We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brandon & Niki Brumage. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brandon & Niki below.

Alright, Brandon & Niki thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

We both work as CRNAs (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists). It can be a very demanding and stressful job at times—especially during the pandemic. We needed to find an outlet to relieve some of that stress. That’s when we really discovered our love for climbing mountains.

We’ve always enjoyed hiking and over the course of the last 4-5 years, we’ve been able to increase our skill and comfort level. The pandemic allowed us to focus a lot of energy into this newly found passion. We started off by climbing all the Washington state volcanoes and progressed from there. We climbed mountains in Oregon, California and Colorado. We took our passion international and climbed in Ecuador and Peru. And we are currently doing this interview at an airport on our way home from a successful summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Brandon & Niki, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are both nurse anesthetists. We started out finishing nursing school and working in the ICU for about 3 years prior to going to anesthesia school. We’ve been working as CRNAs now for just over 8 years.

We live and work in Seattle, WA. CRNAs are licensed to provide anesthesia for all patients and procedures ranging from heart surgery to colonoscopy screenings.

One of the things we both enjoy about this career is the opportunity to comfort our patients in a vulnerable time. Most people are anxious about having surgery or undergoing anesthesia. We have a period in the pre-operative area to meet our patient and alleviate their fears and build a trust with them prior to taking them in for their procedure.

We’re very proud of the work/life balance we’ve been able to build. We hope that we can demonstrate that even with a sometimes stressful, demanding job it’s important to take time for yourself and your mental health. We were lucky to find that being outside, climbing mountains is an incredible stress relief for us.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Growing up in the US, most of us are taught career success is the most important thing in adulthood. We’re taught from a young age that we need to “grind away” no matter the consequences. It took us years to unlearn this way of thinking. Success in your life does not have to be measured by a career. It can be any number of achievements you set for yourself, and these things will differ from person to person.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When we first started climbing higher altitude peaks, we really struggled with altitude sickness. There were times we thought we’d be unable to continue on this journey of scaling some of the world’s highest peaks. Feeling absolutely terrible at higher altitude is enough to make most give up that dream. However, we continued on by changing the way we train and experimenting with a number of different supplements until we finally found a way to climb higher.

Contact Info:

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