Last week I had a chance to interview the creators of the espnW series “What Makes Us” series, Nadine Mundo and Rena Mundo Croshere. It was an exciting chance to get to chat with the ladies who have created a powerful series to empower young female athletes.
FangirlNation: What inspired you to do this series?
Rena: We did the Rhonda Rousy Film as part as the 9 for 9 series and within 24 hours it was the most viewed short in ESPN history and they wanted to work with us again. There’s an audience for these stories and that is where it began
FGN: How did you select the athletes you chose to feature?
Rena: We had conversations about who we would want to feature and with the Women’s World Cup we decided to start there and who we would want to feature.
FGN: Looking at the features based on Syndey Leroux and Megan Rapinoe, do you feel that the series has helped bring more support to the United States Women’s National Soccer Team?
Rena: I don’t know. We delivered the films days before they aired. We got a lot of positive feed back from soccer fans through e-mail and twitter from soccer fans.
They did air the film on ESPN and that was pretty cool.
It’s rare to have these kinds of features on women athletes and any time you can tell the back stories and adversities that these women faced and how they triumphed people are going to enjoy that.
FGN: What do you think of Megan and Sydney’s success in the World Cup so far? 
Rena: Amazing, we picked the best characters on the team. They are two of the most standout players. I feel like half the time I hear the announcers talking about Leroux or Rapinoe
Nadine: It’s awesome, we speculated that asking them about their dreams and aspirations would go over really well.
FGN: What other athletes would you like to feature?
Nadine: We had interviewed Abby Wambach for Megan and Sydney’s films, we would love to do a film on her. She is such a rock star athlete
FGN: What impact do you think that your series has had?
Nadine: Hopefully a positive impact I think we have crafted these stories to highlight these women who had a dream at an early age and have set goals and are still going. Hopefully young women will see these and learn from them.
Rena: When we looked at the content that is out there for young girls they don’t really feature self confident or powerful women. These athletes are heroes for young girls because they have overcome adversity and triumphed.
You can check out the what makes us series on espnW.
