Ready for Beyond

In this Double Down episode of Ready for Beyond, Gina Hudel explores what it means to recommit to your craft in a world that moves at blockchain speed.

She sits down with Tsering Namgyal, a finance journalist and author whose work bridges traditional finance, cryptocurrency innovation, and long-form storytelling. From writing letters home as a child in boarding school to covering global financial crises and the rise of Bitcoin, Tsering reflects on the power of staying curious and staying committed.

Together, Gina and Tsering discuss:

00:00 Introduction: Why Doubling Down Matters in a Changing World
Gina introduces the Double Down theme and welcomes finance journalist and author Tsering Namgyal to explore commitment, craft, and navigating change with intention.

02:07 Returning to Your Roots Instead of Reinventing Yourself
Tsering reflects on how a childhood love of writing became the foundation for a lifelong career in journalism and storytelling.

06:30 AI, Blockchain & the Future of Journalism
Discover how AI, blockchain, and emerging technologies are transforming media while creating new opportunities for agile, independent publishers.

10:18 Why Critical Thinking and Storytelling Still Win
Tsering explains why timeless skills like critical thinking, historical context, and compelling storytelling remain essential in rapidly evolving industries.

13:05 Navigating Disillusionment Without Losing Your Calling
After becoming disillusioned with traditional finance, Tsering shares why he returned to journalism with renewed purpose instead of walking away.

15:51 The Stillness of Middle Age: Choosing Depth Over Noise
A conversation about slowing down, reading deeply, prioritizing health, and finding greater meaning through intentional living.

18:26 Finding Purpose Through Reflection and Impermanence
Tsering discusses how his Tibetan heritage, spirituality, and personal loss have shaped a more thoughtful approach to work and life.

20:24 Appreciating Life's Ambiguities Instead of Rushing Answers
Rather than chasing certainty, Tsering encourages staying open, embracing ambiguity, and allowing life's direction to unfold naturally.

22:05 Small Rituals That Help You Reconnect
The episode closes with a simple reminder that cooking, creativity, and everyday rituals can be powerful ways to unwind and reconnect after demanding work.

Tsering shares how his Tibetan heritage, spiritual roots, and recent personal loss have shaped a more reflective season of life, one that prioritizes intention over speed. His perspective offers a steady reminder that doubling down does not mean doing more. It means choosing more deliberately.

A thoughtful conversation about craft, conviction, technology, and the quiet strength of staying the course.

⭐ About Tsering Namgyal
Tsering Namgyal is a journalist and author whose work explores the intersection of global finance, emerging technology, and long-form storytelling. With nearly three decades of experience across international markets, he has developed a perspective grounded in curiosity, critical thinking, and a commitment to understanding how complex systems evolve and impact people.

He began covering blockchain in 2016 while working as a regulatory journalist in Hong Kong and has followed the space closely ever since, bringing clarity and context to a rapidly changing field. His work has appeared in leading international publications including The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and South China Morning Post, reflecting a global perspective shaped by experience across Asia, Europe, and North America.

Alongside his journalism, Tsering is a literary writer and the author of three books, including Little Lhasa: Reflections on Exiled Tibet and the novel The Tibetan Suitcase. His writing is informed by his Tibetan heritage and a reflective, contemplative lens that brings depth to both his reporting and his storytelling.

Resources discussed in this episode:

⭐ About the Host: Gina Hudel

I’m Gina Hudel, a transformation leader who has worked with teams in more than 40 countries. Over the years, my career has taken me across sectors and communities, supporting people and organizations as they navigate change, make thoughtful decisions, and move forward with clarity and purpose.

I’m also deeply committed to volunteer leadership and community work, which keep me grounded in what matters most: people, connection, and contribution. Whether the setting is global or local, my focus is the same — creating space for people to find their footing, focus on what matters, and make steady, sustainable progress.

Ready for Beyond brings that perspective to the mic. These conversations are grounded and human, shaped by a reminder I hold close: the future matters, but so does today. Each episode offers a moment to pause, reflect, and take the next step with confidence and intention, while staying present to the day you’re in.

⭐ What Is Ready for Beyond?

What you do today shapes what comes next — and navigating change doesn’t have to feel overwhelming.

Ready for Beyond is a podcast about growth, purpose, and finding your way in a world that’s shifting fast. Through candid conversations and practical tools, host Gina Hudel helps listeners move forward with clarity and courage, while still making space to enjoy the day they’re in.

From personal pivots to leadership transitions, career shifts to community impact, the show explores how people make meaningful progress while staying grounded in what matters now. Whether you’re leading a team, rethinking success, or opening the door to something new, this is a space to learn, reflect, and feel supported along the way.

Let’s go beyond.


Contact Gina Hudel: 


Creators and Guests

Host
Gina Hudel
Gina Hudel is a global transformation and governance leader, operating in Kitchener-Waterloo in Waterloo Region along Canada's Innovation Corridor. She is passionate about supporting businesses, institutions & community growth. Whether helping a board navigate transformation, an entrepreneur flourish, a non-profit group evolve, or students master new concepts, she takes a systematic, collaborative approach to her work. Gina’s focus is on sustainable results and meaningful impact.
TN
Guest
Tsering Namgyal

What is Ready for Beyond?

What you do today shapes what comes next—and navigating change doesn’t have to feel overwhelming.

Ready for Beyond is a podcast about growth, purpose, and finding your way in a world that’s shifting fast. Host Gina Hudel shares real conversations and practical tools to help you move forward with clarity, courage, and a little more ease—while still making space to enjoy the day you’re in.

From personal pivots to leadership transitions, career shifts to social impact, this show is for people ready to make meaningful progress while staying grounded in what matters now.

Whether you're leading a team, rethinking success, or simply opening the door to something new—you’re in the right place.

Let’s go beyond.

Gina Hudel: [00:00:08] I'm Gina Hudel and welcome to Ready for Beyond. Ready for Beyond explores how we move forward in a world that's changing fast from AI to global dynamics. It looks at how the lives we build lead us to shape our future. We'll examine growth and personal fulfillment with practical takeaways and candid conversations that open the door to possibility. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss any episode of this journey. Let's go beyond.
[00:00:52] Welcome to Ready for Beyond. I'm Gina Hudel, transformation and governance leader, community builder and your host. This podcast is where we explore growth, reinvention and what it means to navigate change with clarity and purpose. Each episode brings a grounded human conversation to help you stay open to possibility and move forward with intention. Today's theme is 'Double Down', those moments when we choose to commit more deeply to what matters, even when the path isn't obvious. My guest is Tsering Namgyal, a finance journalist specializing in blockchain technology and all its related wonders like crypto, and author of three books, most recently, 'Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exile Tibet'. His work sits at the intersection of technology, trust, and long term thinking.In a world that moves fast and rewards noise, Tsering has chosen depth in writing, in ideas and how he approaches change steering. Tsering, welcome to Ready for Beyond.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:02:03] Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be on your show.
Gina Hudel: [00:02:07] This is brilliant. Tsering, let's start at the beginning. When did writing become central for you? Not just something you did, but something that you committed to?
Tsering Namgyal: [00:02:19] Yes. I think it started very early on. In school, I used to write quite a bit. And also writing letters to my family from my boarding school, and I used to write in both Tibetan and English. That was before the telephone. We didn't have telephones, no internet, so no email. So we had to write letters to each other. So that's how my writing journey really started. And my father was a social worker, and he had a lot of people to communicate with, and he would often dictate letters to me when I'm on my holiday. So that's how my first writing lessons, or actually the creative writing lessons really started. And I never really stopped since then, and I felt that I should keep on writing. And I have a fascination with the English language, and I think it's a beautiful language. So I just never stopped. So then I became a journalist very naturally, even though I studied science in college.
Gina Hudel: [00:03:33] How about that? So you are that classic lifelong learner, right? You're constantly still developing, and it has helped you help others in communicating and relaying messages back and forth. I wonder, could you speak of where your work has taken you? You've traveled across countries and cultures and very different systems of thinking. What has writing helped you explore as you move through those different contexts?
Tsering Namgyal: [00:04:05] Well, it's been a very challenging but also extremely rewarding experience as a writer from the margins, as a journalist with the margins. Coming from my background, my parents were refugees, Tibetan refugees, and they were really very poor. And then I did really well in school, and then I went to Taipei. I worked as a journalist there, and then I worked in Hong Kong, in London, in the United States, and now I'm back in India, but covering Hong Kong and Singapore. And so these journeys have been very rewarding. As you said, it's really a process. There's no end to it, because the thing about writing is that you are constantly in a university setting, you're always writing. You're always writing your papers. Right? It's almost like being in a graduate school. So there's no end to it. So you're constantly updating yourself, constantly learning. So this has been a great journey. For instance, I didn't know anything about blockchain and bitcoin, but when I was in Hong Kong, I just fell into it and I was just curious. So just my curiosity got the better of me. And then I asked one day, what is Bitcoin? And then that's how it started. And people who were there during that time became billionaires. So it's just amazing. I could have just ignored it like the big banks, you know? But I didn't. I understood it after someone explained it to me, I understood it. I thought, this is a very important technology. It's a work of pure genius. And it's not something that should be taken lightly or brushed aside. So I pursued it and I created a website. And then I found an investor, and then I started my website. Now it's called Block Wind News. It's going through a few different avatars over the years, but we're still here.
Gina Hudel: [00:06:30] Look at that. This is so fascinating. So you work at the intersection of basically journalism and blockchain, two spaces that are constantly evolving. Not one. But journalism is constantly evolving. Blockchain is constantly evolving. When you look ahead, how do you see AI and even quantum shaping what people will need next?
Tsering Namgyal: [00:06:53] I think it's going to be an ongoing learning process. But the thing about journalism, as you said, is it's very adaptable. It's writing. It's one of the first human inventions as a human is to write. So that will never change. But the modes, the way they do it will change. We have AI, and AI is actually very useful for journalists. You know, in terms of skills that will help you build, and also in terms of editing and in terms of videos. Or even even creating images. So these are very useful for journalists, especially for journalists in niche areas like us, small online websites who are run by teams of less than five people. So these technologies are incredibly helpful, even though they are very disruptive. Quantum computing is also going to be a very big change, and I am eagerly looking forward to knowing more about it. There is a company in Hong Kong called Abelian who is working on it, and I'm going to meet with them when I go there later this week. So it's a brave new world out there.
Gina Hudel: [00:08:24] Right? What's exciting is a brave new world. But what I hear you speaking of the technology, it empowers you to be stronger. Maybe even be braver as David and Goliath. You have the opportunity to, not that you want to take on Goliath, but you can play in the same field as Goliath, those massive news entities, with those tools enabling you with your passion and your commitment to storytelling. I've heard you share many times how you truly believe that the essence is storytelling.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:08:58] Yes, we can really challenge the big players with the help of technology. So in terms of speed, there's less gatekeeping. And we are out there completely humble, not hiding behind some big brand name. That won't go into these conferences. They never came to these conferences, these big players. But now they're coming because we went there and we covered this amazing innovation happening. And they realized that finally this is real. So what I did when I was in Hong Kong is that I went to every conference on blockchain and bitcoin and Singapore and Hong Kong. I was at a conference, 3 to 4 conferences a week. And that's where I learned, I saw that the world is changing and what is changing on the ground. Big media is like always thinking about how the world should be, how the world is changing. What is happening on the ground. So they got left behind.
Gina Hudel: [00:10:18] Right. I've heard you when we're talking about the change, how matters are evolving and you've written about it and you've spoken about it, we've spoken about it. But how your writing helps you convey. But it also helps you strengthen those skills that you need to keep sharp to do the storytelling. How do you feel about those skills that were taught a long time ago in academia? Less so now we're hearing calls for them to be taught in school. But how do we do it? Things like critical thinking, sense making, patience for long form attention. Are you feeling that those are skills in the past with days that go by? Are they skills that you continue to build upon, or are you simply tapping the foundation that you had from your school days of learning about critical thinking and more?
Tsering Namgyal: [00:11:18] Yes, those critical thoughts are as important as ever. So that doesn't change. What changes is that you have to apply it on the ground in reality, where things are really changing. So that's what helped me because I got all those skills of many years of experience in traditional finance. Right. And then I got into this whole new world, and I can apply all of that experience and then marry it with the new technology and turn it into a story that is actually readable and interesting to the traditional people. Because before that, what was happening was that crypto was done in a very shallow manner. But people who may not have all those skills. So they were basically either technicians or they were very poor journalists. They don't know how to write well or think clearly, or to get the gist of the story and put it into a historical perspective.
Gina Hudel: [00:12:33] Mhm. Mhm.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:12:35] But what I was lucky is that I just happened to have that time with all those skills of having covered the big major historical events, like the big financial crisis and then how it actually led to crypto, and how that actually created crypto. So you need someone to be able to link all those dots and tell a story that becomes actually interesting.
Gina Hudel: [00:13:05] Absolutely. Now, Tsering, you double down on this writing and the journalism. But like all humans, there must have been moments where you thought, maybe this isn't the course I'm going to stay, you know? Was there ever a moment where you stepped away or almost stepped away from writing?
Tsering Namgyal: [00:13:26] Maybe not from writing, but when I was covering traditional finance, on a few occasions I've been very disillusioned with how the markets worked, how the global finance worked. So especially it favored the elite, and it came at a huge cost to the common people, the poor people. So especially with the policies by these big institutions, with the big powers. I got very disillusioned, I think, because as a Buddhist I was very idealistic. So that's when I thought of stepping away. And I even considered being a full time novelist. I went away and I did write a novel, and then I came back. The novel has been critically acclaimed, but I came back into financial journalism because I think it grounds me, it's who I am, because that's how I first started out as a young man, as a financial journalist. So now I apply that experience into covering crypto and blockchain, which I think is the next big thing.
Gina Hudel: [00:14:43] Sure. It's about having that core skill set, being a lifelong learner. Being open to the unknown, which could be scary to others. Where I give you incredible credit, where you're using some of that scariness, some of that AI, and some of that technology to help you move forward and make steps and not be overcome by it, by actually strengthening you and giving you, you know, an even greater foundation. What I'd like to ask you more about, because we're all our work and our passion. And for you, it's a craft. And as you say, you have your novels as well as your journalism outside of work, how do you consciously double down in your own life, the quality of life. You know your relationships, your health, your sense of community. How do you identify what's worth taking that spare time of yours and spare energy of yours, or making spare time, or making energy to say, these are other areas of my life that I'm going to double down on to add to the quality of my life, to make me who I am.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:15:51] That's one of the joys of becoming older and experiences that actually you get to manage your time better, right? You know how not everything is important because on social media, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, there's so much going on and you're constantly bombarded with information. For young people may seem exciting, but for us, we have seen it all. So now, actually I do have more time to pursue my interests to do my readings. Right now, I read four books during my trip to the United States. All novels. And now I'm reading creative writing with lessons from great Russian writers. So I'm reading Tolstoy now. In terms of health. Yes. Of course, as you get older, you get to have some health issues. But I walk like 5 to 6km a day. And there's a stupa monastery where I live, where I can go take a walk every day, like 8000 steps or something. So to look after myself and then also to keep your diet in control. So actually you tend to get more time as you get older. So what I call the stillness of the middle age, right. It's not all go, go. Not attending every event, every meeting or every party in the town, and then reflecting on things. Life is becoming more interesting in that sense. More relaxed.
Gina Hudel: [00:17:52] Would this call upon, you speak of age and you're not by any means someone that we'd say, 'oh, that is an older gentleman'. I think you're being a little reflective there, and that's natural. But you're certainly a man of much energy and dynamo. Do you feel that this reflection also goes back to your origin, your background, your spiritual roots of your childhood? Or would it be influenced by more than you speak of age. I suspect it's more than that.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:18:26] Yeah. I think it has to do with my Tibetan background, which is very reflective, contemplative and spiritual. And I especially lost my father just about a year ago. So I've been in this kind of a reflective, contemplative mode. And I think it's very common because the Tibetans believe that life is impermanent. And not to sound morbid to the Western listeners, but it's really true that it will end one day. But I'm very much looking forward to engaging with the world, like I'm going to Hong Kong next week to cover the consensus, which is one of the biggest Bitcoin conferences in the world. And then I have more travel plans. So this year I'm really going to focus on making my website, blog, and one of the top websites in Asia. So it's not that I'm retiring or anything, I'm just prioritizing what is important so that I can do things that are important.
Gina Hudel: [00:19:39] You must surely have folks that ask you for career advice. I mean, you are, as you say, a published author, well received novelist, incredibly well received financial journalist working on the cutting edge and have been on the cutting edge as long as you've been in the business. Is there a sage counsel that you give students that are looking at how to know what direction to go, and it might be journalism, but it might just be folks that you meet and you're in the town that you're living in, and when you're going out to dinners and more, is there counsel that you give as someone who's traveled the world and written and watched other people's careers as well as your own?
Tsering Namgyal: [00:20:24] I'm reluctant to give advice. It's a very challenging thing because everybody is so different, because the karma, everybody comes with their own karma and it's really difficult. And at what stage you should be doing what? These things are very difficult to give advice on. One important thing is to keep an open mind. I would say look out for signs and also don't try to resolve things too quickly. Appreciate the ambiguities of life. Keep it a little open ended. And then, when you have time, do what you are really interested in doing, like reading books, traveling or whatever, you know, falling in love, whatever. I think that's really important. Having some kind of purpose in life is also important. And that purpose may be probably to help others. That's better because of purpose. Even the fascists have a purpose, right? In helping other people. Making the world a bit bigger place. So that's my non advice.
Gina Hudel: [00:21:49] I like it. And you were fortunate that along the way you found that you had that storytelling and that writing ability and you kept working at it. You double down on that and it is helping you make the world a better place.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:22:04] Oh, thank you so much.
Gina Hudel: [00:22:05] Some days are busier than others. And as you say, I see that you've got yourself a nice balance. I'm glad to hear that you're getting the balance in with your lifestyle and the exercise and the moments to yourself. You do a lot of hectic traveling, as you say. Can you give us some insight? How is it that you unwind and reconnect after a long and demanding week? And for you, I'm thinking about those demanding weeks of those travel weeks of the conferences or back to back interviews, and this will be the closing question for our podcast today. That's how we always close our podcasts, asking folks how they unwind or reconnect after a long demanding week.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:22:48] Cooking a nice meal, and then just really simple. Like make some whole wheat pasta and with some broccoli or some chicken and then have a few glasses of wine and enjoy it. And it's very relaxing, I think. I think it's just very good.
Gina Hudel: [00:23:15] Right. And just sort of immerse yourself in the moment, the experience of making something beautiful, possibly sharing with yourself or sharing it with others.
Tsering Namgyal: [00:23:26] Yeah. It's a small pleasure of life. Right. And also it's very artistic. The cooking is very artistic. It's very much like writing, putting the ingredients together and information. And then so for a writer, it's really just a different form of art.
Gina Hudel: [00:23:47] Thank you for this conversation and reminding us that doubling down doesn't always mean doing more, but choosing more intentionally. Thank you to our listeners for spending this time with us on Ready for Beyond. If today's conversation sparks something for you, follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode, and you can also connect with me on LinkedIn for more insights on transformation, leadership, and navigating change with confidence. Until next time, stay curious, keep moving forward, and stay Ready for Beyond.