Between Healing and Hurting – Military Veteran-Turned Entrepreneur, Olivia Nunn on Life Before and beyond Retirement

Change can be hard to settle into. The universal inclination falls toward stagnancy and comfort, which is why it is hard to break out of that cycle and let change break through. While most people go on with their lives as they are, few of us – courageous individuals with the will to live life to its fullest – move forth with a resilient foot and transpire change around themselves. Military veteran, now also a successful content creator and entrepreneur, Olivia Nunn understands full well what it means to be lost in a dark space, with constant intrusive thoughts and a progressively bleak vision for the future.

Coming from a military family and being raised by a father with a strong footing in the Army, Nunn knew at the ripe age of 4 that she wanted to follow in his footsteps. After graduating high school, she wanted to enlist in the military right away, but ended up going to college upon her parent’s insistence. After graduating from Radford University in Virginia, where she completed her ROTC, she was commissioned in 2001 as the 2nd Lieutenant (as a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear CBRN Officer). This was when her life changed.

During her time there, she met her husband who had been deployed to Iraq thrice. The duo went on to give birth to two children. She also moved from CBRN to Public Relations and finally retired in 2021. Life was supposed to get easy for Nunn at this point, but fate had planned otherwise. Her retirement became a catalyst for her divorce with her husband and increasing faithlessness in her abilities. Alone and pathless, Nunn went down the depressive alleys of her time in the army, her deployment, and the general chaos and violence of what it meant to be working in such a capacity. She recounts, “This sent me on a downward spiral, and I began to plan my suicide, and I almost completed it; it was in my cries for help that I couldn’t find a resource.”

This is when Nunn decided to do things differently. She decided to ask for help and even wring it out of the means promised to her if need be. This was, in many ways, her true feminist awakening, despite having broken through many glass ceilings during her time in the army. She founded her own LLC after being inspired by a conversation with a friend to rediscover her purpose.

Today, Olivia Nunn Communications LLC is a successful marketing and communications firm that enables nascent and established businesses alike to branch out, tell their stories, and make organic connections. Although primarily a PR agency, Nunn wants her firm to be more than just another company; she wants to inspire sustainable change through it. “Through this company, my goal is to create a PR agency that bridges the civilian and military communities together; to effectively drive change and tackle the hard conversations of mental health, race and more,” shares the CEO. Nunn is an example of resilience and innate excellence in the face of extremity and adversity. Having bounced back from the horrible gulfs of depression and PTSD, she understands the inner workings of the human heart and mind closer than most people and works her absolute best to accommodate people in similar spaces, with their health, mental wellbeing, and professional trajectories. To check out more of her work, follow her on LinkedIn or visit the official website.