Alumni Spotlight: Marin Richardson

Alumni Spotlight: Marin Richardson

From the Ice to the Anchor Desk: How Speed Skating Built One of PR's Most Recognized Founders

Some athletes leave the sport and leave it behind. Marin Richardson is not one of those athletes. The former US Short Track Speed Skating national team member, who made the team at just 15 years old, trained alongside Apolo Ohno at the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center, and traveled to Torino ahead of the 2006 Winter Games, went on to become a CBS News national correspondent, an NBC 4 Los Angeles investigative reporter, and the founder of one of the most recognized boutique PR agencies in the country. In 2025, her agency Disrupt PR was named Best Boutique PR Agency in the United States by Bulldog Reporter. We caught up with Marin to find out how the ice made her who she is today.

Speed skating found you in an unusual way. Can you take us back to the beginning?

I was seven years old and a figure skater in Chicago when a boy named Matt looked at me and said, "I'm faster than you. Come to speed skating practice tonight and I'll beat you."

There was absolutely no way I was going to let that happen.

I showed up that night at 7pm. I beat him. I never saw Matt again — but speed skating had me for the next decade. That's the origin story. A seven-year-old who refused to lose a race she hadn't even signed up for yet.

You went from a local rink to the US national team at 15. How did that progression happen so fast?

Honestly, I think it came down to one thing: I was never willing to be outworked. From the moment I stepped on short track ice I was completely consumed by it. The technique, the strategy, the speed. I trained obsessively. I competed constantly. And I got faster.

Making the national team at 15 and moving to the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, as the youngest member at the time, told me something I've carried ever since. That if you outwork everyone in the room, the results follow. It sounds simple. It isn't. But it works.

What was daily life like at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs?

Intense, exhilarating, and unlike anything I could have prepared for. When you're living and training full time at the OTC, every element of your performance is being optimized simultaneously. I was working with US Olympic team nutritionists, lifting weights with Olympic team trainers, and skating for hours every day. The altitude alone changes everything; your lungs, your recovery, your threshold.

Off the ice we trained just as hard. We'd hike the Manitou Incline on weekends, 2,768 steps straight up a mountain, and mountain bike through the Rockies to build endurance. There was no separation between athlete and training. It was a total commitment, twenty four hours a day.

You were training alongside some of the biggest names in the sport. What was that like?

It was humbling and motivating in equal measure. Apolo Ohno, who went on to become one of the most decorated Winter Olympians in US history, was there at the same time. He'd drive me to practice. We'd do the Manitou Incline together on weekends. When you train alongside someone at that level every day, it recalibrates what you think is possible. You stop thinking about limits because nobody around you believes in them.

I was the sixth fastest female short track skater in the United States at my peak. That's not a credential I take lightly. That was earned on that ice, in that altitude, alongside those people.

There's a story about leaving school two days into your sophomore year. What actually happened?

When you're living and training at the Olympic Training Center full time, you're enrolled in the local Colorado high school, that's just how it works when you're based there as an athlete. I was exactly two days into my sophomore year when our coach gathered the top six men and top six women and announced we were heading to Torino, Italy to test the ice and the altitude ahead of the 2006 Winter Olympics.

So, I walked into my Colorado high school classroom on day two of the school year and informed my teacher I was leaving for two weeks in Torino, Italy.

She looked at me and said, "Okay. Goodbye."

I switched to online school and got on a plane to Torino with the top twelve short track skaters in the country. Most of my classmates were still figuring out their locker combinations. I was in Italy training on Olympic ice. That about sums up what life looked like during those years.

Short track is unlike most sports, you have teammates but you race alone. What did that teach you?

Everything. Short track is the fastest self-propelled sport in the world, and you're on that ice with your teammates, but when the race starts, no one can skate it for you. You have to show up with your absolute best every single time. The margins are too thin for anything less.

That taught me mental toughness in a way nothing else could have. You learn to quiet the noise. You learn to compete against yourself first. You learn that preparation is the only thing you can control, because when the gun goes off, preparation is all you have.

I also learned strategy at a very deep level. In the 1000 meter you don't make your move too early. You sit in second place, conserve your energy, read the race and then at two to three laps to go you push to the outside. Timing. Positioning. Patience. Execution. I didn't know it then, but I was learning the fundamentals of how to run a business.

At some point a new chapter called. How did you know it was time?

The ice gave me everything it had to give, and I like to think I gave it everything I had in return. What I carried with me was the certainty that whatever came next, I'd approach it exactly the same way; with the same discipline, the same drive, and the same refusal to be outworked.

A new chapter was waiting. And I was ready for it.

You went from the OTC to USC to Columbia to national television. How did your athletic background show up in your journalism career?

Every single day. I enrolled at the University of Southern California — one of the top journalism programs in the country — and later earned my master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Every late night in the library felt like the Manitou Incline. One step at a time.

I got my first on-air position and worked my way to NBC 4 Los Angeles, on air in the second largest television market in the United States. I joined the investigative I-Team and won the Golden Mic Award for a government investigation.The same principles that got me to the national team got me to that desk. Show up. Outwork everyone. Don't cut corners.

Then came CBS News, a national correspondent position at the CBS Newspath Los Angeles bureau. I reported on some of the biggest stories in the country — the COVID-19 pandemic, school safety, and I was on the ground at the Staples Center the night Kobe Bryant died, reporting live for CBS Morning News. Kobe, of all people. An athlete who embodied everything the training center taught me: relentless preparation, mental toughness, and the absolute refusal to accept anything less than your best.

It wasn't lost on me.

In 2021 you founded Disrupt PR. How does a speed skater build a PR agency?

The same way she built everything else: by outworking the competition and never making a move without a strategy behind it.

Disrupt PR is an Austin, Texas-based public relations agency specializing in earned media, crisis communications, and thought leadership for clients in health tech, emerging technology, fintech, SaaS, consumer brands and more. We are built by former journalists: people who used to be on the other side of the pitch, deciding what was a story and what wasn't. That insider knowledge is our edge.

But the speed skating shows up every day. We don't make our move too early. We read the landscape, position our clients carefully, build momentum and then at exactly the right moment, we push. Hard. Our campaigns have generated so much media coverage that we have literally crashed client websites from the traffic.

That's the Manitou Incline showing up in a press pitch. That's years of three-hour skating sessions showing up in a media strategy. You don't build that kind of work ethic. You train it.

Connect with Marin on LinkedIn.

Back-to-back national awards in four years: Best New Agency 2023, Best Boutique Agency 2025. What does that mean to you?

It means the work is real. In an industry full of agencies making promises, recognition like this from Bulldog Reporter, one of the most respected trade publications in PR, is a signal to clients that what we do delivers. You can see the full list of 2025 Bulldog PR Award winners here.

Back-to-back national awards in four years for a boutique agency built in Austin, Texas is something I don't take lightly. But honestly? It means more to me as a reflection of my team than as a credential. Every person at Disrupt PR brings their A-game every single day. That's not something you mandate. That's something you model, and it's something I learned on the ice a long time ago.

What would you say to a young speed skater reading this today?

It's 2026 and we live in an era that celebrates slowing down and there's real wisdom in that. Life is not a race. But what speed skating gave me wasn't speed. It was structure. It was the understanding that every decision you make positions you for the next one. That strategy compounds. That the mental toughness you build on the ice doesn't stay on the ice, it travels with you everywhere you go.

And maybe most importantly, sometimes the best things in your life start because a boy named Matt said he was faster than you.

Whatever your next chapter is, the sport already gave you the tools. You just have to recognize them.

The ice formed my heart. My desire. My brain. I wouldn't trade a single lap.

Marin Richardson is the founder and CEO of Disrupt PR, named Best Boutique PR Agency in the United States by Bulldog Reporter in 2025. She is a former CBS News national correspondent and NBC 4 Los Angeles investigative reporter. She competed as a member of the US Short Track Speed Skating national team and trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Connect with Marin on LinkedIn.