Contributor

Nikki Stone

Olympic gold medalist and bestselling author

At the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, Nikki Stone became America’s first-ever Olympic champion in the sport of aerial skiing. What made this performance so unbelievable was the fact that less than two years earlier a chronic spinal injury prevented her from standing, much less walking or skiing off a twelve-foot tall snow jump that launches aerialists fifty feet into the air. She overcame the injury and went on to earn 35 World Cup medals, 11 World Cup titles, four national titles, two Aerial World Cup titles and a World Championship title. Nikki is also a magna cum laude graduate of Union College and a suma cum laude masters graduate of the University of Utah, where she was invited to return to teach classes to other students. Her aerial retirement is less than restful as she trains Olympic athletes and business professionals in speaking/media skills, coaches personal and professional development courses, hosts group skiing adventures, sits on five different charitable committees, writes articles and columns for a number of magazines, newspapers, and websites, and authored the upcoming much-talked-about empowering book, When Turtles Fly: Secrets of Successful People Who Know How to Stick Their Necks Out. . Nikki’s career focus is now on traveling around the world working as a sought-after motivational speaker, sharing her secrets to success by inspiring her audiences to "Stick their necks out." Every spare moment is spent with husband, Michael Spencer, and daughter, Zali in Park City, Utah.