Aspiring Women Who Inspire: Nathalie Basha

We’re so excited to introduce you to this week’s Aspiring Women Who Inspire, Nathalie Basha. Nathalie is a senior journalist and producer from Los Angeles, expertly tapping into the evolving world of digital multi-media. A worldwide traveler and inspiring storyteller, she produces, films, writes, edits, and reports her content. Please welcome Nathalie!

Introduce yourself.

Hi, I’m Nathalie, I’m a 35 year old multimedia journalist and producer in Los Angeles. My beat for the last four years has been travel and lifestyle, but I’m also transitioning into food journalism.

How did you get into your industry? Was this always where you saw yourself?

Yeah I always knew I would be in this field, and that’s how I ended up in journalism school at University of Colorado at Boulder. But there are so many aspects of journalism that you could land in, so I wasn’t always 100% where I’d end up. I started in Entertainment news, switched to local news, switched again to digital….and I’m still not sure! My career is always evolving.

From your experience, what are the three key factors or strategies for starting and establishing yourself as a brand?

Pick a niche and be specific in it (don’t just be a fashion blogger – fast fashion, budget fashion, sustainable fashion, etc).

Be consistent in your posts, information, how often you share.

Fake it till you make it! It may seem silly to say that you have to talk to yourself and regard yourself as already what you want to be, but your own internal dialogue is HUGE.

What’s an accomplishment you consider to be the most significant in your career so far?

It was a big deal for me when I made the jump from being a local news reporter to a travel journalist, and then again when I did my first international reporting trip less than a year later after landing the job. I had never done one before, but I KNEW i could do it. I was itching to prove it not only to my employers but to myself. It was insanely satisfying when I did. From then on my confidence in my own abilities grew.

What’s a failure that turned into a blessing?

I took a job as a morning reporter at a prestigious TV station in San Diego, but it was a morning shift which meant I had to wake up at 2 AM every day, and go to sleep at 5-6 PM. It was horrible, and I ended up breaking my 3-year contract and walking out. They were NOT happy with me, but I was too miserable to try anymore. At the time I felt like the biggest failure, and I lost all my confidence and didn’t work as a journalist for three years after that. But it was from that failure that I started building the path that brought me to today.

Morning routine?

Constantly changing 🙂 Depends what’s happening in my life. During quarantine, I’m very regimented: Wake up at 7:30, work out, eat breakfast, log in to work and have an endless series of conference calls with my team. After work I edit my Youtube passion project, or bake, or just veg out and watch TV. Sometimes I reverse the day and workout at night. Weekends are less structured – I LOVE to sleep in. But weekends are also my only time that I can work on my passion projects, so I’m never not doing something.

Who’s an aspiring woman who inspires you?

Well she’s not aspiring, she’s the pinnacle, but I LOVE Lisa Ling. She’s a journalist who has always inspired me from day one. There’s a really really interesting travel vlogger called Eva Zu Beck who is such a trailblazer. She solo travels to places like Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, and she does such a phenomenal job at documenting but not preaching. She’s fearless and respectful of other cultures – to me she’s the standard of how travel vloggers should conduct themselves.

What’s one piece of career advice you’d give a young person looking to follow in your footsteps?

You have to create your own path. Don’t look at people like me and feel like you have to mimic everything I’ve done, because there is no one right or wrong way to arrive at any career, with some exceptions. Multimedia Journalism is such a unique space that you really have to do your own research, be a self starter, take initiative, figure stuff out on your own, and take whatever positions come to you without losing sight of the greater goal. Each job is a stepping stone, it’s your responsibility to make each stone matter.