Blythe Leonard

Well, when we first met life, she had such a great personality. She told us about her intern in ninth grade. So I actually put a calendar on my phone and counted down the days until I got to ninth grade. What made me want to intern here is just because it seemed so cool and it was such a great opportunity just to learn more about what goes into making leather goods. My favorite thing to do while being here is the way that you get to use the leather die in so many different ways. You can use it for belts, you can use it for the marbling, or you can use it on actual leather pieces. I love coming here because the atmosphere is so cool. When I started my company in 2015, Immediately realized that the reason I am where I am today is because I had mentors along the way. So we try to give back to our own community and our youth and work with them. We actually have an internship program where we have students between the ages of 13 and 18 that can come and we work with them. They learn the ropes here pretty much. They can dye leather, they get to do all kinds of stuff with our business and they have so much fun. It's a great learning opportunity for them and it teaches them whether if they want to go into the art career or not, that it just takes hard work and a lot of fun and dedication. I think it is very important for us to support youth in our own community and artists in our own community. I think that it takes someone to kind of hold their hand and say, look, you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up, but we have to support our youth. We have to support our artists in our own community and foster that relationship now because they are our next generation and the creativity is there. You just have to pay attention to it. You have to give them a chance and I think that's very important and that's what we try to do here at Life Leonard LLC.