Nearly There episode 1 – My birthday gift to the world

00;00;00;27 – 00;00;30;16

Samantha

Welcome to nearly there. I’m Samantha Black, and I am your humble host on this journey. Thank you for joining me today. Whether you come for one episode or you’re here for the journey, I just want you to know that I’m starting this process and this project with just a full heart and just so much gratitude for everybody who has helped me get to where I am today and to a place where I can finally make this reality.

00;00;30;26 – 00;00;55;25

Samantha

I have been talking about this for so long, as many content creators can imagine. This has been a dream for me, and so I’m happy to be making it a reality. It’s really quite amazing. I think it’s very poignant because one of my best friends in talking about this with her,

00;00;55;25 – 00;01;17;07

Samantha

She’s like, just talk about something that you’re passionate about. Because I was like, “I don’t know what to talk about. I’m all over the place. I could do this or I could do that, I could blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” I was a mess. And she kind of cut through all that bullshit. And she was like, just talk about something that you’re passionate about. That will come through as authentic.

00;01;17;07 – 00;01;44;08

Samantha

And that’s what people want to listen to. And so she really made me think and come back and circle around and say, you know what? What is it that I am passionate enough about to have something to say, first of all, and something that I can talk to people about over time and still keep up the energy and and really grow this into something.

00;01;45;04 – 00;02;11;03

Samantha

So, you know, I just kind of looked inside myself and said “who am I and what am I doing? What do I know? What am I good at? What can I share?” And I landed on this topic of female empowerment. You know, something that I am really, really about encouraging people and uplifting people.

00;02;11;13 – 00;02;36;22

Samantha

And I think that’s kind of a big nebulous term. But I think it is really a powerful one. It seems really crazy and big and ambitious. But I think if we break it down – let me let me be targeted in a little bit for you. So how I think about this – and if you’re listening to this today, if you can relate to any of us on some level, please stay around –

00;02;36;23 – 00;03;10;05

Samantha

I think that we’re going to dig into a lot of different things here. And hopefully you can get some nuggets of information or some nuggets of truth or knowledge that you need. And, you know, that’s my whole goal here is just to arm the women out there with information and knowledge. And that knowledge hopefully, is coming from other women’s heads and their experiences and they can pass that on to other people.

00;03;10;05 – 00;03;38;05

Samantha

And together we can have these conversations and really help other women out there. That’s the bottom line. So women are really complex. You know, we’re not simple beings. We are complicated. That can be really misleading. But I think the way that I am approaching this podcast and what we talk about here really comes down to two things. For all my millennial girls out there,

00;03;38;10 – 00;04;09;28

Samantha

wwe are in work mode right now. We’re supporting ourselves. We’re supporting our family. We’re really trying to create the lives that we want to live. And I think that kind of can be a big, audacious goal. But I think if you narrow it down and cut through everything right there, there’s work, whatever that looks like for you, and there’s not work. If you think about it that way, kind of cut through all the B.S. and edit It can really be that simple.

00;04;10;06 – 00;04;31;06

Samantha

But I just want to take a second to introduce myself and let you know a little bit about me. And this is such a weird concept because I, in my day job, I’m the one who interviews other people, so I’m always the one asking the questions. I never have to answer the questions and I like it that way.

00;04;31;17 – 00;04;57;03

Samantha

And so I thought I would just take a minute here to be a little bit vulnerable with you guys and share a little bit about my background and who I am. And then, you know, hopefully over time as I talk to different people and we have different guests, you can get to know me better and a little bit more of the nuance, but I thought I’d just give you like a high level who I am and what I’m doing here and why I’m qualified to be doing this.

00;04;57;03 – 00;05;29;18

Samantha

And so I am 32 years old. It’s my birthday today on the launch of this podcast. Happy birthday to me. I grew up outside of Annapolis, Maryland, and I went to college at State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I actually got my PhD there in nutrition. So I studied biology mostly, and I did all of the human classes that a nutritionist or a PhD researcher would take.

00;05;29;18 – 00;05;56;16

Samantha

But my research was actually on chickens and turkeys. And so my degree’s also in poultry science, which is an agriculture degree. And so I’m sure there’s lots of questions about that. Don’t worry, I wanted to be a vet. It’s fine. Didn’t happen. I’m glad for it. And I’m sure we’ll get into that topic later. But bottom line is, got the PhD. We probably are going to talk a lot about academics here.

00;05;56;26 – 00;06;19;23

Samantha

It’s very important to me. I think I know a lot of women who are also academics, and so I’m happy to dive into that more. But the bottom line for me is that I decided when I was in grad school that of course I did not want to stay at university, I did not want to become a professor, do research, go after grants.

00;06;19;23 – 00;06;47;17

Samantha

That was not my jam. But at the same time, in my career, it was university or it was industry. And so somehow I’m crazy enough that I was like, I don’t want to go into industry either. And so, as you can imagine, this is a female podcast. And so being in the agriculture field, there’s a certain amount of things that you have to deal with there.

00;06;47;17 – 00;07;10;14

Samantha

And I just decided pretty much right after I started. So I got my Masters and my PhD and pretty much like year one of my PhD, I was like, I don’t think industries for me took me a while to build up the courage to, like, say that to my advisor and actually, I think admitted to myself. But like pretty early on I was like, Something’s wrong here,

00;07;10;14 – 00;07;39;10

Samantha

I don’t want to do this. So while I’m super grateful for my experiences and I am glad that I did this and achieved this for myself, I just decided that the traditional path was not for me, which hashtag story of my life. So anyway, after school I was kind of struggling with what to do, but I ended up moving back up closer to my parents.

00;07;39;10 – 00;08;11;06

Samantha

So now I live in Virginia, so about an hour away from my parents, which is good and bad. I am in the land of DC and so I did a short stint at a nonprofit, which actually was a fantastic experience and I’m so grateful for that, that time in my life. And it actually really solidified a lot of the core principles and values that I bring into each and every one of my new experiences, especially professionally.

00;08;12;03 – 00;08;38;03

Samantha

So being mission driven and, always thinking about how and who we’re impacting and how we’re doing it and the way we go about things, those are things that I think about on the daily. And I’m so grateful for having that framing experience to kind of make sure that I’m still focused on those things no matter what I’m doing or what direction I’m going.

00;08;38;25 – 00;09;03;22

Samantha

So it was a fantastic experience. But, you know, all good things must end and it was time for me to get a big girl job, as I like to say. I loved the nonprofit, but it was not sustainable for building the life that I want to build, which is why we’re here on this podcast. And so I actually got my next job, which was a program manager, but it quickly evolved.

00;09;04;00 – 00;09;34;24

Samantha

There was an opportunity, I’ll say, to become a journalist, which is hilarious to me, because in grad school, in school I hated writing. It was awful to me. Shocking to everybody, I decided that I was going to go for this opportunity and I actually became editor in chief of a small life sciences online news site. And even more than that, what’s even more crazy, is that I did this all during a global pandemic.

00;09;35;06 – 00;10;04;07

Samantha

And so you can imagine working on life sciences during COVID-19. Wow. It was just an incredible experience. It was probably one of the most stressful times of my whole entire life, but incredible. So I learned so much. I value that experience so highly. It was like drinking from a fire, honestly. And I learned so much.

00;10;04;07 – 00;10;38;25

Samantha

I got to talk to so many incredible human beings and I probably got to learn the most advanced and best science –  the fastest science that I’ll ever see in my lifetime. And so it was just a wonderful experience, difficult, challenging, frustrating, but also a wonderful experience that I would not trade for anything. And I actually rely on that experience in my daily jobs now.

00;10;38;25 – 00;11;04;17

Samantha

And so I’m so grateful for that. But also, again, talk about burnout. That was me at the end of COVID. I said, okay, enough is enough. I’m done working 80 hours a week nonstop under these stressful deadlines. I applaud all journalists – their job is so needed. But it takes a personal toll on them.

00;11;04;17 – 00;11;29;02

Samantha

And so hats off to them, a huge, huge job and more power to them because it’s just a very taxing job. So anyway, for me, I decided I needed a change of pace. I needed some work life balance. And so that actually took me to my current job today, which is head of content for a tech startup company.

00;11;29;19 – 00;12;03;00

Samantha

So tech startup, yeah, that’s not life sciences, but our company’s tech actually serves the life sciences industry. And so it’s still kind of related. But this was a big jump for me and I think it was the first time where I have had the opportunity to have a seat at the table and to interact at the executive level and to address a whole set of situations and challenges that I haven’t had before and really push myself professionally.

00;12;03;00 – 00;12;27;02

Samantha

And so it’s awesome. I get to create the content still. I host a podcast for my day job too, and it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a big, big job. And it comes with a lot of, you know, people, the people side of it. So it’s come into it. You stop doing less execution, you start doing more strategy, you start dealing with more people.

00;12;27;02 – 00;12;49;09

Samantha

And so I think there’s a lot of things that we can talk about and I hope to leverage my experiences and share them so that other people can learn from them. So, you know, ultimately I’m doing that right now. You know, what the future may hold? Who knows? But yeah, I think this is good for me right now.

00;12;49;09 – 00;13;11;26

Samantha

And like I like to say here, we’re nearly there. So what that means in the early days is a good question. But I think having these conversations, hopefully, you know, one of my personal goals is that this is going to help me figure out what my next move is. So anyway, that’s a little bit about me. That’s the business side of me.

00;13;11;26 – 00;13;45;18

Samantha

The other side of me is what you’ll come to, to learn in each episode. So we have to leave some mystery here. But hopefully over time you get to know me better. And as we have these conversations, some of that will start to come out. But my personal goal here is to bring women in and have these amazing conversations with them and be their guide and be your guide in helping them say what they need to say so that you can connect and relate with them.

00;13;45;27 – 00;14;11;16

Samantha

You know, the first part will be talking to really successful, incredible, talented women and they can share their struggles and they can share their experiences so that we and I mean me and you can learn from them and their experiences and we can talk through things that we might not get to talk about with anybody else. Right. They might not understand it.

00;14;11;25 – 00;14;38;15

Samantha

It’s a safe place here. There’s no bosses here. We’re all friends, you know, we’re all confidantes. And so I hope that we can all have honest conversations and really learn and appreciate and share together what our experiences are so that we can help others. And so that’s really the first part. And then the second part is, is that part about the other, right?

00;14;38;16 – 00;15;17;03

Samantha

It’s work and not work. So what’s the what’s the not work part? I’m most excited about this because I love connecting with people. And I think you can connect with somebody over anything. And you know, that could be a shared interest, a hobby, some person in common, or also something that you don’t like. I’m just really excited to highlight the fact that these awesome, incredible women are also just like people like the rest of us and they’re relatable and you can connect with them and really on a human level, get to know them.

00;15;17;03 – 00;15;58;22

Samantha

And so that’s really the second part. We’ll be talking about weird stuff. We’ll be talking about trends that we like. What’s new stuff, old stuff, Anything in between? Anything is fair game for the second half of each episode, so tune in for that. It’s going to be a wild ride. I’m sure that that’s really the goal is just to, you know, really learn, but also connect with these incredible women and, you know, show that it’s okay for for you to be both of those things and to take your true, authentic self wherever you go and to really use that to uplift yourself and uplift others.

00;15;59;03 – 00;16;20;07

Samantha

It’s really that simple. No, it sounds very simple, but I appreciate that it also is not that simple. And so I know that we’re all on these journeys. We’re all in different places. We’re all up the mountains, we’re down the mountains. We could be up and down the mountain 12 times a day. We could be up the mountains for months, down the mountains for months.

00;16;20;18 – 00;16;45;17

Samantha

It doesn’t matter where we are. It’s just all a journey. I think that what joined us all together is that we are on these paths and we’re all working towards something. We’re all nearly there, if you will. And so I think what I hope to achieve with each episode is to get us one step closer to where we’re going and one step closer to nearly there.

00;16;46;22 – 00;17;01;20

Samantha

So I’m going to leave you with that. Thank you for tuning in. I really appreciate your time and I’m looking forward to this project and see where it can go. So thank you and we’ll see you in the next episode.