- ex-vicarious
- Posts
- 15 | Niamh Sullivan: Saving Lives with Storytelling
15 | Niamh Sullivan: Saving Lives with Storytelling
Whether it be with a pen or a microphone, Niamh Sullivan has always loved telling stories.
Today, I have the privilege of telling hers.
It’s not everyday that a Channel 7 reporter becomes a creative studio founder.
Even rarer when the Make-A-Wish Foundation is part of the reason she thrives among us today.
To understand how storytelling has given her life, helped her save others, and let her guide people across continents to find their voice….
We’ll have to start from the very beginning.
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
Now, Niamh was always a “very chatty kid”, who would speak to “anyone around… and tell them all kinds of little stories”.
This included doctors, nurses, charity organisers and anyone else passing through the home she spent many childhood years in – Sydney Children’s Hospital.
Being around these heroes everyday inspired Niamh’s first dream. To become an international doctor without borders – so she could help other kids like her across the world.
Most children fight with their siblings.
Niamh… well she was fighting cancer.
Through all the weary days filled with scans and therapies, one powerful sentence passed on by her father always helped her make it through.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted”.
Everyday, Niamh would find and appreciate those “little moments of joy”, even amongst all the pain and confusion of her non-hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis.
One of those moments blossomed when she was visited by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. They granted her every kid’s dream – a family trip to Disneyland.
After years of restless nights since her diagnosis, Niamh said,
“I felt like a normal kid again… it was the glue my family needed to reconnect with each other, and put ourselves back together.”
Through the difficult days, many other foundations were also supporting Niamh and her family, including the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation, Starlight Foundation and Australian Red Cross to name a few. So Niamh made a promise to herself that she would always help others in her position when she could.
When she turned just twelve, the opportunity arose.
One of the charities that supported her needed a speaker for a fundraising event, and Niamh knew she could finally tell her stories – now on the big stage.
She agreed on the spot.
Upon the day of her important speech, she felt a flutter of nerves in her stomach as she approached the podium, swarmed by hundreds attentive eyes and encouraging smiles.
But “a sense of naivety” combined with the excitement of skipping a day of school channelled the nerves into excitement. As she scanned all the neatly tucked collars and sleek, floor-length gowns ahead, her heart warmed with confidence.
Heart was all she needed to win over the crowd.
Oh, and not just subtly.
Two hours later, Niamh had helped raise $300, 000 dollars in donations.
She lowered the mic from her mouth as applause rippled across the room. Teardrops trickled from the eyes of mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters – sniffling from their pink-tipped noses. By telling her own story, she had touched the hearts of hundreds, many of which would go on to become long-term members of the charity.
This was the moment that Niamh fell in love with telling stories.
More than a passion, it’s a career.
Though Niamh knew she loved storytelling, she had finished high school with her sights set on joining the United Nations.
After the first semester of her International Relations degree, she was suddenly not so sure.
During the same time, she found another opportunity to give back to kids in hospital. Only this time, it was much more hands on, and…all the way in Vietnam!
Red Kite, another foundation that supported her as a kid, was offering to sponsor her trip and connect her with speech therapists, physiotherapists and other health practitioners going over. They would be helping in orphanages and schools for children with special needs. Niamh’s role was to bridge the Australian practitioners with the families and carers of the children.
In her spare time, she also taught English in neighbouring schools.
“The biggest thing I learned is that telling a story, even if it’s a story about yourself, isn’t for yourself. It’s for the people that you’re talking to.”
On her way back, things started to click. She told herself, “storytelling could be my career”.
Intern so much they have to hire you.
This day of university was unlike any prior. Niamh had swiftly switched to a Communications and Journalism degree now, and today, the classroom shone with the pearly white smiles of guest television presenters and reporters.
Niamh was lucky enough to interview one of the stars of 7 News Sunrise – Edwina Bartholomew. As she listened intently to Edwina’s touching descriptions on everything that led to her becoming the face of morning television, Niamh’s heart began to beat a little faster.
“Instantly I knew, that’s what I wanted to do.”
From that day, Niamh decided to get in front of Channel 7 power brokers as much as she could.
First she helped host their “Corporate Hospitality Program for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games”. Next, a four-week journalism internship.
I asked Niamh how she managed to achieve these opportunities so quickly, to which she explained,
“The biggest thing for me was forgetting the embarrassment. Being eighteen, nineteen, I felt so out of place in these newsrooms with these people that I was watching on TV every night. I just had to put aside those nerves and make conversation with them, ask them questions, and take notes about what they were doing.”
Through stints with the Model United National in Japan, producing the “Happiness Project” with News Corp, and interviewing HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Niamh kept applying for every internship that arose at Network Seven.
One of those even involved being the Sunrise Cash Cow!
She recounted,
“I just interned consistently to the point where my uni no longer supported the internships and I had to pay for my own insurance to continue. I just hung around so long that when the first job came up I was there… I was top of mind.”
From there, university became part-time, and covering stories on television became her day-to-day.
She was living the dream, telling the biggest stories to hundreds of thousands at the same time. Somehow, she still felt something missing.
“There were some brilliant stories that I knew had such an impact, but there were a lot of stories, things like car accidents or fatalities or cold cases that I became very emotionally invested in and found it hard to separate myself from what was happening around me.”
Looking to weave words that brought excitement to her fingers, Niamh found herself in the world of freelance writing.
Write for yourself, and others will beg you to write for them.
As a “storyteller powered by sun rays, salt water and lots of peanut butter”, it’s no surprise that Niamh began writing pieces aligning with her own passions, like how Bali’s “beachside town” is perfect for surfers.
Though she was freelance writing just on the side, it wasn’t long before her work was noticed. All the way from New York, in fact.
A representative from Facebook reached out for an interview, and Niamh was soon onboarded as a freelance Facebook writer.
“At Facebook, I wrote everything from scripts and blogs to interview transcriptions and social posts.”
When a new door opens, several others appear. So shortly thereafter, Niamh was freelancing for the biggest players in technology, from Google, to Youtube to Amazon.
Now, anyone who’s spoken to Niamh will know how scarily eloquent and concise she is.
Her experience writing for tech giants explains why:
“It gave me insight into the importance of breaking down complex information into simple and engaging pieces of content.”
Throughout time, everything that exists, and everything that will exist, ultimately falls under the umbrella of ‘technology’. Accordingly, the door of tech startups soon opened for Niamh.
In this face-paced, hope-fueled world, she met hundreds of founders with great ideas, but inadequate communication. Niamh explained how she knew then and there that,
“I wanted to help those at the start of their journey adopt the same principles [as Facebook, Google, Amazon etc.]. Many founders are unable to succinctly and clearly articulate their company’s story, yet it’s such an important component of launching a brand or raising capital. The biggest hurdle for me was learning how to build my own network – I’d never worked for an agency, had no connections in the industry and didn’t really understand how it worked.”
But just as she had done in the news industry, Niamh again formed crucial and meaningful connections.
A few months later, INFIX was born. A creative studio “for tech startups, creative innovators, industry giants and everyone in between”.
As Founder and CEO, Niamh would now be able to tell the stories that she truly wanted, and help early-stage founders make a transformational impact all over the world.
It was…
A dream made real.
Niamh noticed that whilst her dreams morphed from realms of health, journalism and technology, one element remained consistent.
Her love of storytelling.
In Vietnam, it wasn’t working alongside health practitioners that warmed her soul. It was carefully weaving her words to form a web of cultural understanding for the children, families and carers. A web that they could all safely cling to, which spun hope for a better future.
Niamh never had her sights set on the founder path as she saw how little flexibility it gave her parents with their time. But she was beginning to realise that having flexibility in her impact was more important.
So, although most of her hours are now invested in running INFIX, Niamh isn’t too worried about work-life balance.
She’s achieved something better – work-life harmony.
“I love seeing everybody grow. The work that we do allows our clients to grow and allows our team to grow as well. So for me, seeing that and knowing that I helped create that opportunity is most certainly the most fulfilling part of what I do.”
What dreams does the future hold?
As a lifelong storyteller, it’s only normal that Niamh dreams of writing her own fiction book too.
When I asked if she was waiting for the right idea, she replied:
“I have way too many ideas. I have a Google doc that is just dot points, sentences, topics, books, all kinds of things. I have absolutely no idea what direction it would take me in, but there’s lots of ideas.”
Until that day comes, Niamh will continue working her magic at INFIX, keynote speaking for Make-A-Wish Australia, and discovering new beaches across the world.
Though this story has come to an end, Niamh’s future chapters continue to be written by her. If you want to follow along, connect with her below!