The morning after she won the gold at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics 2026, American figure skater Alysa Liu sat for a live interview on NBC’s “The Today Show.” One of her favorite moments from Alysa’s performance in the women’s figure skating event, Hoda Kotb told her, came not during the program itself, but afterward. Watching the Olympic coverage, I had been similarly struck.
Alysa skated well and moved into the lead, but there were two high-scoring skaters still to go. When the final skater’s score was posted, she knew she had prevailed. She sat still in the moment, with a huge grin on her face, while her coaches’ jaws dropped and they moved in for a group hug. Her attention then turned to the 17-year-old Japanese skater, first-time Olympian Ami Nakai, standing nearby, who was overcome with emotion upon realizing she had earned the bronze medal. Alysa left her coaches, and the winner’s spotlight, and moved to Ami’s side, embracing her and lifting her off the ground in a joyful, sisterly hug. “You used your superpower on the ice. It was J-O-Y, joy!” Hoda commented. As the video of the moment was shown, she said, “You keep talking about the journey, not the gold, and I think it’s on display there. Talk to us about that.” Alysa’s response was illuminating:
“Human connection is what I’m all about, and I love sisterhood. I’m an older sister myself, and I carry it on with – I would call her a teammate of sorts. We’re all in this sport together, so we share the love.”
Alysa’s personal journey of reaching the heights of competitive achievement, intentionally stepping away and then returning — on her terms — has taught her about the extraordinary power of human connection. It helped propel her to the very top of her sport at 20.
Alysa is the eldest of five children born to Arthur Liu, a Chinese dissident who helped organize student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989. To avoid persecution, he fled China and eventually settled in the San Francisco area, where he built a successful immigration law practice. Recognizing her potential as a skater at a young age, he invested between $500,000 and $1 million to provide his daughter with the training and competitive opportunities she needed to reach world-class levels.
But world-class skills were not enough. As I share with leaders, for superior performance to be sustainable, you need an ongoing combination of task excellence and relationship excellence. Without the relationship piece, individuals risk burnout, and results suffer.
As she has shared, during her early years, Alysa’s life revolved almost entirely around skating. It lacked the joy that comes from meaningful relationships. Some well-intentioned but ill-informed adults in her life created a toxic environment by offering harmful advice, including guidance on diet and exercise. At times, she approached the rink with dread. She would cry during warm-ups. She didn’t want to be there and felt as though she was skating against her will.
For a time, her extraordinary talent — and her willingness to follow instructions — carried her through. At the age of 12, she became the youngest female skater to land a triple axel in an international competition. She won the U.S. Championships in 2019 at age 13 — the first US female skater to land three triple axels in one competition. She won the U.S. Championships again the following year, at 14.
A few months later, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down ice rinks. Alysa, who had been skating since she was five years old, suddenly had weeks away from the ice — time she thoroughly enjoyed. But once lockdowns ended, she returned to intense training and international competition, often far from her family. She sometimes spent holidays, including Christmas, alone. Plus, there was the stress, pressure and expectations that come with performing at such a high level. At age 16, she competed in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, finishing sixth, and took the bronze medal at the 2022 World Championships in March.
Then, she surprised people a few weeks later: She announced her retirement from competitive skating. Her reasoning? She had met the two goals she had set for herself: 1) to compete at the Olympics and 2) “To have fun with my skating friends and everybody else and to have a good time during my journey as a skater.”
Over the next two years, Alysa reconnected with family and friends and recovered from the burnout she had experienced. She explored interests she had long set aside. She embraced being a teenager: she got her driver’s license, took road trips and went to concerts. She went to Nepal and trekked up to Mount Everest Base Camp. She enrolled at UCLA to study psychology. There, she may have encountered the work of researcher and professor Matthew Lieberman, who has described human connection as a superpower that makes people “smarter, happier and more productive.”
During a ski trip to Lake Tahoe, Alysa realized she missed the adrenaline of competition. She called her coach, Phillip DiGuglielmo, to say she wanted to return to the ice. He initially resisted and spent the next two and a half hours on FaceTime trying to talk her out of it. Eventually, she persuaded him to give it a try.
In the months that followed, Liu trained at the Oakland Ice Center alongside DiGuglielmo and choreographer Massimo Scali. This time was different. Rather than simply following orders, Alysa insisted on autonomy — selecting her own music and costumes, contributing creatively to her programs and determining her training schedule and diet. Her coaches observed that she had matured physically and emotionally and had become deeply self-motivated. She was skating for herself — not merely to satisfy external expectations.
In March 2025, Liu became the first American woman in 19 years to win the world title, capturing gold at the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston. Just shy of a year later, she now has two Olympic gold medals for her performances in Milan (individual and team).
The New York Times’ dance critic, Gia Kourlas, who knows a thing or two about figure skating, having trained as a skater in her early teens, had the following observations:
[Liu has returned] with a renewed focus on joy. This is a woman who moves with abandon; who laughs in amusement, as much to herself as to the crowd; and who floats with such looseness and buoyancy that she can seem nonchalant. This is an illusion. She cares. But her motivation is different from other skaters who are fueled solely by competition. … her skating is driven by love.
Alysa’s focus is not on herself or the judges. It’s on the audience watching her in person and on television. She has explained that she wants to move them emotionally. She thinks of herself as an artist first and an athlete second. Each performance is an act of service to others. Alysa is a living example of what one of my mentors, the late, great Frances Hesselbein, often said, “to serve is to live.” Watching Alysa skate is to observe someone who is so fully alive that she radiates an effervescent joy.
Reflecting on her journey, Alysa has said she loves the struggle of learning and growing. That perspective makes sense. The human connections she now experiences along the way provide comfort and joy. They also strengthen her resilience, enabling her to withstand the inevitable pressures that accompany elite competition.
I can personally relate to aspects of Alysa’s story. For years, I worked on Wall Street. Early on, I coupled that with completing my MBA and law degrees at night. I worked hard. Even when away from the office, my mind was often on the tasks to be completed and the challenges to be addressed. In the process, I crowded out time for faith, friends and family. Outwardly, all looked fine, but inwardly, I started to struggle.
In 2002, I chose to leave Wall Street to reconnect with my family and take a break to explore topics that interested me. It was life-changing. To my surprise, it led me on a new path of writing, speaking and teaching about the extraordinary power of human connection in leadership and organizational culture. In hindsight, I recognized that I had become an “achieve-aholic,” pursuing the “gold medal” measured by wealth and status. I chose not to return to that lifestyle. Reconnection brought deeper joy and meaning, and today I help others understand how cultures of human connection enable us to thrive both at work and in life.
Research shows that many people today are struggling with stress and loneliness. It doesn’t have to be that way. When we intentionally cultivate cultures of human connection — at home, in our communities, in our workplaces and in our nations — we create environments where people can flourish. Alysa Liu’s story is a testament to the extraordinary power of human connection.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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