At each professional crossroad, Nina Simon has made the choice most likely to disappoint her mother. She left an electrical engineering job at NASA to design spy museum exhibits, said goodbye to a museum directorship to start a global movement for more inclusive cultural organizations, and now has put down her CEO hat to write crime fiction. Her first novel, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, will be published in 2023 by William Morrow. Nina lives off the grid in the Santa Cruz mountains with 20 people, 16 chickens, 2 trampolines, and 1 zipline.
We talk about:
- Leaving her dream job
- Living in an intentional "off the grid" community
- What she learned from her ambitious days as a museum industry leader
- Marriage & kids on an unconventional path
- Writing her novel
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Audio intro
0:12 Introduction
1:37 The scripts Nina grew up with
4:43 Did Nina see herself as creative growing up?
5:39 Nina's education and why she hated her dream job at NASA
12:17 Fitting your life into your job vs fitting your job into your life
14:39 Nina's approach to money, building a marriage that supports entrepreneurship
19:55 Writing books
27:39 Giving herself a permission
33:17 Making choices that are not "the right choice"
38:37 The non-traditional paths and having kids
46:08 Reinventing yourself, knowing when to leave
52:42 Constructing backward narratives about our lives
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