Building Bridges: Interview with USA Today Business Reporter Nathan Bomey

I recently went one on one with Nathan Bomey. Nathan is a reporter for USA Today, an author and a documentary scriptwriter. At USA Today, Nathan tracks how business is changing, covers the automotive industry and writes about the impact of misinformation on America’s political discourse. Nathan’s new book, Bridge Builders: Bringing People Together in a Polarized Age, will be released in May 2021 by Polity Press. In Bridge Builders, Nathan dissects the transformational ways in which countercultural Americans are combatting polarization. Nathan is also the author of After the Fact: The Erosion of Truth and the Inevitable Rise of Donald Trump – a book about the misinformation age. Before joining USA Today in the Washington, D.C., area in 2015, Nathan worked as a business reporter for the Detroit Free Press. That experience culminated in his first book, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back, which tells the inside story of the largest Chapter 9 bankruptcy in U.S. history. Nathan has made many appearances on national TV and radio networks and won several national journalism awards, including the National Headliner Award and honors from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Nathan: Thanks for having me, Adam! I’ve been in journalism since I was in high school, so I guess it’s been about 20 years now, which is wild. 

I’m not entirely sure why the editor trusted me to cover local news, features and sports, but he did, and I’m forever grateful. Here I was as a 17-year-old kid sitting at the Lodi Township Board of Trustees trying to decipher a debate over septic system zoning requirements.

After high school, I continued to work at The Saline Reporter while attending college. I couldn’t afford to go away to school, so I enrolled at Eastern Michigan University, a nearby commuter school. Honestly, although my high school credentials were good enough to get me into other schools, I’m so glad I went to EMU. I had to work hard for everything and I learned so much from an amazingly diverse group of people – including, namely, my fellow journalists at the student newspaper.

After graduation, I spent the next nine years working as a business reporter at newspapers in Michigan, culminating in a transformational time at the Detroit Free Press, where I covered General Motors and the Detroit bankruptcy.

I ended up writing my first book, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back, after that experience, and soon thereafter I joined USA TODAY, where I’ve been a business reporter for the last six years.

Adam: Your last book, After the Fact: The Erosion of Truth and the Inevitable Rise of Donald Trump, provides context for the topic you explore in Bridge Builders. What were your biggest takeaways from writing After the Fact?

Nathan: That’s a very astute question because the truth is that I decided to write Bridge Builders in large part because of the experience of writing After the Fact. To be honest, After the Fact is a pretty depressing book to read. I hate to throw my own book under the bus, but if you read it, you’ll almost surely walk away with the impression that we, as a polarized society, are doomed to grow increasingly isolated. There’s no way we’ll ever get on the same page, right?

I just couldn’t accept that premise. I felt like there had to be people out there who weren’t accepting the status quo, I wanted to meet them and I thought their stories should be told. It’s as simple as that. Plus, I feel like I’ve always been better writing about solutions than I have been writing about problems. 

That’s when I set out to visit with and interview bridge builders from throughout the country. I went (pre-COVID) to places like Minneapolis, Detroit, Appalachia, Annapolis, Charlottesville and D.C. I interviewed others by phone from places like San Diego, South Carolina, Iraq and Australia.

I ended up spending more than a year reporting and writing this book before I even had a book deal for two primary reasons. One, I felt like I wanted to let the reporting guide the writing, not the other way around. Two, I wanted to find the subjects of the book organically. I didn’t want to force it under deadline. 

It’s very unusual to do that much reporting and writing before pitching a nonfiction book to publishers, but I felt like that was the best way to go about it.

Adam: What do you hope readers take away from Bridge Builders? What are the key ways we can bring people together in such a polarized age?

Nathan: There are so many things. But let’s start with this. Polarization threatens our very existence. If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that polarization can be deadly.

So that’s the context, and I think that’s crucial to understand. Even if you hate your neighbor, surely you don’t want them to die.

The main through-line of the book is that bridge building is virtually impossible unless we embrace relationship building and conversation between people of difference. We simply can’t begin to address the things that divide us unless we get to know other people first.

I recognize that this sounds weak. It sounds like I’m avoiding the real problem. I get that. 

But I would contend that it’s the opposite. It’s actually revolutionary. It’s countercultural. 

At a time when tribalism is gripping the nation, the best way to break down barriers is by battling back against the forces of segregation, whether they are political, racial, cultural, geographical, class-driven or religious.

Adam: What are the defining characteristics of bridge builders?

Nathan: My hypothesis when I set out to report this book is that bridge builders would have many common traits despite the different areas of life they come from or work in. I was right.

You have to start here: Bridge builders acknowledge the past, educate others about it and refuse to idealize it. They don’t ignore past hurts. They talk about them because they believe in accountability. But they also are careful not to turn blame into shame because they recognize that shaming people leads to a knee-jerk response that undermines the goal of bringing people together for the sake of everyone’s advancement.

Bridge builders don’t label people because they see nuances where other people see caricatures. They embrace conflict because they realize you can’t have a vital democracy without it. But they believe you can agree to disagree while still establishing social trust, which fosters further cooperation and communication.

Finally, bridge builders listen when most people would talk. I know that sounds like it doesn’t fit with the whole thing about embracing conflict. But it does. Healthy disagreement can’t occur unless you first listen to the other side. 

This is one of the fundamental sources of our division today. We’d rather spew hot-takes and partisanship and hate than to consider life from the other person’s perspective. But when you take time to listen, you can often find common ground.

Adam: What can executives and entrepreneurs learn from the bridge builders you studied and profiled?

Nathan: Bridge building is fundamentally about leadership and communication. Leaders set the tone. They can establish a culture of bridge building predicated on encouraging healthy disagreement and perspective sharing without shaming or demeaning others.

It needs to start with valuing diversity in all shapes and sizes. Bridge builders choose inclusion over exclusion. They recognize that we can’t achieve progress unless we empower people of difference. And that means listening to what they have to say, putting them into positions of power and implementing their ideas.

At USA TODAY, I was a founding member of our Diversity Committee. Our goal is to make USA TODAY a reflection of the USA today. It sounds cute, but we’re very serious about it. We’ve made a ton of progress on hiring equity and coverage decisions. And we’re publishing information about our progress, or lack thereof, because we believe that transparency breeds trust and accountability. These are all small steps, in a way, but they add up to a lot of momentum in the end.

Adam: How can anyone become better at building relationships?

Nathan: I think it really does start with listening. It comes down to a recognition that we all have something to learn from each other. Everyone is unique and has had dynamic life experiences, and if I can’t learn something from them, I’m doing life wrong. 

Here’s the thing: Listening isn’t just about lifting others up. It’s about accomplishing what you want to accomplish as well. Yes, listening can be selfish in the best possible way.

When we express interest in other people, we show them that they matter to us. They feel heard. And that’s all a lot of people are looking for. They just want to see that someone cares. When you show them that you care, then you can begin to talk about tougher things. And that’s how you can begin to change hearts and minds.

For one chapter of Bridge Builders, I profiled a group of professional mediators whose entire profession is based on trying to bring people together who are quarreling over something, whether it’s a broken marriage, a workplace conflict or a multi-million-dollar business dispute. One lesson I learned from them is that they don’t launch right into the conflict when it’s time to start negotiating. First they establish some common ground, however small, and build out from there.

I think that takeaway applies to the rest of us, too. It could be small, like a shared love of your local sports team, or a toy from your youth that you both loved. Just find something to bond over, and go from there. 

Adam: In your experience, what are the key characteristics of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Nathan: I think the best leaders follow. Know what I mean? 

Yes, the best leaders also cast vision. But only after they survey the landscape, learn the lessons from what others have done and draw perspective from those mistakes and successes. The best leaders keep in mind the lessons of history to everything they do.

That’s why I love your podcast, “Thirty Minute Mentors.” It’s an entire feed full of fascinating lessons from leaders from all walks of life.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Nathan: One critique I anticipated for this book was that it’s too soft, too squishy, not realistic. So I wanted to get ahead of that by offering a few practical suggestions on what our leaders can do to begin building bridges on a larger scale than the type of organic bridge building I chronicle in the book.

All of the suggestions are based on integrating a culture of relationship building and conversation between people of difference into our institutions, whether it’s the workplace, our schools or our political structures.

For example, we can invest in a national public service movement. This already has broad bipartisan support, but the funding hasn’t been there. What we know conclusively is that when people are serving others shoulder to shoulder, they gain respect and appreciation for each other and for the people they’re serving despite their differences. Plus they can make a difference at the same time.

I’d also suggest that there are ways that schools and colleges can begin to break down the barriers of political, racial and economic segregation. Let’s use the world of virtual classes to encourage class projects between students from different districts. Let’s make first-year college students room with someone they’ve never met, rather than allowing them to pick people who look like them.

In the workplace, I’d say leaders need to think long and hard about relegating this to an annual “diversity training” webinar. Research has shown that doesn’t work very well and, in fact, can be counterproductive unless it’s rooted in this concept called “perspective taking.” 

We need to put ourselves in a position where we’re actively forced to consider other people’s perspectives. That works a lot better than just being told what we need to think in some top-down fashion.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Nathan: Wow, that’s tough. But I think I know. My mom has said many times that someone is always watching you, even when you don’t realize it. 

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share? 

Nathan: I hope that nobody reads my book and agrees with everything they read. I’m pretty sure that won’t happen. But the goal of a healthy democracy is not unity. The goal is to establish social trust so that we can begin to address the massive challenges we face. We can disagree. We need to disagree. That’s how we’ll move forward.

Importantly, you don’t necessarily have to meet in the middle. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions about bridge building. Often you build bridges in other ways, such as building it from one side to the other. At other times, you build it in small pieces, working from pre-established pillars and extending outward. 

The point is that bridge building comes in many forms, but it’s all rooted in the premise that we absolutely musts get past the things that divide us. Otherwise the schisms that plague our society will only get worse – and that has negative consequences for everyone.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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