Amy K. Nelson (born July 16, 1978) is the founder and CEO of Beautiful Bipolar, an event production company based in New Orleans, LA, that destigmatizes mental illness and focuses on mental health, healing and wellness.

A former senior correspondent at SB Nation, Nelson is most known as a writer/reporter for ESPN.com's Enterprise Unit. She also served as a moderator for ESPN's First Take program, and has appeared on SportsCenter, ESPNews, Baseball Tonight and Outside the Lines.

She is also a former American freelance multimedia journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Slate, Deadspin, Out Magazine, The Hairpin and Animal New York, among others.


Early life

Nelson was born on the North Shore of Massachusetts and is a graduate of Hampshire College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in photojournalism, sociology, and psychology.[1][2]

Professional career

After graduating in 2000, Nelson began working for SportsTicker, a now defunct sports news service, that was the official statistician of Minor League Baseball. Nelson began her career as a writer, writing for the news service's editorial branch. Nelson also freelanced for SportsTicker in the Boston area, where she was based. This entailed calling in with score or stat updates to the main office in New Jersey, getting quotes from athletes and writing stories.[3]

In 2004, Nelson left SportsTicker and worked for the Associated Press before joining ESPN.[3][4]

ESPN

Nelson wrote for ESPN for seven years from 2004 to October 17, 2011.[5] She began at ESPN: The Magazine in late 2004 and transitioned to ESPN.com in 2005. Covering baseball, Nelson worked her way from feature writing to include frequent TV appearances on ESPN shows such as Jim Rome Is Burning and First Take.[6]

Some of her more notable pieces were featured on Outside the Lines, including a profile on Logan Morrison[7] and another on Jim Joyce and Armando Galarraga's near perfect game.[8]

On September 19, 2009, ESPN announced the launch of ESPNBoston.com. Nelson was hired as a regular contributor and Red Sox beat reporter for the new site.[9]

SB Nation

Nelson joined SB Nation on November 3, 2011, as their senior correspondent [10] and to work on their new video channel hosted at YouTube.[11]

As part of the channel launch, Nelson produced and hosted her own show, Full Nelson. The short-documentary based program covers a wide range of topics, from a Brooklyn arm-wrestling championship to a story on minor-league-baseball part-owner Bill Murray.[12][13]

Nelson's most recent piece was an oral history on the Costacos Brothers and their sports poster empire.[14] In an interview, Nelson said that it took her over nine months to research, interview and write the story.[6]

Freelance

Nelson's freelance work has included pieces that have received wide pickup, including her story for The Hairpin, about women in the sports media and their systematic disadvantage.[15] It was shared widely and Sports Illustrated media critic Richard Deitsch used it as a platform for a larger roundtable discussion on women in sports media.[16]

Other recent pieces include her quest to find Jeff Gillooly, figure skater Tonya Harding's ex-husband who planned the attack on Nancy Kerrigan 20 years ago prior to the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Nelson was the only journalist to interview Gillooly and appeared in ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary The Price of Gold.[17]

Her written and video piece of a black Santa Claus at Macy's flagship store in New York City[18] received wide pickup from news outlets worldwide, including CNN.[19]

Nelson also covered the uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson, the latter of which garnered her national attention. After moving to New Orleans, she wrote about artist BMike and his outdoor Black history art museum and public art project, Exhibit Be.[20]

Mental Health Company

Two weeks after Hurricane Ida hit, Nelson threw a Mental Health Mutual Aid event through her company, Beautiful Bipolar, that was part of disaster response. The event served over 200 hot meals, had professional counselors leading support group sessions, yoga and various healing modalities for mental health help for the citizens of New Orleans.[21]

References

  1. ↑ This Person in Sports: Amy K. Nelson SDSU Sports MBA, February 7, 2013
  2. ↑ Blogs with Balls: Amy K. Nelson Bio Archived September 6, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Blogs with Balls, Retrieved April 25, 2013
  3. 1 2 Henry Parr, The Climax: ESPN's Amy Nelson talks post-Hampshire life The Climax, pg. 5, March 4, 2010
  4. ↑ Highbeam accessed April 26, 2013
  5. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, ESPN.com October 17, 2011, accessed April 25, 2013
  6. 1 2 From Superpower Stalwart to Guerrilla Reporter Gelf Magazine, February 12, 2013
  7. ↑ OTL: Marked for Life ESPN.com, accessed April 26, 2013
  8. ↑ Searching for meaning in the mistake ESPN.com, January 9, 2011
  9. ↑ Kick Off: ESPNBoston.com Launches Today (Press Release) September 19, 2009
  10. ↑ Amy K. Nelson Is The Latest To Flee ESPN Deadspin, November 3, 2011
  11. ↑ YouTube And SBNation Launch A New Sports Channel WebProNews, March 12, 2012
  12. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, Amy K. Nelson Tells The Story Of The 'Queen Of Arms' SB Nation, March 2, 2012
  13. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, Bill Murray: Baseball's Best Boss – Full Nelson SB Nation, June 20, 2012
  14. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, Poster Boys: How the Costacos Brothers Built a Wall Art Empire SB Nation, February 5, 2013
  15. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, Women in Sports: Fight the Power Outage Archived February 3, 2014, at the Wayback Machine The Hairpin, November 12, 2013
  16. ↑ Richard Deitsch, Debating role of women in sports media; Marino's balancing act; more Sports Illustrated, November 24, 2013
  17. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, 30 for 30: The Price of Gold -The Vault Archived January 30, 2014, at the Wayback Machine ESPN, January 16, 2014
  18. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, Fear of a Black Santa Animal New York, December 23, 2013
  19. ↑ Lorenzo Ferrigno, Macy's has a black Santa, by special request CNN.com, December 24, 2013
  20. ↑ Amy K. Nelson, An Artist Turned An Abandoned New Orleans Complex Into A Tribute To Black History Buzzfeed, January 16, 2015
  21. ↑ Gabriella Killett, Local entrepreneur hosts mental health mutual aid for community after Ida "Loyola Maroon", September 25, 2021
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