BS: That new graduate life is not always the easiest.



RGO: I'll share something I haven't shared before: that first year out of school was actually the worst year of my life. I left the comfort of having a basketball team caring [for me], and my long-term relationship ended — suddenly [I was] trying to figure out who I was alone. I didn't necessarily know which way I wanted to go with my career: should I play ball, should I do broadcasting, should I get a corporate job? At home, my mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and dementia; she had lost her job, and we lost our apartment. My sister was going through her own problems and had to find her own path, [and] my dad had just moved to Nigeria, so he was across the world setting up his life there. It was a really hard time in my life, and it all happened at the same time. But I think what happened was a blessing in some ways. It made me tough in a way I never had to be tough.



I didn't have any other options if things didn't get figured out in my professional life. There was a lot of anxiety, ambiguity, and uncertainty. So I took the Tesla job and chased other odd jobs in broadcasting: I was writing for the Stanford football recruiting website, teaching a public speaking course, and coaching my landlord's daughter's basketball team so that I could get half off the rent! Eventually, I was able to piece enough odd jobs together that I was almost able to call it a very low salary. I left Tesla and chased this broadcasting dream full-time. It was very humbling, sometimes embarrassing. I felt I was being selfish by pursuing my dream, especially given how much pressure there was at home. I definitely thought about giving up broadcasting.

I think a real crossroads in my career was The Pink Room, which was a digital show I created with a friend — we called it that because we filmed it out of my bedroom. We covered women's basketball, and we did a couple episodes and then pitched it to the Pac-12 Conference, which I played in while at Stanford. They said, "This is cool. Can you do this for the conference for all 12 teams? We can't pay you this year, but it can help you get your foot in the door." So we did it: we pulled all-nighters, drove two hours to get there and come back and put this thing together, and we did it each week for 12 teams.



The next year, Pac-12 Networks started, and I got a contract from them. That was the first time I could definitively say, "I have a salary, and I'm a full-time broadcaster." From there, I was able to continue to build into not only women's college, but men's college too — then WNBA, then NBA Development League, and then, finally, into the NBA with the Warriors.