Bio

Nancy Colasurdo is a journalist, blogger and practicing life coach who facilitates goal-setting and creativity workshops. She writes  a twice-weekly column called Game Plan (originally for FOXBusiness.com from 2007 to February 2013) published here and has written for CNBC.com and Beliefnet.com as well as Ladies Home Journal and Parents. She is working on a memoir about the spiritual journey that changed her life.

Nancy has 25-plus years of experience in three forms of media – print, web and television. Through Game Plan, she has had the pleasure of combining her writer and coach voices while also having the opportunity to delve into what entrepreneurs and creatives (i.e., Stacy London, Julia Cameron, Barbara Ehrenreich) have to teach us via their own lives. It is her greatest joy to live out loud, sharing and dissecting cultural experiences, epiphanies and everyday triumphs and hardships via this liberating forum. She is spurred on by reader responses like this one: Your column changed my life today.

Her journey in the communications field began at The Trenton Times, where she was a sports writer/columnist for 10 years. While there she was awarded a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan and earned recognition as the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association Reporter of the Year for her positive coverage of high school athletes and issues. She also earned national recognition from the Women’s Sports Foundation for her balanced series on the prevalence of knee injuries in female athletes.

Nancy spent the ensuing three years working as a web producer for FOX Sports and the National Hockey League and as a television producer at Oxygen Media. At the latter, she enjoyed the opportunity to focus on the inspiring accomplishments of female athletes through cutting edge programming.

Her path in coaching began when, after the traumatic events of September 11, 2001, her long-dormant altruistic side led her to a volunteer stint as a coach to a 9-year-old child. Not only did she find the experience intensely satisfying, but she realized she had stumbled on to a profession that would utilize her natural ability to encourage and motivate people. So she enrolled in an intensive training program through Results Coaching Systems — a program affiliated with New York University and the International Coaching Federation — and subsequently earned distinction as a certified coach.

Just weeks prior to September 11, 2001, Nancy spent a week at The Artist’s Way Creativity Camp in Taos, New Mexico. There she gained artistic inspiration and was motivated to begin facilitating groups using The Artist’s Way, a book designed to unblock and enhance creativity. In 2003, she completed a 12-week Artist’s Way workshop in New York City with the book’s author, Julia Cameron, and poet James Nave. Cameron remarked during an interview for Nancy’s Game Plan column, “It’s good that you’re doing the [coaching] work you’re doing. I bet you’re a demon at it.”

As the bulk of her career has been spent in the area of athletics, Nancy has had an intimate view of what motivates and inspires people to succeed. She listens intently without judgment and has sound, creative ideas for growth and problem solving. She gets immense satisfaction from seeing people achieve their goals in a coaching partnership and finds that giving them the tools to focus on their gifts is some of the most rewarding work she has ever done.

Nancy is a member of Conversation Among Masters, the Association of Transformational Leaders (Northeast Region) and mediabistro.com’s AvantGuild. In addition to coaching and writing since 2002, she has devoted time to: doing pro bono life coaching through her local homeless shelter, coordinating cultural programs for senior citizens at a vibrant senior center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side; membership in Business Networking International; forming a writers’ group; and serving on the Advisory Board for The Symposia Project, an organization whose mission is to foster personal and community growth.

She resides in Hoboken, New Jersey.