Nadia Vaeh

Nadia Vaeh is an award-winning independent artist, filmmaker, speaker, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate making what she calls “solar-powered poptimistic rock.” Behind the music is a bigger story about grief, resilience, creativity, entrepreneurship, and what it takes to keep a dream alive.

After losing her mother to suicide at 17, Nadia found refuge in music. She spent hours beside her bedroom boombox studying the lyrics of emo, pop-punk, rock, and alternative artists unafraid to talk about the darker parts of life. Their honesty gave her language for feelings she didn’t yet know how to process and inspired her to create that same connection for others.

Today, mental health, vulnerability, and hope remain at the heart of her work. Nadia believes music can function like a campfire: a place where people gather, tell the truth about what they’ve lived through, and realize they aren’t navigating this strange human experience alone.

Her career, however, has been anything but a straight line.

As a fully independent artist, Nadia knows the complicated economics of a creative career firsthand. She balances writing, recording, touring, content creation, speaking, and producing with side hustles and entrepreneurial ventures; including building her pet-sitting business, Princess Poop Scoop, to help fund the dream.

That unconventional journey inspired the documentary One Poop Scoop Away: A Journey to a Dream, which Nadia executive produces. The project explores independent artist sustainability, streaming economics, AI, side-hustle culture, mental health, and the personal and financial cost of continuing to create in a rapidly changing industry.

Nadia’s career has earned recognition including an Independent Music Award “Vox Pop” honor and the NACA Midwest People’s Choice Spotlight award. She performs on college campuses and stages around the country and speaks on mental health, entrepreneurship, finding your voice, performance, and building a DIY creative career.

And then there are the stories that don’t fit neatly into an artist bio.

She’s a biochemistry nerd, previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of a cannabis company in Colorado, has built businesses alongside her music career, and once met the Queen of Jordan in a bathroom. She’s become a professional wearer of approximately 727 hats while figuring out how to make an unconventional creative life sustainable.

Nadia makes a strong podcast guest because she isn’t interested in polished, rehearsed “follow your dreams” answers. She’s comfortable talking about the beautiful AND uncomfortable parts: grief, suicide and mental health, creative burnout, money, failure, rejection, entrepreneurship, streaming realities, questioning your path, rebuilding when life knocks you sideways, and finding reasons to keep going without resorting to toxic positivity.

Depending on your audience, conversations with me can explore:

• Music, songwriting & the independent music industry

• Grief, suicide loss, mental health & finding hope

• Turning vulnerability into connection through art

• Artist sustainability, streaming economics & touring

• Side hustles, entrepreneurship & financing a creative career

• AI, technology & the changing creative landscape

• Women navigating music, business & creative industries

• Filmmaking & documenting your own story

• Finding your voice & advocating for yourself

• Resilience without pretending everything is okay

• What happens when you question the dream you’ve spent your life pursuing

Whether the conversation is hilarious, vulnerable, nerdy, deeply personal, or all of the above, Nadia’s goal is the same: tell the truth, stay curious, create connection, and hopefully leave people feeling a little less alone.

Because sometimes chasing the dream looks like standing onstage under the lights; and sometimes you’re literally one poop scoop away from funding the next part of it.