NiCole's Notes

About NiCole's Notes

NiCole's Notes: The study guide for clear thinking about messy things. Witty, rigorous analysis of everything that matters: politics, love, illness, friendship, technology, aging, and the contradictions we live with. Sarcastic scholarship for the thinking Gen-X mind. Smart when it matters and Witty always. A graduate of the University of Calgary, B.A. Political Science '95, B.A.Spanish '08, born with cystic fibrosis, a lung disease that has been trying to kill me since birth. Hanging on to life by the horns with only 26% lung function. I have 20+ years of experience building organizations and understanding how systems actually work. Founder of the Summit Foundation for Cystic Fibrosis, raising 3.5+ million dollars for local research; Philanthropist of the Year for Alberta in 2014; honoured with the naming of a research lab at the Cumming School of Medicine, Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases, at the University of Calgary in 2013. Featured in a documentary about my journey with CF and being a CrossFit athlete, while owning my own gym in 2018. I was part of a $ 350 million fundraising campaign and had a 50' banner of my mug hanging off Foothills Hospital for 4 years (2003-2007). I am deep into my journey to finding my true self. I am attempting to integrate my conscious and unconscious to allow my authentic self to emerge. See Carl Jung's theory about individuation. I write about how I am doing it on my website: www.cokeontherocks.ca, so go see me there for some tips. Just graduated with a professional certification in Graphic Design (June 15, 2026) and am working on another in Integrated Digital Media (graduating May 2027); my friends would consider me the Sassy Smurf of the group. I may have been given a cactus, but I don't have to sit on it.

Publisher

Nicole Zeller

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 May 2026

Latest episode

11 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

30 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   11 Oct 2026

   Fighting For My Breath on TV

   Send us Fan Mail In 2016, filmmaker Laura O’Grady reached out after reading about me in Impact magazine. She wanted to make a documentary. Side-by-side footage: my CrossFit life and my real CF life. Each week of the five-week Open, she’d film me competing, then cut to the truth—the coughing, the pounding, the transplant list interviews, the clinic visits. When it launched in July 2017, it went viral on the biggest platform in the fitness world. But that was just the beginning. Telus TV funded...

2. 

   25 Sept 2026

   Marriage & Divorce: The Duality of Reality

   Send us Fan Mail When you're living your most public life—keynoting in front of CEOs, your face on 50-foot hospital banners, raising millions for your foundation—who sees you disappearing at home? This is the story of the duality. Of building a public persona as the inspirational CF patient while your marriage quietly dies. Of performing health and strength while your lungs decline. Oxygen is the moment when hiding became impossible. Nicole Zeller talks about 25 years of marriage, the shift f...

3. 

   4 Sept 2026

   The Redemption Arc

   Send us Fan Mail Episode 6: I weighed 74 pounds at my wedding. Ten years later, the University of Calgary named a research lab after me. This is how I went from surviving on a feeding tube to raising millions for CF research and discovering that my survival meant something bigger. This episode is the story of redemption. Not because I'm special. But because I refused to die on someone else's timeline. From small wins in weight gain to speaking at CF conventions. From pitching my story t...

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.