Celebrating spirited women who embrace life with Mother Nature. These women inspire us through their stories of adventure, personal growth, and connection to something greater than themselves.
Nature becomes the perfect backdrop for compelling, yet light hearted conversations where we wrestle with some of life’s big sticking points such as when and how to open up the doors to being brave and authentic, compassionate and curious.
These themes bubble to the surface when we explore a variety of access points into the natural realm. Whether by pushing physical and mental limits, creative art making, exploring healing and wellbeing, pursuing business endeavours, understanding ecology or unpacking spirituality.
Join our community and Nature Club to get inspired.
Celebrating spirited women who embrace life with Mother Nature. These women inspire us through their stories of adventure, personal growth, and connection to something greater than themselves.
Nature becomes the perfect backdrop for compelling, yet light hearted conversations where we wrestle with some of life’s big sticking points such as when and how to open up the doors to being brave and authentic, compassionate and curious.
These themes bubble to the surface when we explore a variety of access points into the natural realm. Whether by pushing physical and mental limits, creative art making, exploring healing and wellbeing, pursuing business endeavours, understanding ecology or unpacking spirituality.
Join our community and Nature Club to get inspired.
This episode is about courage and confidence. Traits that my guests today Chelsea Rizzo and Allison Levy have an abundance of. As co-founders of the New York based, women's outdoor brand Hikerkind, these two women epitomise what it means to trailblaze an industry. They saw an opportunity, conjured up the idea, and then executed it in record time.
Being hikers themselves, they experienced first-hand the frustration of not finding gear that empowered them when on trail. They lent into this signal, realising that women were an underrepresented category in the industry. They then committed to being leaders in this space, completely redefining the outdoor segment for women. They believe the only way for a woman to rise to the challenges that will undoubtedly come up when hiking outside, is for them to feel authentic and confident. And their hiking gear, including the apparel, plays a big role in this empowerment. By creating this brand they’ve officially shown the world that style and function don’t need to be mutually exclusive, in fact, a beautiful synergy can exist between the two.
Both women started their careers in the fashion industry, but felt this trajectory was limited. Then came covid. They didn’t see this as a risky, scary time for business, but a time of opportunity. As brands were getting lost in a sea of mediocre products and false instagram facades, they built Hikerkind to have its feet firmly grounded in the values that we need to see more of in the world today; Community, collaboration and intentional design. It’s living this philosophy day in and out, that has meant their entire lives have changed as a result of starting the brand. They didn’t expect to feel such joy working in a value-led business where Nature is at the heart of literally everything they do and that was a beautiful surprise for them.
Their goal is to show people that Nature is accessible to everyone, and isn’t some elusive mountain we need to climb. Everyone is equal on trail, reminding me of Gloria Steinem’s beautiful quote where she wishes for a world ‘where we are linked not ranked’.
This chat is jam-packed with entrepreneurial business insights, tales of personal growth and has an uplifting, seize-the-day type energy. These two New Yorkers will show you that a vision is always worth pursuing, as long as it's one you truly care about.
PLUS! Head over to the Hikerkind website to enjoy 10% off your purchase, use SUNSMITH10 at checkout.
Show Notes:
Book reference - Signals: How Everyday Signs Can Help Us Navigate the World's Turbulent Economy, by Dr Philippa Malmgren
For this new podcast to grow, your help would be greatly appreciated. Please consider any of the following meaningful gestures;
Share this episode with a friend
Hit ‘subscribe’ on your podcast app of choice
Rate the show with 5 stars
Leave a review