BACKGROUND
I began skating in 2011 in my hometown of Redcliffe My skating was birthed out of a need to bring happiness into my life following a major spinal injury that put me in a hospital bed for 6 months.
In 2013 I moved to the Sunshine Coast to study Advertising and Media at the University of the Sunshine Coast (completed Oct’ 2016). The area where I live has now become one of the many downhill skateboarding hubs of Australia offering endless progression-oriented spots. In this time, I began working at local skate shop (now online based) Mudjimba Cruisers where I became an integral part of the downhill community offering serious product knowledge and friendly service for experienced and new skaters alike.
EVENT ORGANISATION
In 2012 I started an Annual charity skate day that went on to become one of Queensland’s largest sanctioned downhill skateboarding events. Lakeside Downhill & Freeride is a single-day community-oriented event raising much-needed funds for disabled children and their families. The event garnered me a Community Hero Award for my work with the The Board Meeting charity. The event went on hiatus in 2016 due to my travels in America, but will return in 2017 due to the incredible demand from the skating community.
LAKESIDE CHARITY SKATE EVENTS
MEDIA
Along with this, I saw a gap in the downhill market where content was becoming less relatable for younger entry-level skaters, and aimed to fill this void with a new type of content in the downhill skateboarding media environment. My Downhill Skateboarding oriented video logs (vlogs) went viral and set myself a task of uploading 100 videos in 100 days. This proved wildly successful as it created a new audience for my content, boosting my channel with over 400 new subscribers. I then set the goal to bring this audience with me when I travelled to America, creating a second volume of video logs whilst I skated around America, rocketing my audience numbers upward.
My Vlogs now include product testing and reports and skater Q&A’s.