight.

That was a big deal.

The thought process was, I am good at being on camera and video and I know that world.

Google had just bought YouTube.

The money was in healthcare and software.

And I could see the mashup of all of those creating a very successful future for me.

And so that's why I was willing to leave a very comfortable job in television and make that change because I wanted to do something bigger and better.

And now on the same side, television news was going down.

That industry was going down.

So everything was going online.

We didn't quite have the news in our pockets like we do now on our phones, but we were able in the 2007 era to be able to, it wasn't just three television shows a day.

There was TV 24-7.

And there were a lot of places to get information that weren't just on TV.

So that industry was changing a lot lot as well.

And it was one that was going on the downside while the other one was on the upside.

So I just jumped from the ship that was sinking to the ship that was going up.

That was what I did.

I think your reflection is really important

because I've noticed a lot of people, including my friends, focus on things like money or trends when considering a career change.

Right now, for example, AI is a huge trend and everyone knows is where the big money is.

But jumping into it without personal alignment often feels like following the herd.

That's why I asked about how you identified your fit in tech.

It's not just about chasing the next big thing.

It's about finding a meaningful place for yourself.

As you explained, your background in video, TV, and connecting with people gave you a unique edge.

You didn't just leap into tech blindly.

You brought your skills with you and carved out a spot where your past experiences could make an impact.

It was a new opportunity.

for both you and the company.

I was going to add to that, if I can jump in for a moment.

I was going to add to that because you made a very good point.

I figured out what I was good at.

And I wasn't just me communicating on TV.

What people told me that I didn't realize I was good at and through those meetings is that you're a journalist.

You're really good at taking very complex things and making them simple, making them sound simple so everybody can understand them.

So for me to jump into a tech space where I needed to explain healthcare and healthcare offerings and insurance and all of that.

It wasn't sexy, but it was a lot of information and it was changing.

We had the Affordable Care Act and things here in the States and it was changing.

And so I could take all this really thick documentation and all this information and get it down to 30 seconds and give it to the person so they could make a decision.

And what I learned through those coffees and things was that, you know what you're good at, Nina?

You're good at taking a big bunch of information and getting it into a tiny little tight ball and handing it to the person.

And that is what we need.

It was interesting when you look at what you're good at, you may not realize what you're good at in a way that other people do.

That's why those conversations are so important,

absolutely.

And I think that's a great point

for anyone listening.

The takeaway here is to think outside the box when it comes to your skills and experience.

We often limit ourselves to what we have always done or the industry we know,

but those same skills can often apply in ways we wouldn't initially expect.

In my own experience, a guest on the show, an executive recruiter, once told me I would make a great executive recruiter myself.

At first, I was surprised.

Recruiting wasn't something I've ever considered.

But she pointed out that my ability to spot talent, connect with people, and bring the right voices onto the show demonstrated qualities that could be valuable in her industry.

So just like your own story, it's about being creative and open-minded when exploring new directions.

Sometimes, it takes an outside perspective to see what we are really capable of.

Absolutely.

And be creative in your own head as you're thinking what you're good at.

That I really encourage people to, you might not have seen that about yourself, but she did.

Same thing for me.

I didn't see that in myself.

Other people said, oh, you could do this.

Having conversations with other people that ask them, what do you think I'm good at?

is really interesting.

You really will learn a lot about yourself.

It's hard when we're in our own head.

One, we might not see our skills.

Two, something that other people think is really valuable that we can do.

For us, it may be second nature.

We don't even think of it as a skill, it's just who we are.

So, really cool to look at it that way.

She saw something in you you might not have seen.

I had the same situation when someone saw something in me.

So, for your listeners, maybe get an outside opinion, figure out what else you might be good at that you don't even see.

Just now, Nina shared with us us about her long journey, her training, her trials, and her setbacks.

Tomorrow, in part two,

we'll explore the tools Nina has developed over the years to help others rise above their challenges.

Tools like the reverse resume and successful timeline.

We are not talking about your typical resume or conventional ideas of success.

We are going beyond that.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media.

I'm Vin Shen, your ambitious human host.

Until next time, take care.