American Olympian Who Quit Six-Figure Marketing Job to Take Up Breakdancing Is Knocked Out in Round Robin Tournament: What’s Next?

American breakdancer Sunny Choi left her job as a marketing executive to lead the first-ever American breakdance team at the Olympics, but now she will leave Paris empty-handed after being eliminated from the quarterfinals before her third match.

Choi ended her Olympic run with a victory, beating Vanessa of Portugal 2-0 in the round robin. But it wasn’t enough to secure a spot in the knockout stages. She finished third in her group but needed a top-two finish.

Now she’ll return home with no certainty that she’ll be able to compete in the Olympics again, an outcome Choi accepted when she stepped down in January 2023 as global creative operations director for skincare at Estée Lauder, the world’s second-largest cosmetics company.

“I literally worked my whole life to achieve this financial stability, and then to give it up for this dream that may or may not come true was really, really scary,” Choi told reporters at the USOPC media summit on April 16. “At first, I just thought, ‘I don’t want to give up my current lifestyle.’ I felt comfortable. I could buy whatever I wanted. I shopped at Whole Foods.”

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And for Choi, the stakes were greater than just financial sacrifice.

“As someone who is stepping down, I thought to myself, ‘I don’t see how that’s going to be possible.’ And then there are other factors. Like, I want to have kids at some point, and now I’m 35. So it’s like, ‘Am I willing to wait a few more years?’” Choi said. “There were a lot of things I just wanted to check off, and the Olympics just threw my plans out the window.”

Choi said she had to think about the decision for a full year before making the decision to leave her job in early 2023.

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Choi gave her employer months’ notice of her intention to leave, and her boss had no choice but to accept Choi’s unexpected ambition.

“But it just came down to, I just have to. I have to try. I have to stop holding back,” Choi said. “My boss said, ‘I really want you to stay, but I don’t have the right to ask you to, given why you’re leaving.'”

Leaving her job was not only a decision to focus on Paris, but also a change of focus towards a new career centered around dance.

Choi said in April that her plan was to open her own dance studio in Queens, N.Y., after the Paris Olympics ended. She had no plans to return to marketing… unless she had to.

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“If I do that, then something went wrong with my dancing career,” Choi said when asked if she would ever return to corporate work. “I still plan on dancing, but I really want to shift gears, give feedback and teach the next generation the things I’ve learned along the way.”

A medal in Paris could go a long way toward helping her achieve that goal and sustain a lucrative dance career. Choi admits that, unlike a corporate salary, earning money from her sport depends largely on the visibility of her own personal brand, something she learned the hard way while training for Paris.

Choi said she had money saved up from working in marketing to fund her Olympic ambitions and maintain a steady lifestyle. She said she had enough to last through 2023 when she quit her job. She had to pay for all of her flights to competitions herself and said she was able to save money by training at public community centers.

But she says she reached a point where she ran out of money and had to consider sacrificing her lifestyle. Luckily for her, around this time she managed to secure sponsorships with Nike and Samsung to fund her dream.

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While he won’t leave Paris with the fame of a podium finish, he can still use his business skills and the experience he gained from his corporate career to help him achieve his future goals.

“I was just lucky enough to have worked in a corporate environment and have knowledge of marketing, project management and operations that will serve me well in the long run,” Choi said.

It will be a while before Choi gets another shot at an Olympic medal, if at all. The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will not feature breakdancing as a sport, but Choi says she is rooting for its return at the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane. She will be 43 by then.

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