August 27, 2025 • 49 mins
Elizabeth Sneed is the face and founder of Curvy Surfer Girl—a global body-positive movement empowering women of all shapes and sizes to find strength, joy, and belonging in the waves. But few would have guessed that she would make a career from the waves after she nearly drowned at fourteen. In this episode, Elizabeth shares her journey from a turbulent childhood in rural East Texas, to a high-pressure career in politics, to eventually facing her deepest fear of the ocean. That leap of faith–and a move to Hawaii–opened the door to a completely new life. Elizabeth now inspires her hundreds of thousands of followers to embrace their bodies and discover the power that comes from reconnecting with nature and themselves.
Be sure to subscribe, leave us a rating, and share with your friends if you liked this episode!
She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Elizabeth, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
Support the show: https://www.shepivotsthepodcast.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Elizabeth Sneed (00:00):
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Elizabeth Snead.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Today's guest,
(00:34):
Elizabeth Snead knows what it means to transform hardship into strength.
She is now the founder behind Kirby surfer Girl, a
body positive women's surfing movement where she leads a community
of women around the world finding empowerment in the waves.
She even got me in the water and gave me
and my kids a personal surf lesson after our interview.
(00:56):
But her path yere was anything but easy. Elizabeth grew
up in rural East Texas and a childhood marked by
instability and difficulty. Even then, she carried with her a
love of animals, a connection to nature, and a drive
to carve out something more for herself. That determination first
led her into the world of politics, where she built
(01:17):
a career navigating high pressure environments and learning how to
use her voice to create change. But Elizabeth's most defining
pivot came not from her professional life, but from a
moment of personal fear. At just fourteen, she nearly drowned
in the ocean. The experience was so traumatic that she
swore she would never go back. Yet years later she
(01:40):
felt an undeniable pull back to the water, a sense
that the ocean was calling her, tied to her body
and her spirit. Instead of running from it, she took
the risk to face her fear head on and learned
to serve. That decision opened the door to a completely
new life. Elizabeth now inspires her hundreds of thousands of followers,
(02:02):
empowering women of all shapes and sizes to find joy, strength,
and belonging in the waves, something she herself didn't feel
from the surfing industry. And she's actually changing the industry
and is pushing companies to create products that fit bigger bodies.
And she didn't stop there. She has now centered ocean
(02:23):
conservation and women's issues in the Curvy surfer Girl community.
Her story is a powerful reminder that sometimes our deepest
fears hold the key to our greatest passions. Let's jump
right in.
Elizabeth Sneed (02:39):
My name is Elizabeth Snead, and I'm a surfer. Founder
of the Body positive women's surfing movement in Honolulu.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:46):
Juway, So we're going to start way back, little Elizabeth, Like,
what is your earliest memory?
Elizabeth Sneed (02:53):
This is an excellent question. I would say my earliest
memory is with my dogs, growing up on over ten
acres in rural northeast Texas and beginning the journey of
a very wildlife.
Emily Tisch Sussman (03:07):
You said it's a very small town, like tells Moore,
set the seat that tells more about it.
Elizabeth Sneed (03:11):
Yes, So I was born at Parkland Hospital in Dallas,
which is where John F. Kennedy was taken, and then
grew up in this really rural, small East Texas town.
The first town I grew up in was called Brownsboro,
and I would move many times throughout Texas until I
was eventually relocated to Arizona with my aunt and uncle.
(03:32):
But these towns are super small, very much impoverished, you know.
The only jobs really were labor jobs on the oil
fields or truck drivers, usually less than a thousand people.
So I had quite a tumultuous childhood and both of
my parents were unfortunately some form of very severely mentally ill,
(03:55):
and so I grew up really like the first seven
years of my life in a vain traveling around the
United States. They were radicalized apocalyptic evangelicals, and so I
was kind of in between living life in a van
and then living in a trailer on about ten acres
of land in East Texas. You just know that, you know,
(04:17):
we're getting in the van and we're going somewhere, and
that was life, you know, it was life on the road.
And then we would get back to the trailer on
this big plot of land, and you know, I had
my dogs and my little lifestyle there, and that was it.
I knew that there were other people that were living
not this lifestyle. I was a very intelligent young child,
(04:39):
and so I mean I gathered like this was not usual,
you know, going into churches and asking for money and
you know, living in a van, going all over the place.
Emily Tisch Sussman (04:50):
When did you start school.
Elizabeth Sneed (04:52):
I started school in first grade, and there was you know,
lots of extensive child abuse that I went through all
through my younger years, which I've shared very publicly. So
I was navigating that and that was just normal for me.
Like you came home and you got beaten nearly half
to death, and then you go back to school the
(05:12):
next day and pretend like you you know, fell or
did something else to hurt you, and you just continue
on like that was just normal.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:21):
Did the teachers ever ask you about it? Anyone ever
catch on?
Elizabeth Sneed (05:25):
You know, when you grew up in rural country environments
like that, all the kids are kind of bruised up
one way or another. And in East Texas in particular,
at least in that time period, it's very hard for
anybody to prove child abuse and then have it land anywhere.
So it has to be really radical, which not that
ours wasn't, but it has to be visibly radical. And
(05:46):
both of my parents, despite being very mentally ill, were
highly intelligent people, and they knew how to disguise everything
that was going on quite well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:56):
How and when did you eventually leave the house.
Elizabeth Sneed (05:59):
So the abuse had escalated to a point where it
was pretty undeniable by this point, even to members in
the public and community, and my mom essentially tried to
kill me on our front lawn in front of CPS,
and I was immediately removed because there was clear evidence
that my life was in danger. So they made a
(06:21):
phone call and there was a court order place for
my immediate removal, and I was sent inside to get
put whatever my belongings were in trash bags, and from
that point on I was thirteen years old. That anniversary
is coming up. I left June thirteenth of two thousand
and three for foster care, and I ended up in
two shelters and then eventually my first foster home, which
(06:43):
was very abusive, and then finally a second foster home,
which was extraordinary. That was where I started my martial
arts career, was with my foster mother, gree who decided
she wanted to enroll all of the foster girls that
she had. They were about four of us in martial arts,
so that we were never subjected to physical violence and
(07:04):
couldn't defend ourselves. And that was where I took second
in the state of Texas, and taekwondo was through her,
you know, enrolling us in these self defense programs and
molding us as future athletes really and then subsequent to that,
my aunt and uncle would gain custody of me that
summer and I was nearly fifteen years old, and then
(07:25):
I moved to Arizona and they took extraordinary care of me.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:30):
Just a year after getting out, she started to develop
symptoms for an autoimmune disease, something she has dealt with
ever since.
Elizabeth Sneed (07:39):
If you're familiar with the a studies that were conducted,
I believe they started in the seventies. They have now
after studying thousands of people that have gone through extensive
child abuse and traumas children, they've been able to identify
that autoimmune diseases are very prevalent in this population of people.
(08:00):
And I developed the autoimmune disease that I have now
at the age of fourteen, and then it has only
progressively become more and more severe as I've aged.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:09):
I mean, that makes sense, Like it totally makes sense now.
Just around that same time, when you were fourteen, you
volunteered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Yes, how did
that come about? Can you tell us about what happened? Sure?
Elizabeth Sneed (08:24):
So on part with you know Texans and tradition. I
was required to go to a church the entire time
I was in high school. You just don't have an option,
you know, even if you don't want to. So I was.
You know, when my aunt and uncle gang custody of me.
They're amazing people. They went to church and I was
(08:44):
required to attend with them, whether I wanted to or not.
There was a youth humanitarian group being organized to go
to help relieve Hurricane Katrina. And I've always been a humanitarian,
even from a young age. I was like, I have
no issue with humanitarian work. I'm happy to go and
help rebuild and assist communities anywhere and everywhere I can.
(09:04):
That spoke to me I didn't necessarily need to do
it in the name of religion, so to speak, but
that was where the opportunity presented itself. So I went
with this church youth group to Mobile, Alabama, in the
southern part of Alabama on the coastline, and started helping
rebuild schools and other infrastructure in the community. And on
(09:26):
one of those days, I was asked as part of
the group to swim out to a sandbar at the
end of a very long pier. And I didn't know
how to swim, Like, I didn't properly know how to swim.
I knew how to doggy paddle and maybe tread water
for a little bit, but this was about a quarter
of a mile offshore and it was a long swim,
and so I got really peer pressured into doing it,
(09:47):
despite a lot of resistance. It was like the whole
youth group was going out there, and these were upper
middle class kids, you know, that had grown up with
resources to take swimming lessons and have swimming pools in
their backyard, and a lot of them were on the
swim team at this very prominent high school in my area,
and so they all just kind of pressured me and
(10:08):
they were like, no, we'll help you if something happens.
And looking back on it, I was like, wait, you're
gonna help me if something happened. But I doggy paddle
a quarter of a mile out to the sandbar. We'd
been out there for a couple hours, and I was like, okay,
I mean, it's just a bunch of sands, Like, I'm
over it. Let's go back to shore. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty.
We've been building houses all day. Moving on, and so
(10:31):
I got two other girls to swim back with me,
and on the swim back, the weather had very aggressively
changed almost instantly, and we were lost at sea, and
the three of us we survived because of fishermen found us.
But there was another young man that was kind of
(10:52):
in between the pier and the sandbar that was swimming
and playing about our age fourteen, and we watched him
drown to death. It was very traumatic. We were completely
convinced that we were not going to make it out alive,
and we had made peace with that outcome, and I thought,
you know, if I survived this, I'll never go back
(11:12):
in the ocean ever again.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:15):
Elizabeth got on with life, avoiding the ocean, but dreaming
of a bigger life. She eventually started school at Arizona
State University, planning to become a veterinarian.
Elizabeth Sneed (11:27):
So at a young age, I think I remember having
consciousness about this. Around four, I decided I was going
to be a veterinarian, and that became my survival response
to everything. I had recognized at a very early age
that people associated doctors and academic achievement with success, and
(11:49):
very early on I recognized that if I was going
to escape this hell that I was in, I was
going to have to succeed my way out of it.
And so that's what I did. I dedicated myself to
being a veterinarian. I became absolutely obsessed with animals, animal physiology, psychology,
you name it. I got accepted to pre veterinary school
(12:11):
and then went through three and a half years of
that until I had a revelation at about twenty twenty
one years old that this was a survival response for me,
and I had gone very I mean, I can tell
you so much about animals, it's unreal, But I loved
animals like that was my passion as a child, as
an adult, even still to this day. You'll see there's
(12:33):
a lot of wildlife featured on my page. And that
was how I succeeded my way out of poverty and
foster care and survived some very violent, emotional and physical
abuse for the majority of my life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (12:52):
While she forged her way working toward her dream of
becoming a veterinarian, she also had her site set on
another dream.
Elizabeth Sneed (13:00):
There were three places I wanted to see my entire life.
It was Hawaii, New York, and Alaska. I came into
the world wanting to visit these three places. I have
no clue who what when we're haw Wahi. My little
childhood brain chose them, but it did. I said that
since I was like three years old. So Hawaii was
the first one I got to and it was supposed
(13:22):
to be a present for graduating my high school, my
high school graduation present. However, it fell through. We just
logistically it didn't quite organize, and so my sophomore year
of my university fall break, I called U my aunt Mom,
who's a flight attendant, and I said, I booked myself
(13:44):
a round trip ticket to Hawaii, and I'm just going
to go, Like I've always wanted to go there. I've
always wanted to see it. I've never seen blue water.
I needed to confirm it wasn't a conspiracy theory in
magazines that were just photoshopped. My whole life really exist.
So it was just just very like I'm going to
go see why casual. I didn't think anything of it, really,
(14:07):
And then I got there and I had a very powerful, moving,
almost spiritual experience, and I just knew that that's where
I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (14:18):
Did you go into the water right away like that
must have been? Yeah?
Elizabeth Sneed (14:21):
I can absolutely not. I could not imagine. Yeah, I
was still very much traumatized from the ocean at this time.
But I've told the story a handful of times and
it seems a little bit woo woo, and I don't
really know how else to describe it. This is what
really happened. I get to Hawaii. I had been landlocked
my entire life. I went from Texas to Arizona, so
(14:42):
I'd never really met the ocean properly other than when
I was nearly you know, exiting stage left. And so
I'm there. I'm in a little hostel. It's right by
the ocean, and I could feel the ocean inside of
my body when the tide would go out, pulling on
(15:04):
the earth. I don't know how or why I experienced
that phenomenon, but I could feel it. And I would
go to the beach where all of the beach boys
who go back to the eighteen like turn of the centry,
turn of the twentieth century, this is a tradition that
goes back that far. I would go to the beach
(15:25):
boys every morning at the exact time the tides were
going out, and they were like, how do you keep
showing up exactly when the tides are going out? And
I said, I can feel it in my chest. I
can feel the ocean pulling on the earth, like on
the island. And they were like, there's no way I
And they kept timing it every day and I was
(15:47):
I was showing up exactly when the tide was going out,
like it was.
Emily Tisch Sussman (15:51):
Pulling me with it.
Elizabeth Sneed (15:53):
And so then they convinced me to take a surfing
lesson in Waikiki and kind of assured me that, you know,
I wasn't going to be ripped out to see again. Yeah,
and so that was my reintroduction to the ocean.
Emily Tisch Sussman (16:08):
I was a pretty big reintroduction to go from I
can't put my toe in more than a couple of
inches too, I'm going to try surfing.
Elizabeth Sneed (16:14):
Yeah, it was. But thankfully in Waikiki the waves are
really beautiful. The Hawaiian people or some of the most
special people in the earth. They were clearly seeing that
I wanted to have a relationship with the ocean, but
that I was terrified of it. And so that was
when they intervened and was like, you know, let us
take you out. Let us like reintroduce this this space
(16:37):
to you and help you heal. They shepherded me through
that experience and it changed my life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (16:44):
For the time being. Elizabeth had to go back to university,
back to what she thought was her dream of becoming
a VET. When we come back, we learn about Elizabeth's
first pivot stay tuned.
Elizabeth Sneed (17:11):
By the time I was ready to go to VET school,
I had over three thousand shadowing hours and I dedicated
literally a whole lifetime to it from five to twenty.
I was very much like every summer was spent in
VET offices and it was my life dream. And so
I had a bit of an existential crisis when I
had to change my major. It was genuinely a full
scale existential crisis. And I was very late in my
(17:34):
career when I did it. At university, I was a
junior because I was preparing to go to VET School,
So I had to really make a decision. At that point.
There was an intersection, and it's like, well, you either
stay committed to this and you're going to go to
VET school, or you have to change now otherwise you're
not going to be able to get a degree. So
I talked to any and every mentor I had, and
(17:56):
we were just grasping at straws at this point about
what I could do to grad and landed on I'm
really great with languages, I'm a natural with history, and
why don't you just go and see if there's something
in international business that you can major in? Because I
was at a business school, WP Carrie at Arizona State University,
(18:17):
and so I was like great international business. It's the
cross sections between most of the things that I care about.
Turns out they didn't have that as a major. And
I'm like, what major institution in the United States does
not have international business as a bachelor's degree, Like what
are we doing? And so they're like, well, we have
other business degrees that you can choose from, and they're
like half and half. You know, you get half a
(18:38):
business degree in this and then you get half in
something else so that you're more marketable when you graduate.
And I was like, okay, what are the options. And
it was like supply chain management and da da, da da,
all these different things. And one of the I said, well,
what's the closest you've got to international business. Let's simplify this,
and they said global business politics. And so I was like, fine,
(19:02):
sign me up for that. Whatever that is. That's I'll
call it international business on my resume if I have
to at this point. And so I started taking all
of these political science classes because it was essentially half
of a political science degree and half of a business degree,
which I didn't realize at that time. I just was
trying to get international business so I can market myself
after I graduated and do something. Turns out I was
(19:25):
really good at it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (19:26):
Did you have a vision of what you would do
with this quote international business degree once you created it?
Elizabeth Sneed (19:31):
I had no idea. I was so lost, Like I
was so emotionally devastated about not becoming a veterinarian, and
I had all of this medical and science and biology
and chemistry behind me, and now I had to pivot
really hard to go. This route was nothing I had
been studying for my whole life. But I was naturally
very good at it. I was always interested in history.
I always loved it. Like I said, by this point,
(19:53):
I was already minoring in French, and so I was
just like, I'll figure it out. I guess as I go.
And I took a Foreign Pol class and I was like, oh,
this is my vibe. This is my vibe. I go
up to the professor and I'm like, how do I
do this? That's what I want to do. I literally
want to shape the world. And he was like, well,
(20:17):
you can only go one place to do that. There
well two places, really, he was like, you either go
to the UN or you go to DC.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:24):
And I went to both.
Elizabeth Sneed (20:27):
I mean, you talk about girl, bossing to the SUN.
I was like, we are not going backwards, that's for sure.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:32):
No, no, no, we only go forwards. Okay, So tell us
about each of those, the UN and d Space.
Elizabeth Sneed (20:37):
Yeah. So I decided I was going to move to
Switzerland to study French full time, because you need, you
need to have a real good grasp on a foreign
language if you're going to do anything in international affairs.
So I moved to Switzerland. I went to the University
delos En and studied for a year in French. And
then the UN was just in Geneva, so I got
(20:58):
to frequent the UN and you know, visit and do
little programs that they had for you know, foreign exchange students.
And then of course I was studying international affairs at
the University in Lausanne as well, along with my French degree.
And then I was able to travel all throughout Europe
with just extremely little resources, but I did it nonetheless.
(21:20):
And then I returned from Switzerland and was on to
the next and I said, Okay, the next thing I
have to conquer is Washington, d C. And you've got
to remember, I'm doing Washington, d C. From like I
didn't realize it at the time, but I was only
five years removed from foster care and like extreme poverty
(21:40):
and extreme child abuse. But I was so hyper focused
and determined that I was just like, I will find
a way to make it in Washington, d C. I
had no money. I used one thousand dollars tax return
and the institute I went to in DC. I convinced
(22:01):
this institution to make me one of their scholars, which
was like a divine intervention fee because I was competing
against people that were in Harvard and Yale and all
of these other very prestigious institutions that were going to
this Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, d C. I mean
this was for like wealthy people's children that were about
to become ambassadors by appointment, you know, because they made
(22:24):
the right amount of a donation to a campaign that's
who I was on part with. And I was like, yeah,
I'm going to compete with you, and I'm going to
do it. I'm going to figure it out, and money's
never going to stop me, because that's not allowed in
my universe.
Emily Tisch Sussman (22:38):
Yeah.
Elizabeth Sneed (22:38):
So I went door to door in my entire community.
I asked for donations, I fundraised. I went to small
businesses in my community, and I said, look, you know,
I want to study foreign policy and I want to
be on the world stage, and I would really appreciate
if you would support helping send me to Washington, d C.
And I fundraised a small amount of money, convinced the
institution to make me want of their scholars and I
(23:02):
was able to complete a full study of foreign policy
in Washington, d C. And that's where I was introduced
into becoming a lobbyist, which would be my career for
the next ten years.
Emily Tisch Sussman (23:14):
Elizabeth dove into the world of politics, where she worked
with the Armed Services Committee, running into some of DC's
biggest names.
Elizabeth Sneed (23:23):
I had met Senator John McCain on the plane ride
to Washington, d C. And the odds of that were
a million to one. And I walked up to him
on the airplane and I introduced myself and I said,
I would I would love to get a picture with
you as I'm entering Washington, d C. Because the scholarship
(23:45):
that I was given from this institution involved documenting my
whole experience in Washington, DC. And I said, what are
the odds that I ride on the plane with one
of the most recognizable US senators in American history and
st John McCain such an amazing man. I was at
the back of the airplane and he told his chief
(24:06):
of staff that there was a young woman that wanted
to meet him and take a picture. And he waited
for me for over thirty minutes to deboard the plane
at Reagan International. And it changed the trajectory of my
life because when I came back from Washington, d C.
He was up for reelection and I went to one
of his campaign events and I said, Senator John McCain,
(24:27):
I don't know if you remember me. I was the
young woman on the airplane that I asked you to
stay behind. And he said, of course I do. You're Elizabeth.
And I'm like, you're kidding you. Of all, you remember
my name. He's like, yes, of course I do. And
I was like, this is the most impressive thing I've
ever seen in my life. And then I told him that,
you know, I was looking for an opportunity to continue
(24:49):
staying in my field for you know, everything I had
been studying. And he offered me a role on his
campaign team as a field organizer, and so I helped
with his reelection in twenty sixteen, and of course he
was reelected, and then after his successful campaign, he helped
place me in an environmental nonprofit where I would then
(25:11):
go on to advocate for our natural resources. So, as
you can imagine, right around that time, things drastically begin
to politically change with the election of President Trump in
his first term, and so most of the work that
we had done was being undone by the administration on
the conservation fronts, and so the nonprofit it really didn't
(25:38):
have anywhere to go, and so I was laid off.
And when I was laid off, I just said, I
don't know what I'm doing anymore. I was in DC,
I was in Switzerland, I was in all of these
places where we broke our power. And I think what
I was trying to do the entire time was attempt
to prove that I had meaning and that I had
(26:00):
purpose to the world other than growing up as this
very poor East Texas girl. I just wanted to show
everybody that, you know, I was going to be somebody,
and I was going to be something. But then when
you grow up, it's like, well, who are these imaginary
people You're trying to prove this too? Now there's nobody left,
like nobody knows your story. Nobody really cares or is aware.
(26:23):
You're girl bossing so hard and you're doing it really well.
But I was not happy. Ultimately. I was really just
trying to prove my worth to society through achievement. And
I thought the more I achieved and the more I did,
and the more I was around successful, powerful people, that
I would be seen as worthy and lovable and important.
(26:46):
And I finally had a breakthrough that that's really not
the answer of how I'm going to find self actualization.
And I gave it up, and I said, you know,
I wanted, what my soul really wants and has always wanted,
is to live in Hawai, become a surfer, and I'll
do whatever I need to do when I get to Washington,
(27:08):
d C. Or when I get to Hawaii, maybe I
can become a environmental activist there, you know, with the
Pacific Ocean and the Pacific peoples. I didn't really know
where the world was going to take me. I just
knew that my future was there and that somehow my
purpose was connected to Hawaii.
Emily Tisch Sussman (27:27):
So she packed up her life and headed back to Hawaii.
After the break, we dive into how Elizabeth made her
pivot into social media and the creation of Kirby Surfer Girl.
Elizabeth Sneed (27:50):
So I moved to Hawaii and I got a job
doing anything I could. I became an executive assistant at
a little nonprofit and then they would go bankrupt about
a year later, and I would find myself kind of
in the same position. I was just questioning, like, how
am I going to move forward. I had to become
an Uber driver for two years because I was simply
(28:12):
just too overqualified for most of the positions that were available.
Even at the Hawaii State Capitol. It was really hard
to get a job because people were like, well, you've
lived in DC and you've done all of this, and
you could do my job. I don't want to hire you,
and then you take my job. And I was like,
I don't want your job. I just want a job, right,
(28:33):
Please just hire me. I'm driving Uber and I have
three degrees, and like, please something. And it just knows
everywhere I turned, and it was really devastating. I was
unemployed for two years of my life. I started having
nervous breakdowns and a full scale identity crisis because I
had worked so hard my entire life to gain an
(28:55):
inch for all of it to be stripped away from me,
like my whole identity was stripped away from me at
that point. Your academic accomplishments don't matter, Your professional accomplishments
don't matter, like you're a glorified taxi driver. And I
was like, is this dream worth pursuing? Or have I
made a critical error in judgment at this point? And
(29:16):
people were asking me that every day I woke up,
which was leading to more and more anxiety and panic
and uncertainty. And I said, all I know is that
this is where I belong. I don't belong back in Washington,
d C. I already did that, and I was not
finding fulfillment. And I don't want to live a whole
human life unfulfilled. It's just not fair and it wasn't
(29:40):
serving me. And I said, I know that I can
accomplish something greater if I am in alignment with my
core values. And my core values were Hawai. I wanted
to be by an ocean. I wanted to have a healthy,
balanced life. I wanted to enjoy and find joy in life,
which I hadn't been able to do up to that point.
And so I made a commitment that no matter, no
(30:02):
matter what, happened. I was going to make it in
Hawaii and that just failure was not an option. And
so my initial contact relationship working on this long term
was with my surf coach, Chelsea, and Chelsea changed my life.
She has been one of the figures that I don't
even know what my life would look like if I
(30:24):
didn't meet her. I was still having really severe or
extreme reactions to the ocean. Every time I would go
in it, I would have the convulsions and the crying
spells and the hyperventilation, even if I was just sitting
on a surfboard in less than ten feet of water.
And so she was really pivotal in my recovery psychologically,
(30:47):
while she was also teaching me how to surf. And
I can't even explain the type of person it takes
to sit with someone that's having very extreme panic attacks
in the middle of the ocean and trying to teach
them a very difficult skill at twenty six years old.
That she's a saint among people, and I've been so
(31:08):
blessed to know her. So she teaches me how to surf,
and around the same time I had discovered free diving
and being landlocked. My whole life. I didn't even know
human beings could do this. Yeah, you can just hold
your breath and go deep down into the ocean. I
thought you would die if you did that. Yep, confidently.
(31:29):
I was like, there's no way that people can do this.
This is like other marine mammals. But indeed humans can
and do, and they're quite good at it. We're on
par with some other marine mammals, believe it or not.
So I was like, oh, okay. So then that became
part of my rehabilitation as well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (31:50):
When you think about it as like a relationship with
the ocean, like what did that mean to you in
that moment?
Elizabeth Sneed (31:55):
Well, previously, the ocean was a space that was extremely negative.
I associated it with death, destruction. I just couldn't even
understand it to be anything else other than a source
of danger negativity. And you know, it's like only seeing
a very very small perspective, like peeping into a key hole, almost,
(32:17):
Like the ocean is such a magnificent living entity of
our planet that to only associate it with those feelings
and identities was very much unfair to it as a whole.
But it was the only experience I had had in
it in my whole life, and so I had to
build a relationship with it. And to build a relationship,
whether it be with a person or nature, you have
(32:39):
to continually go back and learn about it and you know,
experience it in different ways to understand how this operates.
It's a living thing, you know, just like all of
us are our living, breathing things. So I had to
re establish that relationship with it and learn that it's
not this whole black hole of terror just going to
(33:01):
you know, get up and pull me out again. And
so that kind of was where it started, was with surfing.
Emily Tisch Sussman (33:09):
Elizabeth was finally living out her dreams, but she was
still working her nine to five in politics to financially
support herself.
Elizabeth Sneed (33:17):
And I ended up working for one of the most
esteemed representatives at the State of Holoy, Representative Cynthia Thlen,
and she was one of the most incredible bosses I
have ever had in my whole life. And I was
so happy to finally have a job back in my field,
doing what I could do in the place that I
(33:38):
wanted to be. And then the pandemic hits and the
entire state capital was laid off. The entire state capital
was completely laid off, and the only opportunity I was
given was to help with unemployment, processing unemployment documents for
millions of people in HOOI on not just a wall
(33:59):
who but all of the islands, because people weren't trained
and there weren't enough people to do it, and everybody
was now unemployed and didn't have resources to feed themselves
with their families, and so they needed a small army
to start processing unemployment documents so that people could start
receiving money. And so I joined that team as a
(34:20):
volunteer and was recognized by the governor of HOOII at
that time. But I had nowhere to land, and I
was terrified. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown. I
paddled out into the horizon of the ocean on my
surfboard and I was crying. I was speaking to the
ocean and I said, I mean, I really poured my
heart out, and I said to the ocean, I said,
I don't know why I'm here and what my purpose is.
(34:43):
All I know is that I want to be in
the ocean, and I want to serve a purpose greater
than myself in connection to the ocean. And I just
kept saying that over and over and over until I
had cried so much that my eyes were dry, and
then back in and the moment that I sat down
in my car, I was given It was almost like
(35:06):
a divine inspiration. I literally saw and was given the
idea for Curvy Surfer Girl. I was given the name,
the idea, the concept. I used all of my grassroots
campaigning work to build a grassroots movement around women in
this space, and I said, this is how I'm going
to try and do this. I had to take an
(35:27):
enormous risk. I used my rent money to hire a
well established surf photographer and that was the very beginning
of Curvy Surfer Girl and the rest of its history.
It took off. It had over ten thousand followers in
ninety days. Six years ago, I made a life changing decision.
I moved to Hawai to chase my dream of becoming
a surfer. For years, I covered my body and hid
(35:49):
my psoriasis, afraid of what people would think of me
and my skin. But I decided it was time to
get real clear about my skin disease. I learned not
to be defined by my body. Beginner to intermediate surfer,
I am on a growth journey twenty four to seven,
and this is an example of that. I posted a
video last week where I missed back to back waves
(36:09):
as a form of encouragement for anyone that may be
struggling on Most of you know me as a body
positive surfer, but you might not know that I've been
living with siriasis most of my adult life.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Now there's an organization helping encourage what suits for all
body types. I welcome this, but even more than that,
they're promoting body positivity among female surfers. And on the
line right now to talk about it is the founder
of Kirby's Surfer Girl, Elizabeth.
Emily Tisch Sussman (36:31):
That's up, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Sneed (36:34):
Oh oh Kelly, Oh my god.
Emily Tisch Sussman (36:38):
Wow. Okay, So when you say that you had the idea,
the vision, what was that like? What can you articulate
for us what the vision was and has it evolved
since then?
Elizabeth Sneed (36:47):
So at the time, as you all know, I have
the severe autoimmune disease which affects many parts of my body,
one being my metabolism. There for my weight, and I
was at the heaviest I had ever been when I
had started surfing. I was two hundred and twenty pounds
at five feet tall and it was very abnormal to
see somebody in this body type surfing, and it was
(37:09):
never represented within surf culture prior to colonialization, because prior
to colonialization, the Native Hawaiians of all different body shapes
and sizes were represented, were welcomed, were depicted throughout time
and history in these spaces. Post colonialism into the age
of capitalism, that all changed and women became objects for
(37:34):
men within surfing. And so to meet that objectification, the
standard was blonde, young, and very small. And that's how
it was for the last over one hundred years until
we showed up. And that was where the very beginning
of the body positive movement on social media was starting
to rise. And I had seen many body positive influencers,
(37:58):
but once again it was in the lens of a
more male gaze, more male objectification of women. They were
often lingerie models or in you know, scantily claud swimwear
in larger bodies. But I was an athlete, and I
was like, why can't we see athletes in larger bodies
doing sports and athletic things. And at this time, in
(38:21):
twenty seventeen, all the way up through twenty twenty, this
just was not a thing you know, we've come so
far even in five years, but at that time, you
just were not seeing female plus size athletes in any
athletic space.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:36):
Had you been getting as you had started surfing during
that time, had you found barriers in the gear, in
the community, Was it not welcome? Did you get external
like the opposite of validation, like external like a form
of rejection, Yeah yeah, non belonging, Yeah yeah. I would
say it wasn't vocal or in your face. It was
(38:59):
very subliminal, like if you get on social media or
you're walking into a surf shop.
Elizabeth Sneed (39:05):
At no point is any of this marketed towards women
like us, anyone like us, if you're not thirteen to
twenty years old, in a certain body type, age demographic,
meeting certain standards, it's just obvious in a subliminal, non
you know, like verbal way, this is not for you.
(39:27):
We don't make swimsuits for you. We don't take pictures
of women like you surfing, We don't take videos of
people like you surfing. You can, I guess if you want,
you know, I'm paraphrasing what was kind of going on
in my own mind. It's kind of like, well, if
you want to be in this space, like, sure, I
guess it's the ocean. Anybody can be in it, but
like you don't belong in it. There's nothing for you
(39:50):
you can go into at that time. You could go
into any corporate surf store, you could go on any
social media page dedicated to surfing, and you would never
see a woman of a certain body type or age
represented in this industry. It just did not happen. And
I just kind of said to myself when this vision
(40:10):
came to me, the voice I heard was, You're going
to be the Ashley Graham of surfing. And I was
like very scared. I mean, I was terrified. I'd only
been surfing for three years, and I felt extremely unqualified
to be someone leading a women's movement in surfing. I'm
I feel like this should be going to somebody with
(40:32):
way more time in the ocean, way more credibility, way
more skill. But it turns out all of those things
that I was afraid of ended up being my greatest
asset because because I was still learning how to surf,
I was relatable to tens of thousands of women, and
because I took on this advocacy role that you don't
have to be part of the one percent elite to
(40:54):
have representation in surfing. That was starting to dismantle this
prestige around surfing that you have to be of a
certain level or of a certain pedigree to participate in it.
That was the beginning of dismantling all of that and
then building something new through this grassroots movement of women
around the world, and that's how it developed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (41:16):
Did you have specific goals when you started, like did
you want to get to a certain follower count? Did
you want to get sponsors? Like what did you use
your vision of how you would have known that you
had made it?
Elizabeth Sneed (41:26):
Honestly, I started this on pure faith. I had no
idea if this was going to reach people or not.
I used my rent money and I was like, well,
I guess you know, if I have to sell a kidney,
I'll sell a kidney. But yeah, I mean I knew
that it was picking up steam and momentum at that point,
and then it just continued. And like the metrics of
(41:49):
success I used were, you know, definitely follower account, but
really impact, Like I wanted to see change, and if
I wasn't seeing change, then I knew I wasn't accomplished
my mission, not just for myself but for women around
the world, like having swimsuits for women in different body types.
One thing that people were not aware of at the time,
(42:10):
especially as a woman, is that women's surfing was marketed
to women, but everything that was manufactured was manufactured in
junior sizing. Yeah, wrap your head around that for a second.
All of the swimwear and clothing for quote, women's surfing
was manufactured in juniors sizing, and it's actually to this
(42:32):
day still on some of the corporate websites that you
would go on to if you're going to buy anything
from the site, that sizes are in juniors sizes, but
it's marketed as women's surfing. And so these were things
that I started taking on and I said, this is unacceptable.
You can't market women's surfing to women and then be
(42:52):
making these in child size clothing. And women around the
world are having nervous breakdowns and fitting rooms because they're
thinking they're unworthy because of their body, or because of
their strength, or whatever the case. Whatever the narrative is,
they're telling themselves as a result of not being able
to fit into the uniform of what it means to
be a surfer, and so my goal was to begin
(43:14):
changing those metrics. So it started with swimwear, and then
it was media representation and getting even larger media representation
so that women could genuinely start seeing themselves in this
space and saying, you know what, I've never thought about it,
but I do belong in that space. And I never
thought about it. But when I went to go try
(43:35):
on those swimsuits, It's not my fault that I'm not
the right size. It's that the industry was making things
that could never fit a standard sized woman to begin with.
So I started dismantling those conversations and then starting new
ones around increasing sizing and women's swimwear for performance athletics
and ocean spaces, and it just kept evolving and developing.
(43:56):
An advocacy was huge for that.
Emily Tisch Sussman (43:58):
Did you always do it full time that at what
point could you monetize it to a point that it
could be your full time job or did you have
to have a different form of employment for revenue and
then work on this as your advocacy and your mission.
Elizabeth Sneed (44:11):
So I still had to continue being an uber driver
because it does still take a long time to get
to a point where you're established, even within social media.
But I knew that I never wanted to put the
burden of income on my audience, which you know some
people do very successfully, like they offer different courses and
(44:32):
you know, subscription models. And I knew that I wanted
to have a community of very amazing, empowered women and
I didn't want to have to ask women to pay
to have access to this community because I grew up
in poverty. So I was like, I'm not going to
put more barriers up to women gaining access to something
that they already want and need access to by putting
(44:55):
the burden onto my followers and my community. And when
I say mind, it's really our because it was developed,
it was co conspired with everyone that's a follower on
this account. I mean, it took everybody to get where
we are, But I knew that as the founder of it,
I didn't want to put that burden on them, and
so my goal was to partner with larger brands both
(45:16):
to amplify the voice of this community that we had
and then to use their resources to further the mission.
And that was always my goal from day one. I
was like, I don't want anybody to have to come
to Curvy Surfer Girl and think that they have to
spend money to exist in this space. I want everyone
to immediately know that they're welcomed here and that they
(45:38):
belong here, and that whatever resources I have is also
their resources. So I started working with large brands that
I felt we're in alignment with our mission and our
core values and really represented women well in athletic spaces
and supported authentically the message of women's body positivity. And
(45:59):
then cantinued using those resources I would gain from campaigns
to reinvest in the mission of Curvy Surfer Girl to
reach more women and strengthen our community.
Emily Tisch Sussman (46:09):
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Elizabeth Sneed (46:11):
I'm confident at some point yes, But whatever the pivot includes,
I always intend to have it connected to the ocean
in one capacity or another. It's been a crazy life
and a wild ride, but I'm so thankful for women
like you that amplify other women's voices and you know,
bring these things to the public because I think it's
(46:32):
so important and it's a topic that it's not often considered.
Emily Tisch Sussman (46:37):
Well, right after this, you're going to teach me to
surf for the first time.
Elizabeth Sneed (46:40):
Yes, And I'm so excited about that. This is like
this is what brings me joy, like introducing women to
the ocean. And I think surfing is such an amazing
vessel for that because it really reveals to you your
strength as a woman and your connection, your inherent connection
to nature, and you're belonging to nature through that journey
(47:00):
and process.
Emily Tisch Sussman (47:01):
I'm very excited about this. I've always felt connected to
the ocean. I got a tattoo of a mermaid when
I was seventeen.
Elizabeth Sneed (47:07):
I love this.
Emily Tisch Sussman (47:08):
I've always felt very connected to the ocean. But I've
had my own body journey that my body was really
destroyed by having three kids in three years, and so
it took me a couple of years to get really
strong and now I'm the strongest that I've ever been.
And so this is the first time that I've ever
felt strong enough to try surf.
Elizabeth Sneed (47:24):
It really Yeah, So this is a myth that I
have to constantly debunk, you know, especially with women, and
I think women are so extraordinary and so much more
powerful than they're ever even aware of, even from a
physical capacity. I'm constantly reinforcing like it doesn't really take
much to get started surfing. The journey is on the
(47:44):
learning pretty much anybody can go into the ocean day
one as you are right now, as we're sitting on
this couch together, and as long as they have a
surf instructor with them, you can successfully surf on day one.
But surfing is a lifelong journey and it's thing that
you develop through time, and you get better and better
at as you stay committed to it. And you'll see
(48:06):
this as we go into the ocean today, You're going
to be using muscles in your shoulders and chests that
you've never used before, and they get very fatigued very quickly.
But I always remind people, whatever it is, surfing or life,
it may be hard, but you can do hard.
Emily Tisch Sussman (48:20):
Things exactly we do hard things right. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, Yes,
thank you, thank you. Elizabeth still lives in Hawaii and
serfs as much as you possibly can. I can attest.
She is an amazing surfer and even got me close
to up on the board. Be sure to follow her
(48:41):
on Instagram at Kirby Surfer Girls so you can stay
up to date on all her incredible happenings. Talk to
you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of
She Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did,
leave us a rating and tell your friends about us.
To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram
(49:01):
at she pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our
newsletter where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content
on our website at she pivots thepodcast dot com. This
episode was produced and edited by Emily Atavelosk, with sound
editing and mixing from Nina Pollock, Audio production and social
(49:23):
media by Hannah Cousins, research by Christine Dickinson, and logistics
and planning by Emma Stopic and Kendall Krupkin. She pivots
is proud to be a part of the iHeart Podcast Network.
I endorse she pivots
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Elizabeth Snead.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Today's guest,
(00:34):
Elizabeth Snead knows what it means to transform hardship into strength.
She is now the founder behind Kirby surfer Girl, a
body positive women's surfing movement where she leads a community
of women around the world finding empowerment in the waves.
She even got me in the water and gave me
and my kids a personal surf lesson after our interview.
(00:56):
But her path yere was anything but easy. Elizabeth grew
up in rural East Texas and a childhood marked by
instability and difficulty. Even then, she carried with her a
love of animals, a connection to nature, and a drive
to carve out something more for herself. That determination first
led her into the world of politics, where she built
(01:17):
a career navigating high pressure environments and learning how to
use her voice to create change. But Elizabeth's most defining
pivot came not from her professional life, but from a
moment of personal fear. At just fourteen, she nearly drowned
in the ocean. The experience was so traumatic that she
swore she would never go back. Yet years later she
(01:40):
felt an undeniable pull back to the water, a sense
that the ocean was calling her, tied to her body
and her spirit. Instead of running from it, she took
the risk to face her fear head on and learned
to serve. That decision opened the door to a completely
new life. Elizabeth now inspires her hundreds of thousands of followers,
(02:02):
empowering women of all shapes and sizes to find joy, strength,
and belonging in the waves, something she herself didn't feel
from the surfing industry. And she's actually changing the industry
and is pushing companies to create products that fit bigger bodies.
And she didn't stop there. She has now centered ocean
(02:23):
conservation and women's issues in the Curvy surfer Girl community.
Her story is a powerful reminder that sometimes our deepest
fears hold the key to our greatest passions. Let's jump
right in.
Elizabeth Sneed (02:39):
My name is Elizabeth Snead, and I'm a surfer. Founder
of the Body positive women's surfing movement in Honolulu.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:46):
Juway, So we're going to start way back, little Elizabeth, Like,
what is your earliest memory?
Elizabeth Sneed (02:53):
This is an excellent question. I would say my earliest
memory is with my dogs, growing up on over ten
acres in rural northeast Texas and beginning the journey of
a very wildlife.
Emily Tisch Sussman (03:07):
You said it's a very small town, like tells Moore,
set the seat that tells more about it.
Elizabeth Sneed (03:11):
Yes, So I was born at Parkland Hospital in Dallas,
which is where John F. Kennedy was taken, and then
grew up in this really rural, small East Texas town.
The first town I grew up in was called Brownsboro,
and I would move many times throughout Texas until I
was eventually relocated to Arizona with my aunt and uncle.
(03:32):
But these towns are super small, very much impoverished, you know.
The only jobs really were labor jobs on the oil
fields or truck drivers, usually less than a thousand people.
So I had quite a tumultuous childhood and both of
my parents were unfortunately some form of very severely mentally ill,
(03:55):
and so I grew up really like the first seven
years of my life in a vain traveling around the
United States. They were radicalized apocalyptic evangelicals, and so I
was kind of in between living life in a van
and then living in a trailer on about ten acres
of land in East Texas. You just know that, you know,
(04:17):
we're getting in the van and we're going somewhere, and
that was life, you know, it was life on the road.
And then we would get back to the trailer on
this big plot of land, and you know, I had
my dogs and my little lifestyle there, and that was it.
I knew that there were other people that were living
not this lifestyle. I was a very intelligent young child,
(04:39):
and so I mean I gathered like this was not usual,
you know, going into churches and asking for money and
you know, living in a van, going all over the place.
Emily Tisch Sussman (04:50):
When did you start school.
Elizabeth Sneed (04:52):
I started school in first grade, and there was you know,
lots of extensive child abuse that I went through all
through my younger years, which I've shared very publicly. So
I was navigating that and that was just normal for me.
Like you came home and you got beaten nearly half
to death, and then you go back to school the
(05:12):
next day and pretend like you you know, fell or
did something else to hurt you, and you just continue
on like that was just normal.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:21):
Did the teachers ever ask you about it? Anyone ever
catch on?
Elizabeth Sneed (05:25):
You know, when you grew up in rural country environments
like that, all the kids are kind of bruised up
one way or another. And in East Texas in particular,
at least in that time period, it's very hard for
anybody to prove child abuse and then have it land anywhere.
So it has to be really radical, which not that
ours wasn't, but it has to be visibly radical. And
(05:46):
both of my parents, despite being very mentally ill, were
highly intelligent people, and they knew how to disguise everything
that was going on quite well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:56):
How and when did you eventually leave the house.
Elizabeth Sneed (05:59):
So the abuse had escalated to a point where it
was pretty undeniable by this point, even to members in
the public and community, and my mom essentially tried to
kill me on our front lawn in front of CPS,
and I was immediately removed because there was clear evidence
that my life was in danger. So they made a
(06:21):
phone call and there was a court order place for
my immediate removal, and I was sent inside to get
put whatever my belongings were in trash bags, and from
that point on I was thirteen years old. That anniversary
is coming up. I left June thirteenth of two thousand
and three for foster care, and I ended up in
two shelters and then eventually my first foster home, which
(06:43):
was very abusive, and then finally a second foster home,
which was extraordinary. That was where I started my martial
arts career, was with my foster mother, gree who decided
she wanted to enroll all of the foster girls that
she had. They were about four of us in martial arts,
so that we were never subjected to physical violence and
(07:04):
couldn't defend ourselves. And that was where I took second
in the state of Texas, and taekwondo was through her,
you know, enrolling us in these self defense programs and
molding us as future athletes really and then subsequent to that,
my aunt and uncle would gain custody of me that
summer and I was nearly fifteen years old, and then
(07:25):
I moved to Arizona and they took extraordinary care of me.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:30):
Just a year after getting out, she started to develop
symptoms for an autoimmune disease, something she has dealt with
ever since.
Elizabeth Sneed (07:39):
If you're familiar with the a studies that were conducted,
I believe they started in the seventies. They have now
after studying thousands of people that have gone through extensive
child abuse and traumas children, they've been able to identify
that autoimmune diseases are very prevalent in this population of people.
(08:00):
And I developed the autoimmune disease that I have now
at the age of fourteen, and then it has only
progressively become more and more severe as I've aged.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:09):
I mean, that makes sense, Like it totally makes sense now.
Just around that same time, when you were fourteen, you
volunteered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Yes, how did
that come about? Can you tell us about what happened? Sure?
Elizabeth Sneed (08:24):
So on part with you know Texans and tradition. I
was required to go to a church the entire time
I was in high school. You just don't have an option,
you know, even if you don't want to. So I was.
You know, when my aunt and uncle gang custody of me.
They're amazing people. They went to church and I was
(08:44):
required to attend with them, whether I wanted to or not.
There was a youth humanitarian group being organized to go
to help relieve Hurricane Katrina. And I've always been a humanitarian,
even from a young age. I was like, I have
no issue with humanitarian work. I'm happy to go and
help rebuild and assist communities anywhere and everywhere I can.
(09:04):
That spoke to me I didn't necessarily need to do
it in the name of religion, so to speak, but
that was where the opportunity presented itself. So I went
with this church youth group to Mobile, Alabama, in the
southern part of Alabama on the coastline, and started helping
rebuild schools and other infrastructure in the community. And on
(09:26):
one of those days, I was asked as part of
the group to swim out to a sandbar at the
end of a very long pier. And I didn't know
how to swim, Like, I didn't properly know how to swim.
I knew how to doggy paddle and maybe tread water
for a little bit, but this was about a quarter
of a mile offshore and it was a long swim,
and so I got really peer pressured into doing it,
(09:47):
despite a lot of resistance. It was like the whole
youth group was going out there, and these were upper
middle class kids, you know, that had grown up with
resources to take swimming lessons and have swimming pools in
their backyard, and a lot of them were on the
swim team at this very prominent high school in my area,
and so they all just kind of pressured me and
(10:08):
they were like, no, we'll help you if something happens.
And looking back on it, I was like, wait, you're
gonna help me if something happened. But I doggy paddle
a quarter of a mile out to the sandbar. We'd
been out there for a couple hours, and I was like, okay,
I mean, it's just a bunch of sands, Like, I'm
over it. Let's go back to shore. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty.
We've been building houses all day. Moving on, and so
(10:31):
I got two other girls to swim back with me,
and on the swim back, the weather had very aggressively
changed almost instantly, and we were lost at sea, and
the three of us we survived because of fishermen found us.
But there was another young man that was kind of
(10:52):
in between the pier and the sandbar that was swimming
and playing about our age fourteen, and we watched him
drown to death. It was very traumatic. We were completely
convinced that we were not going to make it out alive,
and we had made peace with that outcome, and I thought,
you know, if I survived this, I'll never go back
(11:12):
in the ocean ever again.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:15):
Elizabeth got on with life, avoiding the ocean, but dreaming
of a bigger life. She eventually started school at Arizona
State University, planning to become a veterinarian.
Elizabeth Sneed (11:27):
So at a young age, I think I remember having
consciousness about this. Around four, I decided I was going
to be a veterinarian, and that became my survival response
to everything. I had recognized at a very early age
that people associated doctors and academic achievement with success, and
(11:49):
very early on I recognized that if I was going
to escape this hell that I was in, I was
going to have to succeed my way out of it.
And so that's what I did. I dedicated myself to
being a veterinarian. I became absolutely obsessed with animals, animal physiology, psychology,
you name it. I got accepted to pre veterinary school
(12:11):
and then went through three and a half years of
that until I had a revelation at about twenty twenty
one years old that this was a survival response for me,
and I had gone very I mean, I can tell
you so much about animals, it's unreal, But I loved
animals like that was my passion as a child, as
an adult, even still to this day. You'll see there's
(12:33):
a lot of wildlife featured on my page. And that
was how I succeeded my way out of poverty and
foster care and survived some very violent, emotional and physical
abuse for the majority of my life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (12:52):
While she forged her way working toward her dream of
becoming a veterinarian, she also had her site set on
another dream.
Elizabeth Sneed (13:00):
There were three places I wanted to see my entire life.
It was Hawaii, New York, and Alaska. I came into
the world wanting to visit these three places. I have
no clue who what when we're haw Wahi. My little
childhood brain chose them, but it did. I said that
since I was like three years old. So Hawaii was
the first one I got to and it was supposed
(13:22):
to be a present for graduating my high school, my
high school graduation present. However, it fell through. We just
logistically it didn't quite organize, and so my sophomore year
of my university fall break, I called U my aunt Mom,
who's a flight attendant, and I said, I booked myself
(13:44):
a round trip ticket to Hawaii, and I'm just going
to go, Like I've always wanted to go there. I've
always wanted to see it. I've never seen blue water.
I needed to confirm it wasn't a conspiracy theory in
magazines that were just photoshopped. My whole life really exist.
So it was just just very like I'm going to
go see why casual. I didn't think anything of it, really,
(14:07):
And then I got there and I had a very powerful, moving,
almost spiritual experience, and I just knew that that's where
I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (14:18):
Did you go into the water right away like that
must have been? Yeah?
Elizabeth Sneed (14:21):
I can absolutely not. I could not imagine. Yeah, I
was still very much traumatized from the ocean at this time.
But I've told the story a handful of times and
it seems a little bit woo woo, and I don't
really know how else to describe it. This is what
really happened. I get to Hawaii. I had been landlocked
my entire life. I went from Texas to Arizona, so
(14:42):
I'd never really met the ocean properly other than when
I was nearly you know, exiting stage left. And so
I'm there. I'm in a little hostel. It's right by
the ocean, and I could feel the ocean inside of
my body when the tide would go out, pulling on
(15:04):
the earth. I don't know how or why I experienced
that phenomenon, but I could feel it. And I would
go to the beach where all of the beach boys
who go back to the eighteen like turn of the centry,
turn of the twentieth century, this is a tradition that
goes back that far. I would go to the beach
(15:25):
boys every morning at the exact time the tides were
going out, and they were like, how do you keep
showing up exactly when the tides are going out? And
I said, I can feel it in my chest. I
can feel the ocean pulling on the earth, like on
the island. And they were like, there's no way I
And they kept timing it every day and I was
(15:47):
I was showing up exactly when the tide was going out,
like it was.
Emily Tisch Sussman (15:51):
Pulling me with it.
Elizabeth Sneed (15:53):
And so then they convinced me to take a surfing
lesson in Waikiki and kind of assured me that, you know,
I wasn't going to be ripped out to see again. Yeah,
and so that was my reintroduction to the ocean.
Emily Tisch Sussman (16:08):
I was a pretty big reintroduction to go from I
can't put my toe in more than a couple of
inches too, I'm going to try surfing.
Elizabeth Sneed (16:14):
Yeah, it was. But thankfully in Waikiki the waves are
really beautiful. The Hawaiian people or some of the most
special people in the earth. They were clearly seeing that
I wanted to have a relationship with the ocean, but
that I was terrified of it. And so that was
when they intervened and was like, you know, let us
take you out. Let us like reintroduce this this space
(16:37):
to you and help you heal. They shepherded me through
that experience and it changed my life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (16:44):
For the time being. Elizabeth had to go back to university,
back to what she thought was her dream of becoming
a VET. When we come back, we learn about Elizabeth's
first pivot stay tuned.
Elizabeth Sneed (17:11):
By the time I was ready to go to VET school,
I had over three thousand shadowing hours and I dedicated
literally a whole lifetime to it from five to twenty.
I was very much like every summer was spent in
VET offices and it was my life dream. And so
I had a bit of an existential crisis when I
had to change my major. It was genuinely a full
scale existential crisis. And I was very late in my
(17:34):
career when I did it. At university, I was a
junior because I was preparing to go to VET School,
So I had to really make a decision. At that point.
There was an intersection, and it's like, well, you either
stay committed to this and you're going to go to
VET school, or you have to change now otherwise you're
not going to be able to get a degree. So
I talked to any and every mentor I had, and
(17:56):
we were just grasping at straws at this point about
what I could do to grad and landed on I'm
really great with languages, I'm a natural with history, and
why don't you just go and see if there's something
in international business that you can major in? Because I
was at a business school, WP Carrie at Arizona State University,
(18:17):
and so I was like great international business. It's the
cross sections between most of the things that I care about.
Turns out they didn't have that as a major. And
I'm like, what major institution in the United States does
not have international business as a bachelor's degree, Like what
are we doing? And so they're like, well, we have
other business degrees that you can choose from, and they're
like half and half. You know, you get half a
(18:38):
business degree in this and then you get half in
something else so that you're more marketable when you graduate.
And I was like, okay, what are the options. And
it was like supply chain management and da da, da da,
all these different things. And one of the I said, well,
what's the closest you've got to international business. Let's simplify this,
and they said global business politics. And so I was like, fine,
(19:02):
sign me up for that. Whatever that is. That's I'll
call it international business on my resume if I have
to at this point. And so I started taking all
of these political science classes because it was essentially half
of a political science degree and half of a business degree,
which I didn't realize at that time. I just was
trying to get international business so I can market myself
after I graduated and do something. Turns out I was
(19:25):
really good at it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (19:26):
Did you have a vision of what you would do
with this quote international business degree once you created it?
Elizabeth Sneed (19:31):
I had no idea. I was so lost, Like I
was so emotionally devastated about not becoming a veterinarian, and
I had all of this medical and science and biology
and chemistry behind me, and now I had to pivot
really hard to go. This route was nothing I had
been studying for my whole life. But I was naturally
very good at it. I was always interested in history.
I always loved it. Like I said, by this point,
(19:53):
I was already minoring in French, and so I was
just like, I'll figure it out. I guess as I go.
And I took a Foreign Pol class and I was like, oh,
this is my vibe. This is my vibe. I go
up to the professor and I'm like, how do I
do this? That's what I want to do. I literally
want to shape the world. And he was like, well,
(20:17):
you can only go one place to do that. There
well two places, really, he was like, you either go
to the UN or you go to DC.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:24):
And I went to both.
Elizabeth Sneed (20:27):
I mean, you talk about girl, bossing to the SUN.
I was like, we are not going backwards, that's for sure.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:32):
No, no, no, we only go forwards. Okay, So tell us
about each of those, the UN and d Space.
Elizabeth Sneed (20:37):
Yeah. So I decided I was going to move to
Switzerland to study French full time, because you need, you
need to have a real good grasp on a foreign
language if you're going to do anything in international affairs.
So I moved to Switzerland. I went to the University
delos En and studied for a year in French. And
then the UN was just in Geneva, so I got
(20:58):
to frequent the UN and you know, visit and do
little programs that they had for you know, foreign exchange students.
And then of course I was studying international affairs at
the University in Lausanne as well, along with my French degree.
And then I was able to travel all throughout Europe
with just extremely little resources, but I did it nonetheless.
(21:20):
And then I returned from Switzerland and was on to
the next and I said, Okay, the next thing I
have to conquer is Washington, d C. And you've got
to remember, I'm doing Washington, d C. From like I
didn't realize it at the time, but I was only
five years removed from foster care and like extreme poverty
(21:40):
and extreme child abuse. But I was so hyper focused
and determined that I was just like, I will find
a way to make it in Washington, d C. I
had no money. I used one thousand dollars tax return
and the institute I went to in DC. I convinced
(22:01):
this institution to make me one of their scholars, which
was like a divine intervention fee because I was competing
against people that were in Harvard and Yale and all
of these other very prestigious institutions that were going to
this Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, d C. I mean
this was for like wealthy people's children that were about
to become ambassadors by appointment, you know, because they made
(22:24):
the right amount of a donation to a campaign that's
who I was on part with. And I was like, yeah,
I'm going to compete with you, and I'm going to
do it. I'm going to figure it out, and money's
never going to stop me, because that's not allowed in
my universe.
Emily Tisch Sussman (22:38):
Yeah.
Elizabeth Sneed (22:38):
So I went door to door in my entire community.
I asked for donations, I fundraised. I went to small
businesses in my community, and I said, look, you know,
I want to study foreign policy and I want to
be on the world stage, and I would really appreciate
if you would support helping send me to Washington, d C.
And I fundraised a small amount of money, convinced the
institution to make me want of their scholars and I
(23:02):
was able to complete a full study of foreign policy
in Washington, d C. And that's where I was introduced
into becoming a lobbyist, which would be my career for
the next ten years.
Emily Tisch Sussman (23:14):
Elizabeth dove into the world of politics, where she worked
with the Armed Services Committee, running into some of DC's
biggest names.
Elizabeth Sneed (23:23):
I had met Senator John McCain on the plane ride
to Washington, d C. And the odds of that were
a million to one. And I walked up to him
on the airplane and I introduced myself and I said,
I would I would love to get a picture with
you as I'm entering Washington, d C. Because the scholarship
(23:45):
that I was given from this institution involved documenting my
whole experience in Washington, DC. And I said, what are
the odds that I ride on the plane with one
of the most recognizable US senators in American history and
st John McCain such an amazing man. I was at
the back of the airplane and he told his chief
(24:06):
of staff that there was a young woman that wanted
to meet him and take a picture. And he waited
for me for over thirty minutes to deboard the plane
at Reagan International. And it changed the trajectory of my
life because when I came back from Washington, d C.
He was up for reelection and I went to one
of his campaign events and I said, Senator John McCain,
(24:27):
I don't know if you remember me. I was the
young woman on the airplane that I asked you to
stay behind. And he said, of course I do. You're Elizabeth.
And I'm like, you're kidding you. Of all, you remember
my name. He's like, yes, of course I do. And
I was like, this is the most impressive thing I've
ever seen in my life. And then I told him that,
you know, I was looking for an opportunity to continue
(24:49):
staying in my field for you know, everything I had
been studying. And he offered me a role on his
campaign team as a field organizer, and so I helped
with his reelection in twenty sixteen, and of course he
was reelected, and then after his successful campaign, he helped
place me in an environmental nonprofit where I would then
(25:11):
go on to advocate for our natural resources. So, as
you can imagine, right around that time, things drastically begin
to politically change with the election of President Trump in
his first term, and so most of the work that
we had done was being undone by the administration on
the conservation fronts, and so the nonprofit it really didn't
(25:38):
have anywhere to go, and so I was laid off.
And when I was laid off, I just said, I
don't know what I'm doing anymore. I was in DC,
I was in Switzerland, I was in all of these
places where we broke our power. And I think what
I was trying to do the entire time was attempt
to prove that I had meaning and that I had
(26:00):
purpose to the world other than growing up as this
very poor East Texas girl. I just wanted to show
everybody that, you know, I was going to be somebody,
and I was going to be something. But then when
you grow up, it's like, well, who are these imaginary
people You're trying to prove this too? Now there's nobody left,
like nobody knows your story. Nobody really cares or is aware.
(26:23):
You're girl bossing so hard and you're doing it really well.
But I was not happy. Ultimately. I was really just
trying to prove my worth to society through achievement. And
I thought the more I achieved and the more I did,
and the more I was around successful, powerful people, that
I would be seen as worthy and lovable and important.
(26:46):
And I finally had a breakthrough that that's really not
the answer of how I'm going to find self actualization.
And I gave it up, and I said, you know,
I wanted, what my soul really wants and has always wanted,
is to live in Hawai, become a surfer, and I'll
do whatever I need to do when I get to Washington,
(27:08):
d C. Or when I get to Hawaii, maybe I
can become a environmental activist there, you know, with the
Pacific Ocean and the Pacific peoples. I didn't really know
where the world was going to take me. I just
knew that my future was there and that somehow my
purpose was connected to Hawaii.
Emily Tisch Sussman (27:27):
So she packed up her life and headed back to Hawaii.
After the break, we dive into how Elizabeth made her
pivot into social media and the creation of Kirby Surfer Girl.
Elizabeth Sneed (27:50):
So I moved to Hawaii and I got a job
doing anything I could. I became an executive assistant at
a little nonprofit and then they would go bankrupt about
a year later, and I would find myself kind of
in the same position. I was just questioning, like, how
am I going to move forward. I had to become
an Uber driver for two years because I was simply
(28:12):
just too overqualified for most of the positions that were available.
Even at the Hawaii State Capitol. It was really hard
to get a job because people were like, well, you've
lived in DC and you've done all of this, and
you could do my job. I don't want to hire you,
and then you take my job. And I was like,
I don't want your job. I just want a job, right,
(28:33):
Please just hire me. I'm driving Uber and I have
three degrees, and like, please something. And it just knows
everywhere I turned, and it was really devastating. I was
unemployed for two years of my life. I started having
nervous breakdowns and a full scale identity crisis because I
had worked so hard my entire life to gain an
(28:55):
inch for all of it to be stripped away from me,
like my whole identity was stripped away from me at
that point. Your academic accomplishments don't matter, Your professional accomplishments
don't matter, like you're a glorified taxi driver. And I
was like, is this dream worth pursuing? Or have I
made a critical error in judgment at this point? And
(29:16):
people were asking me that every day I woke up,
which was leading to more and more anxiety and panic
and uncertainty. And I said, all I know is that
this is where I belong. I don't belong back in Washington,
d C. I already did that, and I was not
finding fulfillment. And I don't want to live a whole
human life unfulfilled. It's just not fair and it wasn't
(29:40):
serving me. And I said, I know that I can
accomplish something greater if I am in alignment with my
core values. And my core values were Hawai. I wanted
to be by an ocean. I wanted to have a healthy,
balanced life. I wanted to enjoy and find joy in life,
which I hadn't been able to do up to that point.
And so I made a commitment that no matter, no
(30:02):
matter what, happened. I was going to make it in
Hawaii and that just failure was not an option. And
so my initial contact relationship working on this long term
was with my surf coach, Chelsea, and Chelsea changed my life.
She has been one of the figures that I don't
even know what my life would look like if I
(30:24):
didn't meet her. I was still having really severe or
extreme reactions to the ocean. Every time I would go
in it, I would have the convulsions and the crying
spells and the hyperventilation, even if I was just sitting
on a surfboard in less than ten feet of water.
And so she was really pivotal in my recovery psychologically,
(30:47):
while she was also teaching me how to surf. And
I can't even explain the type of person it takes
to sit with someone that's having very extreme panic attacks
in the middle of the ocean and trying to teach
them a very difficult skill at twenty six years old.
That she's a saint among people, and I've been so
(31:08):
blessed to know her. So she teaches me how to surf,
and around the same time I had discovered free diving
and being landlocked. My whole life. I didn't even know
human beings could do this. Yeah, you can just hold
your breath and go deep down into the ocean. I
thought you would die if you did that. Yep, confidently.
(31:29):
I was like, there's no way that people can do this.
This is like other marine mammals. But indeed humans can
and do, and they're quite good at it. We're on
par with some other marine mammals, believe it or not.
So I was like, oh, okay. So then that became
part of my rehabilitation as well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (31:50):
When you think about it as like a relationship with
the ocean, like what did that mean to you in
that moment?
Elizabeth Sneed (31:55):
Well, previously, the ocean was a space that was extremely negative.
I associated it with death, destruction. I just couldn't even
understand it to be anything else other than a source
of danger negativity. And you know, it's like only seeing
a very very small perspective, like peeping into a key hole, almost,
(32:17):
Like the ocean is such a magnificent living entity of
our planet that to only associate it with those feelings
and identities was very much unfair to it as a whole.
But it was the only experience I had had in
it in my whole life, and so I had to
build a relationship with it. And to build a relationship,
whether it be with a person or nature, you have
(32:39):
to continually go back and learn about it and you know,
experience it in different ways to understand how this operates.
It's a living thing, you know, just like all of
us are our living, breathing things. So I had to
re establish that relationship with it and learn that it's
not this whole black hole of terror just going to
(33:01):
you know, get up and pull me out again. And
so that kind of was where it started, was with surfing.
Emily Tisch Sussman (33:09):
Elizabeth was finally living out her dreams, but she was
still working her nine to five in politics to financially
support herself.
Elizabeth Sneed (33:17):
And I ended up working for one of the most
esteemed representatives at the State of Holoy, Representative Cynthia Thlen,
and she was one of the most incredible bosses I
have ever had in my whole life. And I was
so happy to finally have a job back in my field,
doing what I could do in the place that I
(33:38):
wanted to be. And then the pandemic hits and the
entire state capital was laid off. The entire state capital
was completely laid off, and the only opportunity I was
given was to help with unemployment, processing unemployment documents for
millions of people in HOOI on not just a wall
(33:59):
who but all of the islands, because people weren't trained
and there weren't enough people to do it, and everybody
was now unemployed and didn't have resources to feed themselves
with their families, and so they needed a small army
to start processing unemployment documents so that people could start
receiving money. And so I joined that team as a
(34:20):
volunteer and was recognized by the governor of HOOII at
that time. But I had nowhere to land, and I
was terrified. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown. I
paddled out into the horizon of the ocean on my
surfboard and I was crying. I was speaking to the
ocean and I said, I mean, I really poured my
heart out, and I said to the ocean, I said,
I don't know why I'm here and what my purpose is.
(34:43):
All I know is that I want to be in
the ocean, and I want to serve a purpose greater
than myself in connection to the ocean. And I just
kept saying that over and over and over until I
had cried so much that my eyes were dry, and
then back in and the moment that I sat down
in my car, I was given It was almost like
(35:06):
a divine inspiration. I literally saw and was given the
idea for Curvy Surfer Girl. I was given the name,
the idea, the concept. I used all of my grassroots
campaigning work to build a grassroots movement around women in
this space, and I said, this is how I'm going
to try and do this. I had to take an
(35:27):
enormous risk. I used my rent money to hire a
well established surf photographer and that was the very beginning
of Curvy Surfer Girl and the rest of its history.
It took off. It had over ten thousand followers in
ninety days. Six years ago, I made a life changing decision.
I moved to Hawai to chase my dream of becoming
a surfer. For years, I covered my body and hid
(35:49):
my psoriasis, afraid of what people would think of me
and my skin. But I decided it was time to
get real clear about my skin disease. I learned not
to be defined by my body. Beginner to intermediate surfer,
I am on a growth journey twenty four to seven,
and this is an example of that. I posted a
video last week where I missed back to back waves
(36:09):
as a form of encouragement for anyone that may be
struggling on Most of you know me as a body
positive surfer, but you might not know that I've been
living with siriasis most of my adult life.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Now there's an organization helping encourage what suits for all
body types. I welcome this, but even more than that,
they're promoting body positivity among female surfers. And on the
line right now to talk about it is the founder
of Kirby's Surfer Girl, Elizabeth.
Emily Tisch Sussman (36:31):
That's up, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Sneed (36:34):
Oh oh Kelly, Oh my god.
Emily Tisch Sussman (36:38):
Wow. Okay, So when you say that you had the idea,
the vision, what was that like? What can you articulate
for us what the vision was and has it evolved
since then?
Elizabeth Sneed (36:47):
So at the time, as you all know, I have
the severe autoimmune disease which affects many parts of my body,
one being my metabolism. There for my weight, and I
was at the heaviest I had ever been when I
had started surfing. I was two hundred and twenty pounds
at five feet tall and it was very abnormal to
see somebody in this body type surfing, and it was
(37:09):
never represented within surf culture prior to colonialization, because prior
to colonialization, the Native Hawaiians of all different body shapes
and sizes were represented, were welcomed, were depicted throughout time
and history in these spaces. Post colonialism into the age
of capitalism, that all changed and women became objects for
(37:34):
men within surfing. And so to meet that objectification, the
standard was blonde, young, and very small. And that's how
it was for the last over one hundred years until
we showed up. And that was where the very beginning
of the body positive movement on social media was starting
to rise. And I had seen many body positive influencers,
(37:58):
but once again it was in the lens of a
more male gaze, more male objectification of women. They were
often lingerie models or in you know, scantily claud swimwear
in larger bodies. But I was an athlete, and I
was like, why can't we see athletes in larger bodies
doing sports and athletic things. And at this time, in
(38:21):
twenty seventeen, all the way up through twenty twenty, this
just was not a thing you know, we've come so
far even in five years, but at that time, you
just were not seeing female plus size athletes in any
athletic space.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:36):
Had you been getting as you had started surfing during
that time, had you found barriers in the gear, in
the community, Was it not welcome? Did you get external
like the opposite of validation, like external like a form
of rejection, Yeah yeah, non belonging, Yeah yeah. I would
say it wasn't vocal or in your face. It was
(38:59):
very subliminal, like if you get on social media or
you're walking into a surf shop.
Elizabeth Sneed (39:05):
At no point is any of this marketed towards women
like us, anyone like us, if you're not thirteen to
twenty years old, in a certain body type, age demographic,
meeting certain standards, it's just obvious in a subliminal, non
you know, like verbal way, this is not for you.
(39:27):
We don't make swimsuits for you. We don't take pictures
of women like you surfing, We don't take videos of
people like you surfing. You can, I guess if you want,
you know, I'm paraphrasing what was kind of going on
in my own mind. It's kind of like, well, if
you want to be in this space, like, sure, I
guess it's the ocean. Anybody can be in it, but
like you don't belong in it. There's nothing for you
(39:50):
you can go into at that time. You could go
into any corporate surf store, you could go on any
social media page dedicated to surfing, and you would never
see a woman of a certain body type or age
represented in this industry. It just did not happen. And
I just kind of said to myself when this vision
(40:10):
came to me, the voice I heard was, You're going
to be the Ashley Graham of surfing. And I was
like very scared. I mean, I was terrified. I'd only
been surfing for three years, and I felt extremely unqualified
to be someone leading a women's movement in surfing. I'm
I feel like this should be going to somebody with
(40:32):
way more time in the ocean, way more credibility, way
more skill. But it turns out all of those things
that I was afraid of ended up being my greatest
asset because because I was still learning how to surf,
I was relatable to tens of thousands of women, and
because I took on this advocacy role that you don't
have to be part of the one percent elite to
(40:54):
have representation in surfing. That was starting to dismantle this
prestige around surfing that you have to be of a
certain level or of a certain pedigree to participate in it.
That was the beginning of dismantling all of that and
then building something new through this grassroots movement of women
around the world, and that's how it developed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (41:16):
Did you have specific goals when you started, like did
you want to get to a certain follower count? Did
you want to get sponsors? Like what did you use
your vision of how you would have known that you
had made it?
Elizabeth Sneed (41:26):
Honestly, I started this on pure faith. I had no
idea if this was going to reach people or not.
I used my rent money and I was like, well,
I guess you know, if I have to sell a kidney,
I'll sell a kidney. But yeah, I mean I knew
that it was picking up steam and momentum at that point,
and then it just continued. And like the metrics of
(41:49):
success I used were, you know, definitely follower account, but
really impact, Like I wanted to see change, and if
I wasn't seeing change, then I knew I wasn't accomplished
my mission, not just for myself but for women around
the world, like having swimsuits for women in different body types.
One thing that people were not aware of at the time,
(42:10):
especially as a woman, is that women's surfing was marketed
to women, but everything that was manufactured was manufactured in
junior sizing. Yeah, wrap your head around that for a second.
All of the swimwear and clothing for quote, women's surfing
was manufactured in juniors sizing, and it's actually to this
(42:32):
day still on some of the corporate websites that you
would go on to if you're going to buy anything
from the site, that sizes are in juniors sizes, but
it's marketed as women's surfing. And so these were things
that I started taking on and I said, this is unacceptable.
You can't market women's surfing to women and then be
(42:52):
making these in child size clothing. And women around the
world are having nervous breakdowns and fitting rooms because they're
thinking they're unworthy because of their body, or because of
their strength, or whatever the case. Whatever the narrative is,
they're telling themselves as a result of not being able
to fit into the uniform of what it means to
be a surfer, and so my goal was to begin
(43:14):
changing those metrics. So it started with swimwear, and then
it was media representation and getting even larger media representation
so that women could genuinely start seeing themselves in this
space and saying, you know what, I've never thought about it,
but I do belong in that space. And I never
thought about it. But when I went to go try
(43:35):
on those swimsuits, It's not my fault that I'm not
the right size. It's that the industry was making things
that could never fit a standard sized woman to begin with.
So I started dismantling those conversations and then starting new
ones around increasing sizing and women's swimwear for performance athletics
and ocean spaces, and it just kept evolving and developing.
(43:56):
An advocacy was huge for that.
Emily Tisch Sussman (43:58):
Did you always do it full time that at what
point could you monetize it to a point that it
could be your full time job or did you have
to have a different form of employment for revenue and
then work on this as your advocacy and your mission.
Elizabeth Sneed (44:11):
So I still had to continue being an uber driver
because it does still take a long time to get
to a point where you're established, even within social media.
But I knew that I never wanted to put the
burden of income on my audience, which you know some
people do very successfully, like they offer different courses and
(44:32):
you know, subscription models. And I knew that I wanted
to have a community of very amazing, empowered women and
I didn't want to have to ask women to pay
to have access to this community because I grew up
in poverty. So I was like, I'm not going to
put more barriers up to women gaining access to something
that they already want and need access to by putting
(44:55):
the burden onto my followers and my community. And when
I say mind, it's really our because it was developed,
it was co conspired with everyone that's a follower on
this account. I mean, it took everybody to get where
we are, But I knew that as the founder of it,
I didn't want to put that burden on them, and
so my goal was to partner with larger brands both
(45:16):
to amplify the voice of this community that we had
and then to use their resources to further the mission.
And that was always my goal from day one. I
was like, I don't want anybody to have to come
to Curvy Surfer Girl and think that they have to
spend money to exist in this space. I want everyone
to immediately know that they're welcomed here and that they
(45:38):
belong here, and that whatever resources I have is also
their resources. So I started working with large brands that
I felt we're in alignment with our mission and our
core values and really represented women well in athletic spaces
and supported authentically the message of women's body positivity. And
(45:59):
then cantinued using those resources I would gain from campaigns
to reinvest in the mission of Curvy Surfer Girl to
reach more women and strengthen our community.
Emily Tisch Sussman (46:09):
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Elizabeth Sneed (46:11):
I'm confident at some point yes, But whatever the pivot includes,
I always intend to have it connected to the ocean
in one capacity or another. It's been a crazy life
and a wild ride, but I'm so thankful for women
like you that amplify other women's voices and you know,
bring these things to the public because I think it's
(46:32):
so important and it's a topic that it's not often considered.
Emily Tisch Sussman (46:37):
Well, right after this, you're going to teach me to
surf for the first time.
Elizabeth Sneed (46:40):
Yes, And I'm so excited about that. This is like
this is what brings me joy, like introducing women to
the ocean. And I think surfing is such an amazing
vessel for that because it really reveals to you your
strength as a woman and your connection, your inherent connection
to nature, and you're belonging to nature through that journey
(47:00):
and process.
Emily Tisch Sussman (47:01):
I'm very excited about this. I've always felt connected to
the ocean. I got a tattoo of a mermaid when
I was seventeen.
Elizabeth Sneed (47:07):
I love this.
Emily Tisch Sussman (47:08):
I've always felt very connected to the ocean. But I've
had my own body journey that my body was really
destroyed by having three kids in three years, and so
it took me a couple of years to get really
strong and now I'm the strongest that I've ever been.
And so this is the first time that I've ever
felt strong enough to try surf.
Elizabeth Sneed (47:24):
It really Yeah, So this is a myth that I
have to constantly debunk, you know, especially with women, and
I think women are so extraordinary and so much more
powerful than they're ever even aware of, even from a
physical capacity. I'm constantly reinforcing like it doesn't really take
much to get started surfing. The journey is on the
(47:44):
learning pretty much anybody can go into the ocean day
one as you are right now, as we're sitting on
this couch together, and as long as they have a
surf instructor with them, you can successfully surf on day one.
But surfing is a lifelong journey and it's thing that
you develop through time, and you get better and better
at as you stay committed to it. And you'll see
(48:06):
this as we go into the ocean today, You're going
to be using muscles in your shoulders and chests that
you've never used before, and they get very fatigued very quickly.
But I always remind people, whatever it is, surfing or life,
it may be hard, but you can do hard.
Emily Tisch Sussman (48:20):
Things exactly we do hard things right. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, Yes,
thank you, thank you. Elizabeth still lives in Hawaii and
serfs as much as you possibly can. I can attest.
She is an amazing surfer and even got me close
to up on the board. Be sure to follow her
(48:41):
on Instagram at Kirby Surfer Girls so you can stay
up to date on all her incredible happenings. Talk to
you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of
She Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did,
leave us a rating and tell your friends about us.
To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram
(49:01):
at she pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our
newsletter where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content
on our website at she pivots thepodcast dot com. This
episode was produced and edited by Emily Atavelosk, with sound
editing and mixing from Nina Pollock, Audio production and social
(49:23):
media by Hannah Cousins, research by Christine Dickinson, and logistics
and planning by Emma Stopic and Kendall Krupkin. She pivots
is proud to be a part of the iHeart Podcast Network.
I endorse she pivots
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.