Faces of Marketing podcast: Nina Byrd, CEO of Nina Byrd Consulting

Nina Byrd, founder + CEO of Nina Byrd Consulting, is an old soul in a young person’s body. Nina’s family is exceptional, but to her growing up, it was simply normal. She was a National Champion rower and a competitive fencer. Her twin brother was a college gymnast; her sister was a prima ballerina, her mom an ER nurse, and her dad was one of the top five black ventriloquists in the world. Nina’s superpower is her ability to recognize and move with change without a lot of emotion.
She runs a marketing and business consultancy. Nina is a New Yorker who has a unique perspective on Portland after moving here 2 years ago and describing our town as having enormous potential while still in its awkward teenage years. When asked who inspires her most right now, she gives a key insight about Portland, describing a man on the Ross Island bridge who makes hats and invariably has a smile on his face. “He doesn’t have a sign, he hasn’t asked for anything. But he is just there working his craft every day.”
Tune into this podcast interview between Nina and me on the Soundcloud audio file above, or on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, or most other podcast players.
Transcript:

Ryan: Hey there, welcome to the Faces of Marketing podcast where we talk about the human stories and lives of different people and perspectives in the marketing profession, especially entrepreneurs and movement makers. This is your host, Ryan Buchanan. I’m here with my good friend Nina Byrd, who is founder and CEO of Nina Byrd Consulting. Welcome to the show, Nina!
Nina: Oh, thanks so much Ryan. I’m so happy to be here.
Ryan: Awesome. Well, here we are in a late sunny day in October. Yes, it is is possible in late October, but rare. We were just talking about some hikes we took a few miles from one another in the Columbia Gorge — we both loved it. You’ve only been here for a couple of years, right? Moved from New York? Well, what do you have to say about Oregon fall?
Nina: It’s beautiful. This is my first official fall that I’ll spend the entire time in Portland. I’ve been here just under two years, but my first year I flew back and forth from New York every few weeks — I’m finally experiencing all of the seasons in Portland. I wish the listenership could see what we’re seeing right now with the change in leaves — the red, the orange, the sun, the mountains….it’s gorgeous.

Ryan: So you and I met a year ago, but have really connected in the last few months. Our good friend, Sadie Lincoln, who’s founder of barre3 and also a Faces of Marketing alumni. In the last three or four times we have gotten together, I feel like I’ve really gotten to know you — you’re like an old soul in a young body. I feel like you have a unique perspective about Portland, especially for only having been here a relatively short time.You mainly work with mid-size, exec-team CEOs, and it seems you have a really cool insight into Portland. I get this really fascinating take from you, from the outside, and what you’ve experienced in the last year. I was hoping you’d share some of that with us on this podcast.
Nina: Sure will. Absolutely. So the caveat is I’ve never been a West Coaster before, so this is my first introduction — not just to the Pacific Northwest, but to the West Coast in general. I’m very much an East Coaster, born and raised in New York. I guess I kind of come to this region with that lens. There are just some weird things about the west coast in general.As far as my point of view, it’s very hard for me to call Portland a city. My understanding of Portland right now is that it’s in its teenage stage. Remember what it’s like to be an awkward teenager? I know I do.
Nina: Maybe some of us more recently than others. But I think Portland has this really unique vibe, right? Portland is trying to balance the juxtaposition between being this “Silicon forest tech epicenter” and trying to maintain its integrity with an environmental focus; the belief in sustainability and a higher level of conscious thinking. But we’ve kind of skipped some steps, right? I think from a business perspective of how businesses have been built here. This idea of moving out West and it kind of being avant-garde, going against the grain, that is still nascent in the Portland culture. However, we’re also trying to lean into the future, right?
Nina: So it’s like an awkward teenager who’s trying to figure out how do to navigate high school, while still having acne and a changing voice, as well clothes you are out-growing. Everyone knows what the roads here are like and what traffic is turning into — we haven’t really figured out good solutions and how we need to grow, yet we continue to grow nonetheless. I think this comes with a little bit of ignorance, but it also comes with a lot of opportunity.
Ryan: Can you give us a few specific examples of the work you do here in Portland? Some of the small, medium, or even larger endeavors? I think in Portland your clients are more on the small to medium size, where as in New York, you came from more enterprise type of clients. Are you seeing that in Portland? Is there a bright spot and then maybe an opportunity with the work that you’ve been doing?

Nina: Yeah, absolutely. I work with all types of clients as a strategist — that’s just a fancy way of saying I’m a problem solver. I help create plans of action for all types of, of businesses that have unique challenges. I’m really non-discriminant with who I work with ,including small, tiny, non-profit businesses who have only have ten staff members.I have experience mitigating growing pains in order to help my clients keep pace with the evolving culture in Portland. In New York, you’re talking big teams — sometimes 10, 20, 30 teams on one project. Here in Portland, however, I’ve found that there are small to medium sized businesses that don’t realize their potential.
Nina: Here in Portland, I sometimes feel like I’ve stepped into the Midwest. I expected it to be like Seattle; a big sprawling city. Then I came here, did a loop around downtown, then another loop, and I was like, where is the rest of it?But that’s where the opportunity is, right? It’s so small.When we talk about the folks we know, it’s just one to two degrees of separation, right? This makes it very easy to be nimble ,navigate, and get to know the community really well. I feel I’m very blessed to be invested with so many influential businesses here. I advise CEOs who have been here for 20 or 30 years and they are totally shaking things up. Folks like yourself, Ryan, who are just really leading the charge on some really tough issues.
Ryan: Well, I think there’s a term here. Yeah, I’m building off of what you said about the Midwest — I think Portland really does share those values. I’m like you, I’m also from the East coast and from DC — we tend to be a little more direct in poking the hornet’s nest. But this term “Portland Nice” can be a hindrance to moving forward, especially in equity circles. When you are not direct, you are not communicating how you really feel. So there is a great deal of communication that is behind people’s backs and very passive instead of direct. Is that an example of what you’re talking about? What are some things that you’re seeing? What’s an organization that gives you hope? I don’t know if it’s someone like a Shari Dunn at a Dress for Success Oregon? Let’s talk about that.
Nina: Well, to speak to the Portland “nice,” I think that’s absolutely true. People who both lived in New York and in Portland warned me about the Pacific Northwest. I can use an example of how that manifests in the business community. Oftentimes, I’ll go into a meeting and everyone leaves the meeting after an hour and a half or so. They feel good and are excited about have engaging conversations. But no one knows what happened. No one knows what was accomplished. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that failure. It’s kind of like, did we just have that meeting? Do we all feel okay? What are the action items, right? I’m a direct communicator most of the time. I like having a very clear, concise plan of action.

Nina: I like knowing what I’m doing when I’m walking into any environment, especially if I find that there’s a general acceptance , a complacency, the thought, that as long as you’re showing up and working, that’s PROGRESS. In New York, that’s not progress. If I’m just showing up, operating, that’s not progress.So I’m re-examining. What does it look like to be truly progressive in all areas, not just political….it needs to be a company culture, OUR community, our environment. I think we need to be a little bit bolder here in Portland. This is a transplant market and you’ve got lots of folks with varied experience.There is diversity of thought coming in, moving here, and being a part of Portland. Things are starting up.
Nina: You mentioned Shari Dunn. I just saw her this morning. She’s at the top of my mind as a CEO of Dress for Success in Oregon; she approaches non-profit life in a very innovative way with great social impact, right? Like social entrepreneurship. I think what she’s doing here in Oregon can be a model for nonprofits all across the world. When we talk about for-profit corporate culture, I think there’s some interesting things that happened at OHSU and Providence. I think they’re being challenged by the changing landscape of healthcare. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is right on our heels. Everyone’s wondering where automation fits into their industry and what does that look like in terms of human capital, right?
Nina: Where do we innovate and integrate technology that can assist humans to do the work that humans were meant to do? I try to help prepare clients for a two, three, five year projection. I have to be accurate in helping pay the pathway to get them from point A to point B. That requires perspective change. Perspective change requires trust. Oftentimes what I’m doing with clients is trust-building, reaffirming what they already know to be true and helping them pave the way to change.
Ryan: But this notion of thoughts becoming things…when you’re talking about, reaffirming what they already know? Is that how we define the future? Do we just lean into what we already intuitively know?
Nina: Yeah, simplifying processes is a critical component of, of what I do. Taking really complex things and distilling them down to action items, working across cultures and across languages. I know later on we’ll talk a little bit about my upbringing, but I grew up between worlds, so I have an ability to be kind to this middle ground. I say I live in the gray. I love the black and white. I love it.
Nina: I think it’s great. I like it when you have clarity and consistency, but the gray is where change happens and the gray is also awkward and uncomfortable help folks recognize what’s inside them, what needs to come out — to come out for change, for change to happen. Everyone has that; without the risk of sounding preachy, people move here so that they have the mental freedom to explore FREEDOM. It’s very easy in a place like New York or Connecticut or DC to just stay busy in the doing mode and just do, do, do. Check boxes and make a lot of money to have career success. But retire and die in Portland.I think people, and this is my assumption, people move here because they’re pulled toward a higher level of conscious thinking.
Nina: This involves empathy, right? Empathy is a buzzword now. But what empathy is, is really just a manifestation of leaning into your emotions. You know, empathy is great, but it’s also awkward.
Ryan: In Portland, I’ve noticed that on that dance floor, people are not self conscious at all and they just have permission to go crazy. Like people who have no business dancing and I might be one of them — making complete fools of themselves on the dance floor, but not caring. But it’s Portland, it’s all good. Right? With that freedom to do that and truly be themselves, then there’s more change possible.
Nina: Absolutely. And that’s a really great point, right? I wish people would bring that creativity and that audacity to the Board room. The same guy, and I won’t name any names, but executives that I see at weddings dancing and having, you know, just a ball, and not caring about ego or the way they’re perceived as being their true authentic selves. I wish I would see that more in the Board room. I’m hoping that my work can help inspire that kind of change.
Ryan: Kind of like an episode of Seinfeld and the Elaine dance, you know?
Nina: Yeah, Elaine’s awkward dance. And for anybody who’s under 18 and listening to this, you have to YouTube that Elaine awkward Seinfeld dance.

Ryan: Awesome. As many of the listeners know from past episodes, let’s talk about New York. What kind of activities were you into? Do you have siblings, your folks? Talk to me about how you grew up.
Nina: I’m a water girl. So when I moved to Portland, I moved to the water. I grew up doing water sports as a competitive rower for many years in high school and in college.But back to my early childhood, if anyone’s interested, I don’t think it’s all that interesting. I’m a twin, so I’ve got older siblings. I have a twin brother. We were the surprise coming back from Puerto Rico, my parents were very happy to have two kids and my mom thought she had the flu! Surprise! We were twins. We were a bundle of joy but were between a lifestyle that was like a boom and bust. My father was an entrepreneur. He was an entertainer. When life was really great, it was amazing. You know, caviar and champagne, amazing experiences.
Ryan: What kind of entertainer?
Nina: My father is a ventriloquist. He’s one of the top five black ventriloquists. So yeah, he’s pretty incredible.
Ryan: Wow. So let’s talk about charting your own path.
Nina: He was one of 13 children. I grew up with dozens and dozens of cousins, all different races, religions, everything. So when we talk about what true like ethnic and cultural diversity looks like, that was an intrinsic part of my upbringing. I thought that was “normal.”
Nina: I have an uncle that looks like you, Ryan. And for listeners who don’t know me, I’m a person of color. Though it was very normal having a cousin who was white or biracial — it was extremely normal.When I got out into the “real world” and I was privately educated, people thought it was novel. I was like, why? I didn’t get it. My mother was an ER nurse. She was empathetic, healing, all those things. She then transitioned her career into commercial real estate, and she is amazing at that as well. I was allowed to explore in my childhood. I was allowed to be whatever I wanted. My siblings and I had very loose restrictions, but were expected to be good people.
Nina: And as a result of being a good person, there was an expectation that we would do well in school. So we were all good students, the whole nine yards, all that stuff. Never once did my parents have to say, “You should have studied.” Never once did they say, “Oh, why did you get a B? You should’ve gotten an A.” It was always an expectation that we put on ourselves. Even college was like an option in one of many options. Where do you want to go to school? Do you want to go to school? I got really frustrated.Once again, privately educated, grammar school, high school, college, and I had all of my friends with their parents pushing them or lobbying for a certain college back East. But my parents were like, “you want to start a business? You want to go to college? Do whatever you like.”
Nina: They knew no matter what, we would put the onus of success on ourselves and that we’d be good people. And so having that type of freedom was, some anxiety. Everyone else had all this structure and we didn’t. But at the same time, in the same breath, I’m an entrepreneur now and am able to step outside of the bounds or confines of traditional structures. I feel very comfortable in that space.
Nina: People don’t know what boxes I think out of — I’ve kind of always been a contrary and an alternative thinker; that’s been luckily recognized by traditional schools of thought as being valuable. I want to encourage folks who really think differently than like everyone in their work force, friend group, or whatever — they need to lean into that. There is something beautiful on the other side of awkward and it is always something great. I’m really happy that I was able to to see the value in that. My childhood was full of contradictions, and it was a really unique, strange experience being a twin. My brother’s a competitive gymnast. He’s now a gymnastics coach. He’s a great one. Yeah. Amazing.
Nina: He actually married one of my best friends and he is the nicest guy — takes after my dad. My sister’s a prima ballerina and I was a competitive rower and fencer. Can you imagine a black family that does all of that? We certainly had our fair share of obstacles and challenges — just navigating that space growing up as kids. When we talk about being resilient or building resilience, I think that goes hand in hand with being a person of color, navigating a traditionally white, privileged environment, because it’s one and the same, right?

Ryan: I remember in our past coffee meeting a couple of weeks ago, you were sharing a little bit of your rowing experience in college — in this podcast we always ask what formative moments you’ve had in your life, usually right before college or in college. Can you describe the moment you got overcame obstacles?
Nina: I sometimes forget that being a person of color, being black, matters to other people. Not that I don’t think I’m black. I’m black. I have black pride. I love my culture. It can be awkward for me when I go into environments and I get stares, you know, people can literally dance around me. That happens in the supermarket even now. I’m like, do I have something on my face?
Nina: Oh gosh, that’s right. Okay. It’s that thing again, that thing called my race. So yes, it still happens. We were National Champions on my rowing team and we went to a regatta in Indiana. Everyone was white, you know, typical rowing. We were just in a new environment and everywhere we went, I can just remember it like it was yesterday. Every single restaurant we went to, if whites went to it, we went to the restaurant on the other side of the road. We were getting so many stares, people stopping dead in their tracks and staring at us. And I’m like, what is happening? What is going on?And then a fellow teammate had to call it out — I don’t think they’ve ever seen a black person in this part of the neighborhood, or at least not black rowers! Even at the regatta it was painfully obvious that I was different. Just having to recognize that and honor that that difference is an interesting challenge for a person of color navigating those spaces. That’s something I’ll never forget. Even now when I go to a new environment or go overseas, its still the issue of do I have something on my face?

Nina: I studied public policy in college and I thought the way that changed the world was through politics. I had a rude awakening on my first job. I worked 90 hours a week, Monday through Monday. I took one half-day off in maybe seven months. And the reason why I explain this is because I transitioned out of politics and into a traditional marketing. And at that agency it was like Mad Men. All white men, pretty much like truly mad men. The whole nine yards. Drinking at the parties, all that. Drinking at noon, not necessarily late at night — covered by the company — shots at lunch, you know? Wake up in the morning, go to work, people are hungover, showing up to team-night and drink-again, drinking on road trips, all that stuff. I can’t even explain that. This was the poster trout for me, too. That type of environment, you know. I started to realize as the only, not just woman, but a person of color. I knew that I had to leverage my resources.
Nina: I’m extremely resourceful. People say that to me all the time. I can recognize and move with change without a lot of emotion. That’s kind of like one of my superpowers. I would have interns shadow me and sometimes they’d be 45, 50 years old, interning for our companies. It was a really prestigious company. White guy intern. We would go into a meeting, right, with a newer client and they’d only talk to him, even though I was the Account Executive. And they’d keep talking to the person that doesn’t know anything. Then our intern would look at them, then me, and say, “ You have to ask Nina.”
Nina: So I’d say something and they’d echo it and then the client would say, “Oh, okay, that’s great idea.” And then I’d say something again and then they’d echo it and kind of say, “Oh, that’s wonderful.”
Ryan: Did you have to orchestrate that because you had to get stuff done and you just had to work within the broken system that was given to you?
Nina: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s part of navigating change, right? You have to take your concessions in areas that might be uncomfortable to do what’s effective to make the change. So I was still a stellar manager because I was able to leverage the resources we had to work with and meet them where they’re at. Then after the trust is established, we’re buddy buddy. You know, that’s my rule. Telco client in the middle of, central New York, right? Or my progressive client in the middle of Chicago who wants to hang out with me after hours.

Ryan: I like that you get people where they are at, and I know that is a process, right?
Nina: I know this process is not about me, this situation, someone’s emotions, how they’re treating me. It’s not even about me because they don’t know me. So yeah, that’s always been interesting, an interesting tactic. Most folks of color know how to do that. So that’s another little inside tip for anybody listening.
Ryan: You know, as a straight white male, these are things that we don’t have to think about, like at least in America. So we jumped around a little bit, but you went to college, a technology-focused college. Why that choice and is tech a part of what you do now? I think you mentioned that some clients are nonprofit and some are in tech, it’s all over the map. But you, as a futurist, and see technology as just a part of the flow.
Nina: Always. Yeah. I mean, you imagine correctly. My journey to choosing college if I’m totally honest, it has to do with how a sixteen year old makes decisions, right? So I went to college at sixteen. To jump back a minute, 80% of the kids in my graduating class in my high school were boys: there were only a few girls in honors classes. Boys got whatever they wanted. Very spoiled environment, very free and open. So I went from a kind of all-boys environment up until eighth grade and then to an all-girls school.
Nina: Which was a really interesting cultural transition for me, right? I attended an all-white, all-girl Catholic school.I thought, what does it look like to go back to an environment with all men — I was really curious about that. My first boyfriend and my college RET — I was the only female . it was a mostly male environment and it was just your Rochester Institute of Technology. And I love the fact that I clearly focused on lots of cutting edge majors in technology. I studied censorship laws and science and technology policy. All of my friends were nerds. I was finally in an environment where people valued Dungeons and Dragons and drinking ’til two in the morning.
Ryan: Dungeons and Dragons comes back.
Nina: It comes back! I have a friend from college, or I should say a colleague, a very loose friend who owns a Dungeons and Dragons gaming studio in New York. He is like a savant. Brilliant guy. So, yeah, we just totally got to nerd out for my college experience and all my close friends are in science and technology.
Nina: Now I’m including the man of honor in my wedding. He works for Zoom Technology and he’s an amazing, very privileged, white male. We have lots of interesting conversations about what it’s like to be in the workforce now. But techno, that was where I really got my first taste of technology and innovation. I’ve sat in on innovation committees,
Nina: So right now I still work with a couple of venture capital firms and I work with startups like app- developers. I help folks in that field articulate a strategy or plan around how they go through the first and second years of their start up; how they navigate that process purely through strategy or through prototyping . So what I find is a lot of folks don’t know where to start, so they start with strategy. Let’s bring the subject matter experts to talk about how much funding you need. You know, when you create an app, a lot of folks, you find they’re nerds who tinkered around and just want to change the world with this one idea, but they don’t know where to start. They don’t know how much money they need.
Nina: They don’t know who the right team is. They don’t know the phases of funding. They don’t know how to do user testing, So we create a strategy around all of that before we start implementing, executing on the work. So we’ve done that now with four applications.
Ryan: And is that almost all your clients are back in New York or is in the Bay area, Silicon Valley?
Nina: I’ve got one in Portland as of two weeks ago in the app space.I’ve always kind of dabbled in that space and some of those pupils started off as like my friends from college.They got recruited and now say, “I want to create my own app.” Like when apps were new and innovative and different and there wasn’t so much competition in the market. But now that there is a lot of competition, it’s even easier to understand how one application or one service can be differentiated from all the rest. So I enjoy that process.
Nina: And for me, those are some of my favorite clients because they’re so willing to just lean in and do the work. I find that I do tend to work really well with people that are in the spectrum. So folks who have Asperger’s where they don’t really have the social skills. I think of some of my developers are there but are so flexible and adaptive. Though not solely, I work with people in the spectrum I work with all types of people, but I like people who really value logic and can set their emotions aside for a moment to do the work that needs to be done. I think it’s great. There’s a time to use emotions to lean into, and like I said, the discomfort to understand what’s beneath the anger.
Ryan: So your frustration is all about opportunity, right?
Nina: It’s perspective change. I offer peoples solutions with “What could we do in that space?” Let’s fast forward a year or whenever — its what we are going to do to navigate and make this an opportunity for an organization.
Ryan: This is so off script, but I’m going to go there anyway. Your wedding is happening in about a month, month and a half.
Nina :I think it’s like 80 days or something. January, the first week of January and in and Costa Rica.
Ryan: Do you communicate with your fiancé in the same manner during an argument?

Nina: I’m black, my fiancé is white. He’s in medicine now. But we both love to talk and we both love challenge each other with kind of thought provoking conversations in every now and again. It gets a little bit competitive to say the least.
Nina: We have to remember what we’re doing in this world, why we’re together and how we hope to shape Portland and the rest of America to be a better place. We’re always very mission focused about how we want to raise our future children or even name their names. We’ve kind of charted a path for them and we’re helping to create an environment right now that sets them up for success. That’s why I’m so engaged in the community in Portland. I’m doing it for them. But, when we reach moments of a little bit of contention, I do frame it as an opportunity.
Nina: I talk about owning your emotions because I really believe in that. We don’t have to really get angry with one another. We can get angry about situations that happen, but that doesn’t diminish our character. Right? You need alternate perspectives to grow.
Ryan: So yeah, I’m glad I’m on the right track with my wife. We’ve had some great therapists too. My wife is from here, but she’s amazingly direct — more so than anyone I’ve ever met and she’s not intimidated by any situation. We have a dynamic of strong will meeting strong will. But, amazingly we have balance, yes! So just a couple of questions left. The one question in this moment right now, who alive inspires you most?
Nina: That’s a wonderful question. You know, previously I would’ve said some thought provoking icon in pop culture, you know, and Obama or an Oprah or Deepak Chopra or whatever. Those are all great people and I think the power of social media and the digital era is that any individual’s voice can be amplified and recognized. I think that’s wonderful. But I’d like to just highlight local folks. So someone that’s been on my mind, I don’t even know his name, but I see him almost every day and it’s a guy who sits at the corner of the Ross Island Bridge when you’re just coming onto the ramp. He makes hats. He dazzles little hats and he always has a smile on his face. He doesn’t have a sign, he hasn’t asked for anything. But he is just there working his craft every day.
Nina: He’s one of the most consistent people I’ve seen in Portland. I just think about him when I think about people doing hard work. He’s one of them. And when I think about someone who’s inspiring me, literally, every day, that’s a person. I think we can get inspiration from folks, whether or not they are mega icons or someone when we pass on the street every day.
Ryan: That’s cool. That question reminds me of a dinner conversation where it started at as, “Who’s your hero?” And as a kid, my hero was Michael Jordan; always been big into basketball. He is just a beautiful human being from what I saw on the basketball court. But as I think of that question, my hero is someone a lot closer to me — not just the people I look up to immensely, their work ethic and all those things, but my mom is my hero. She is insanely entertaining and brings joy in life to any room she comes into.
Nina: I think that I really resonated with that very present-moment response. Many people in the American culture have an attraction to mega-icons, but the the people I interact with look for alternative values, right? So we talk about this whole thing with, diversity, equity and inclusion. You know, it’s about value. Do we find other folks valuable? That’s where we need to start. And if you don’t know them, how can you find something valuable that you don’t know?
Nina: It’s almost impossible. I think it comes back to our circle of influences, who — you put yourself around, what books you read, right? This in terms of shifting paradigms, shifting mentality, anything that’s so important. But I will also say that part of my privilege is not having social media; I only have LinkedIn. I’ve never had Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or anything else.
Nina: I advise this — I advise on this all the time, right? I’m a little bit of counter-culture in that way because l look at Jaron Lanier, who’s a Godfather of Virtual Reality in technology. He also doesn’t have social media and thinks it’s a detritus to our health. Without hoisting people up to these echelons of tons of power that no one can sustain. And maybe that’s part of my privilege - growing up with celebrity culture and seeing the behind the scenes of icons of, “Oh, why is that person so sad?” Or calling my father at two o’clock in the morning drunk. You know, I have this conversation with my friends who are NBA athletes and NFL athletes, and it’s all a little bit of a myth, right? In this kind of iconic culture, anybody can be an icon, whether that’s the guy on the Ross Island Bridge on the corner working his trade or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Ryan: The last question is open-ended: Your senior year in high school could’ve been an opportunity or an obstacle. In the moment or in the past , could you give the audience a glimpse into how you operate? Now when you look back and there was a couple of moments that were like, “Oh, okay, this is what I would like to have as an independent moment or as an overcoming this thing moment?
Nina: Yeah. That’s a really tough question, right? I think throughout my life there’s been these micro-moments and they still continue to show up, right? As I navigate new spaces, that’s part of the process of navigating the unknown, which I really value. When I think back to some pivotal life moments in my life, that’s where I had to sit back into the moment and just kind of understand what was really happening. I think back to this moment when I did my first overseas international aid trip: I thought it was just gonna be this revolutionary life changing thing.
Nina: I’ve had lots of friends who’ve had done work overseas, lots of solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. I have friends who are attorneys and doctors and they’ve have all these wonderful experiences. So I really had high expectations and it didn’t disappoint. I decided to go to Haiti with a group of friends from New York and do some relief work there. At the time it was actually interpreting, so I interpret in a couple of different languages as just a side hobby. When I arrived people were speaking Creole, which is kind of this amalgamation of French, English, and Spanish and it was a totally different culture. We were working in the medical clinic, and it was really incredible. There were 500 folks lined up to come in and, and see a doctor for the first time.
Nina: Most of those folks were in their seventies and eighties and had never seen a doctor in their life. It’s amazing. So that was humbling right then and there, right? I have three doctors, you know: the specialist, the chiropractor, and primary care. Another moment of recognizing my privilege.
Nina: Unfortunately though, throughout the course of that day, we were only there for about 10 hours a day in this little cement hut. No windows, tables, etc. There were doctors dispensing medications for curable diseases like malaria.There was a woman who came in with a toddler and her infant, a newborn. She was in distress and the toddler’s stomach was distended. That’s usually a sign of malnutrition or malaria, or some type of worm — sickness. We knew that he needed to be seen right away, but so did every other person there.
Nina: The medical team was tending to him, but he ended up losing consciousness — they tried to revive him. They couldn’t. And that was intense, to say the least. It was hot and you still have another 200 people to see. So what are you gonna do? Right? And so in that moment, I looked at the mother and I looked at the people that I was serving right in front of me. I’m like, we have to continue. We can’t, you can’t even really stop to grieve properly. And the mother, while she was so sad that her child didn’t make it, she was very excited for her infant to receive care and potentially not die. That was the first time I think, ever in my life ,that I saw someone balance extreme joy and extreme sadness in the same moment.
Nina: It’s powerful. It’s just a reminder for us, right? Life throws curve balls at us all the time and we can learn from every single moment. Whether we’re here in Portland, Oregon, or in New York or overseas. We can learn in the most unexpected environments, from, the people that we never even thought we’d never interact with. That is humbling and it still stays with me to this day. I think everyone should travel overseas, go experience a life outside their norm, or their bubble. That’s how we grow.
Ryan: That’s amazing and a really powerful story to end on. I want to thank you so much for being on the show and I’m going to listen to this a second time.
Nina: Thanks so much, Ryan. Thanks for doing this. I really believe in what you’re doing to inspire change and elevate people into new ways of thinking.
Ryan: Awesome. Cheers!
The author, Ryan Buchanan, is a social and for-profit entrepreneur who co-founded a pathway to leadership program for professionals of color called Emerging Leaders as well as founder + CEO of a data-driven, digital marketing agency, Thesis.
