Today we’d like to introduce you to Kiki D.
Kiki, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started Trashy Girls Collective back in April 2019 with two fellow SCUBA divers/badass ladies – Bess and Kristina. I moved to South Florida at the end of 2017 to work in the diving industry – in my early days in South FL on my days off from teaching SCUBA diving, I would take my dog Daisy to the beach and we just started picking up trash along the shoreline. Other beachgoers would help out, and then it became a fun little activity for friends to join in and we’d just walk along the beach and talk about life, the environment and kinda just unplug while cleaning up the beach. Fast forward to now, and we have cleaned up over 1,000 lbs of trash on beach cleanups and diving cleanups! We do monthly beach cleanups with the Parrot Lounge in Fort Lauderdale, and we try to do a reef diving cleanup every month as well but that’s very dependent on the weather since we want our dives to be inclusive to all levels of divers so we will reschedule if the ocean conditions aren’t ideal. We’re currently working on expanding our community, outreach projects, our website, and designing sustainable apparel with a percentage of proceeds being donated to local organizations – primarily smaller marine conservation organizations that could use more attention!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It seems as if everyone’s obstacle nowadays is the luxury of time. For the most part, broadening Trashy Girls Collective reach and spreading useful eco-friendly information has been pretty smooth sailing – although we always feel like we can do more, but that’s also a large part of our message – every little bit counts! It’s better to be imperfectly sustainable because every action big or small makes a difference!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My main expertise is as a SCUBA diving professional – I am a Course Director and Instructor Trainer with SCUBA Diving International and First Response Training International. I’m also a technical diver, artist and currently working on a research vessel 45 miles offshore from North Carolina. I spent a good part of this past summer traveling in Europe, visiting family, and diving in Grand Cayman after leaving a management and training position I held for almost five years at a local diving development center – I am dedicating more time to Trashy Girls Collective now that I have made space for it, along with working in different areas of diving.
I’m very excited for this next chapter now that I’m concentrating more on the sustainable design aspect of Trashy Girls – I have been an artist my whole life and earned a degree in fine arts from the Pratt Institute in NY where I attended art school many years ago. Combining my passion for the ocean with art is what I’ve always dreamed of!
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up, I was kinda all over the place – physically and mentally. I was born in Northern California and lived in a beautiful suburb and attended a not-so-culturally-diverse elementary school, where I was one of three Asian kids – and I’m only half Korean on my Mum’s side, Scottish on my Dad’s side, with me being first generation American. When I was 4 years old, I had a near-drowning incident at the health club pool down the street from our house – my Dad then forced me into swim lessons and then swim team, and later I almost became a pro swimmer after we moved to the Philippines in 1995 for my Dad’s job. What a culture shock that was! I had never even heard of the Philippines, and jumping from my safe little suburban life to a third-world country was pretty jarring. I learned how to SCUBA dive in 1996 at 11 years old and have been obsessed with the ocean and marine life ever since. Because of a rocky home life when I was a young teenager, I left home quite young and have traveled, lived, and worked all over the world – Hawaii, Maine, New York, Scotland, Australia, Honduras, Florida, and now on a 150ft. research vessel 45 miles offshore North Carolina.
I was always very shy as a kid, which later possibly translated into just being insecure and feeling different and misunderstood, hence the rocky home life. Being forced into a mold has never worked for me – as I’ve grown older, especially once I hit my 30s, I’m learning more and more to celebrate anything and everything and to give myself more grace. It’s also been great realizing that there are so, so many amazing people that have the exact same interests and common goals as me. If you are passionate about something, you are bound to gravitate towards others that share it, and they will gravitate towards you – which has been such a large part of the community of Trashy Girls Collective. No one, and not one thing, is too small to make a difference!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @trashygirlscollective
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/trashygirlscollective
