We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful NiK Kacy. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with NiK below.
Hi NiK, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Where do we get our resilience from? This is a question I think of often. Whenever I speak in public, whether it be on a panel or with a large audience, I often talk about resilience. From Pride month to Equality Fashion Week, where I bring hundreds of members of our LGBTQ+ community and give them an opportunity to collaborate and foster unity, I often use our resilience to inspire making an impact and show our visibility and diversity.
Most recently, the topic of resilience arose out of the Covid pandemic. So many people struggled during this time and had to overcome challenges while some profited from the plight of others. As a community, we often talk about how LGBTQ+ people, particularly Trans People of Color, are the most resilient because we basically began fighting to exist since birth, in a world that neglects, discards and hates our existence.
When I think about where I get MY resilience from, there is a long list of reasons and circumstances.
As a Queer, Transgender, Nonbinary, Asian Immigrant from a divorced family who was relocated from my birthplace and planted in a new country at the age of 7, I had to learn 2 new languages by first grade in order to just communicate. I was picked on and bullied as a child and was often left to my own devices growing up. I grew up doing a lot of chores for a family of 6, which quickly grew to a family of 8 in my teenage years. As an Asian person, assigned female at birth, I was raised to keep quiet, my opinions to myself and do as I was told. Little girls had zero rights and I was lucky if I got to play with my younger (male) cousin’s toys.
In school, when I asked questions, my teacher would call me a troublemaker. The popular white kids would tease me and passive aggressively pick on me (in a way I almost didn’t realize until later) and the other kids of color (Hispanic and Black) would bully me. I have forever imprinted in my head being in the girl’s bathroom in elementary school and was pushed around in a circle by girls who called me derogatory names and bounced me around like a rag-doll. Sometimes when I play it in my mind, it feels like a movie scene. Sadly, it was real and it was my life. In hindsight though I now understand why I was bullied by predominantly other people of color. Other little kids of color were also discriminated in our society and it was easy to pick on the little Asian kid who didn’t speak English.
As a young adult, I would watch white boys and girls get the kind of attention, care and responses they wanted, while it took me 3 times more work, effort and stamina to achieve the same results. I could get the best grades in everything but if I raised my hand to question anything, I was told I was causing trouble. Meanwhile, other non-Asian kids could disrupt class all day long with no punishment. In high school, I joined and led as many extracurricular activities as possible and was 7th in my class of over 300. I tried my hand at Track and Tennis teams but was sadly injured during a volunteer trip in the Appalachian mountains helping disadvantaged folks farm and build homes. That ended any sort of sports for me but I still believed in being as active as possible.
It wasn’t until college that I heard the words “resilient” and “persistent” used by another human being to describe ME… and it was the first time that something clicked in my head about who I was and what I was about.
In college, I had received a full scholarship with work study to cover my entire University costs. However, I needed to find work in order to pay for food and books, etc to help cover the remaining cost of living. I was studying International Communications at the time and I wanted to work in the Telecommunications Lab so I can get into the multimedia industry. The office was at the top of the campus and took me up two sections of very long and steep, outdoor cement staircases spread throughout the campus. I walked several miles everyday back and forth. When I heard about an open position at the Telecommunications office, I walked to that lab every day for two weeks asking for the opportunity to apply for that intern position. Every day I would walk up there to see if they hired anyone yet and every day they would say they are still interviewing. The hiring manager finally after two full weeks stopped and looked at me (while I was panting from climbing the stairs), and said, “you are the most persistent person I have ever met and you’re hired.”
It was the first time that I felt my persistence was not annoying or troublemaking… it was what made me resilient and hopeful that I will achieve everything I put my mind towards. To this day, I’ve not let any of the challenges that come my way deter me from living my best life or being my full self. For every “NO,” I’ve used it to inspire me to find new creative ways to create “YES” for me and others. I believe it is how my journey has led me to create the first of so many things. I’m not afraid to create something new because I don’t believe in failure. People who are resilient understand that there is only learning, growing and evolving.
Who would have thought the kid who was trained to keep quiet and follow orders would turn out to be the disruptor making changes, creating impact and doing things people said couldn’t be done?
I did. 
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Well, like I said, I’m the Founder and CEO of NiK Kacy Footwear, the first gender equal footwear and accessories brand focused on developing a genderequal and genderfree sizing range for all identities and spectrums. I developed my own foot mold that breaks the traditional gender binary of shoe sizes in the US, which usually is divided between Men’s and Women’s. I use a European sizing system to help make sizing easier to understand but the shoe molds are custom made and designed by me that breaks the traditional proportions. At the end of the day, the shoe either fits or it doesn’t. Gender has nothing to do with it.
As for what I’m up to currently… I’m working with a few other brands to help provide a platform on my website to help spread the word on brands that want to be inclusive and representative of all identities. I am also in the planning stages of Equality Fashion Week, the first LGBTQ+ focused fashion week in LA, which will be held in late April or May of 2024. I am looking for partners who believe in what I’m doing and want to support financially so that we can fairly compensate the over 100+ queer talent who will be participating in EFW.
I am also working on a sneaker design with fellow gender inclusive brand DapperBoi. They are dear friends of mine and were recently on Shark Tank, which I’m so proud of their accomplishments! Talk about resilience!! They are inspiring! Because I was so inspired, I wanted to design a special DapperBoi x NiK Kacy sneaker to commemorate the challenges we’ve overcome together. We started our journey nearly side by side for the last decade and this was something that was organic and so reflective of our friendship. Be on the lookout soon from both NiK Kacy Footwear and DapperBoi for our new sneaker for Fall 2023!
Finally, I’m also excited to be heading to Dallas for the Coming Out For Love Meet and Greet on September 14th at @sueellensdallas in Dallas Texas. Host Jessica Clark, myself and other cast members will be there for a reunion and discuss all things Coming Out For Love! If you haven’t watched the streaming web series’ first season yet, you should! It’s different than any other dating show and it’s the first all queer dating series. You can use my special promo code “nik” for a discount on the watch bundles! Here’s the direct link for the discount! https://comingoutforlove.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Looking back, I think my top 3 qualities or skills that impacted my journey the most were my organizational and time management skills, my resilience/persistence, and my belief in myself. I am detailed in how I manage my time and priorities. I have an uncanny ability to maximize efficiency in everything I do so it makes me very effective in my time management skills. I can accomplish a lot in a very short amount of time. (For example, the first Equality Fashion Week in 2018, I produced in less than 1 month.) When I am passionate about doing something, I get hyper focused and breathe, eat and sleep what I’m setting my mind on.
Of course, as I’ve gotten older (and hopefully wiser), I am more mindful of my health and spirit so I balance out my work time and my off time more evenly. I remember to take breaks now and to “self-care” however that may look like at the time, which is something I hope younger folks early in their journey learn to do more of now. Take care of yourself, believe in yourself and don’t let failure be part of your vocabulary. Things may not always turn out the wa you expect it, but it is always learning and often times, it’s even better and will always take you one step closer to where you will be. 😉 Take your experiences as learning and it will help make you grow every time. Every experience helps us to learn more about ourselves and to do BE better so essentially, we are always succeeding!
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I am definitely looking for like minded folks who believe in helping those most under-represented in our LGBTQ+ BIPOC communities. I’m looking for people who understand what privilege is, have it and want to leverage it to help those without. I am looking for people who don’t believe they are above anyone or anything and just want to contribute and make a positive impact – leave the world better than they found it. I’m looking for partners in crime who want aren’t afraid to go against the grain and make the world more equitable, not just equal. If you have skills, access, contacts or financial access to help me bring Equality Fashion Week 2024 to life and reach it’s full potential, please contact me at info@equalityfashionweek.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.equalityfashionweek.com / www.nikkacy.com
- Instagram: @nikkacy @nikkacyfootwear @equalityfashionweek
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/nikkacyfootwear / www.facebook.com/equalityfashionweek
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/nikkacy
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/nikkacyfootwear
Image Credits
Kelly Balch, Nicolette J-Pownall, Torrie Mills
