CLEVELAND — Often times, when we’re “resetting," it involves taking a chance without knowing all the answers, which can be scary. That’s how it was for Susan Oguche.
Now she’s the executive vice president and chief communications officer for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Before taking on this role, she had an impressive job with Nike and she’d gone through some turbulent times personally.
Oguche recently sat down with 3News anchor Christi Paul for a conversation about knowing how to grab the chance in front of her.
"I think it was in some ways kind of blind faith last year. One of my sort of mantras was, 'I'm betting on me' and it was coming out of a year where I had a lot of personal tragedy. My father passed away, I was pregnant with my youngest, and I had a really, really rough pregnancy," Oguche said. "And it was just in this season of, 'okay, if I'm betting on me, where does that take me?' I had a recruiter actually reach out for this role and I didn't have the typical background that someone had. Most of my communications experience had been more in the consumer products space."
Oguche says the more she learned about the Cavaliers team itself, and the more she learned about the culture here, the more she became interested in the opportunity.
"It went from, 'well, that could be interesting,' to, 'I really want this. I feel like I can make an impact,'" she recalled.
As a mother to children ages one and six, Oguche says she felt immense responsibility when considering the move.
"I made the move [to Cleveland] from Portland, so it was a little far. I felt a lot of pressure because this isn't our first move as a family. We moved from Chicago to Portland, which was another very, very far move. And Chicago was a place where we had really deep roots," she told Christi.
But fortunately, they were coming back to some deep roots as well.
"It was the opportunity to come back to Ohio where I grew up, and just remember having such a wonderful upbringing that I took for granted," Oguche said. "[At the time, I thought], there must be this bigger world out there. But it was in the process of going away [that I began to appreciate it]. And I think there's so many boomerangs now. I meet so many people who are like, 'I grew up in Cleveland or grew up in Columbus,' and they're coming back because that what we thought was really boring and uneventful as a kid...was just such a beautifully connected, safe way to grow up."
But Oguche admits that when we move, we don’t move away from ourselves. And she candidly spoke about the anxiety that follows her.
"It's something that I have kind of dealt with my whole life. So I remember my process with anxiety, not knowing there was a name for it, but just being in college and just feeling my chest was closing up and I was like, 'what is this thing that's happening to me?,'" she recalled. "You don't want to put a name on yourself. You don't want to put something negative and say, I have anxiety. It feels so permanent."
But today, Oguche says she now sees that very anxiety as an asset.
"I kind of have gone from thinking of it as this horrible affliction to also thinking about it as a superpower and trying to listen to what that's telling me. If I'm anxious about something, is it because I don't have it the right information? Is it because maybe my gut's telling me it's the wrong decision, that I need to pay attention to that?"
Still, that weight pressed down on her as she tried to decide - was she going to become part of the Cavaliers family?
"I think for this situation, it was, what people call imposter syndrome, but it was just me: 'Can I do this? Am I willing to put in the personal sacrifice that's required?' I left my mom and my brother back in Portland. 'How's my family going to adjust? I'm moving my kid in the middle of school year. Does this make me a bad parent to be doing this?'"
But Oguche says she was able to find her answers, by leaning on her faith.
"For me, prayer was a big part of it... being in alignment with my husband both. This was not a decision we took lightly. We both had a lot of time for prayer and reflection," she said. "I'm a work in progress. We all are."
And Oguche says giving herself grace has also gone a long way.
"And that sense of giving myself grace has allowed me to give people grace because I'm like, 'who's perfect? Anybody? Nobody.' None of us. And just being able to try it again tomorrow and give it my best efforts and know there's grace to cover all of it," she said. "And it says, you know what? I don't have all the answers, but I'm trusting that there's something in this....I'm trusting that God's on the other side of that. And regardless of what happens, there's purpose in it for me that nothing in life is going to be wasted."