Even if you are from the same neighborhood as someone else, you might still be coming from different places. Where you are from is a complicated question and it elicits complicated, but interesting and thought-provoking responses. We’ve shared some of those responses below.

Kimberly Hogate | Marketing Agency Owner

I’m proud to be from Chicago where I grew up feeling like there was “something more” out there to be discovered. I grew up in Cook County about 30 minutes from the downtown area, so I was right outside of the super urban environment, with just a quick drive or train ride to get right in the thick of it. Read more>>

Cathy A. Smith | Artist/costume designer

I grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota and on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation – on a ranch far from any metropolitan area. I had to invent a career for myself and create my own business, I had no other choice. But being an artist of beadwork and porcupine quillwork, I developed my skill by learning from my elders, then took it to an art center that specialized in native art- namely Santa Fe, NM. It was a huge move and a big risk, with no support or financial backing, but in Santa Fe, I was discovered by Kevin Costner to make the costumes for the film Dances with Wolves. that put me in the film business for the past 34 years- 47 Westerns!
Ten years ago my daughter, Jennifer Jesse Smith, who is a silver and gold smith, revived an 80 year old historic Indian Trading Post on the High road to Taos, just north of Santa Fe. We have a costume museum as well as a gallery full of our collection of vintage Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Indigenous beadwork and paintings, as well as the soulful jewelry of Jennifer Jesse Smith.
I am an historian of the American West as well a being an artist and we share that history in our Nambe Trading Post. Read more>>

Michelle Dinsmore | Business Owner & Brow Expert

I was born in Wyoming and come from a line of rebel perfectionists. We moved around a lot and met a lot of people, so while I craved the steady rhythm of staying in one place, I still need regular change in my life. Read more>>

Vyvyan Brunst | Photographer & Wild Horse Advocate

I was born in England, in the city of Reading, some 40 miles or so along the Thames west of London. When I was two my parents moved to Switzerland. My father had accepted a job teaching English and Russian at the International School of Geneva. He’d spent part of his military service in the 1950s at Cambridge, learning Russian in a low-level intelligence program. My pre-school and early elementary school years were wonderful ones, along the shores of Lac Léman in that cosmopolitan city, and before we left for the United States I had picked up French, more or less on the streets, playing with local kids. Read more>>