Leslie Kim

Owner and Founder

Dynamite Starfish

TBD

Steering Committee Member

The Basics

Company Name: Dynamite Starfish
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Founded: 2014
Full-Time Employees: 1
Products: Hand-printed apparel, pins, giftables
Social: Instagram
Claim to Fame: Bear’s Ears project : Our “Crying Bear” drawing was able to bring in over $1600 (after corporate matching) for the Access Fund in 2017.

The Culture

The best thing about working at Dynamite Starfish is: It’s just me. It’s also the only negative.
When we’re not working, we’re:  Climbing, cooking, fermenting cabbage using laborious traditional methods, designing for other clients.
What we’re reading: Haunting the Korean Diaspora by Grace M. Cho, The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
What we’re listening to: Waxahatchee, Frank Black, podcasts about nutrition and wellness.
If they made a movie about our workplace, it would be called: 99% Flailure.
Inclusion in the outdoors matters because: I believe that the large gap between reality and what is portrayed in the media causes exponential damage to our society down the line. People, especially youth, use the media as their primary way of creating their personal ideologies. Inclusion is a huge factor in this, because when a group of people never see people like themselves doing an activity, they may inherently think they are not meant to do that thing.

Five years down the line, it’s our hope that: My company has grown enough to sustain a life for not just myself but for a number of employees. We have grown gracefully and have made decisions along the way that keep human wellness in mind. We have not succumbed to trends or the status quo, but have kept our priorities strong and used them to positively affect our interactions. I also want to start learning more about fabrics and be able to offer more sustainable base fabrics.