City Walk Chats LA 03: Building Brands & Ocean Beauty
City Walk Chats is a monthly series designed to bring brand founders, creatives, and operators in the beauty, wellness, fashion, and lifestyle worlds together to connect, explore a new area of the city, discover new brands, and - walk + talk:
Knowledge + network sharing
Building a brand that sticks
Getting traction in your business
Becoming confident entrepreneurs
The monthly series is hosted by Creating Forward Studio founder, Sarah Saxty (Sax), and May's guest co-host Christina Kuklinski, the founder of KOOK, an ocean-first beauty brand, with Oat Cacao Brain Snack bars by Cryptic Health, and founder, Dr. Maha Almohamad.
Here's how it works 👀
We'll meet at the determined location, either a cool neighborhood, a trail, or a cultural space.
You'll get to sample Christina's products and grab some snacks for the walk.
You'll pair up with someone to walk + talk your way around using conversation prompts we'll provide.
Then we'll swap partners so you get multiple perspectives.
You'll leave with:
New connections with founders and potential collaborators in your city
An understanding of how to make your brand more "sticky" and ideas for getting more traction in your business
Increased confidence in yourself, your vision, and your business
About The Hosts
Sax, is a Fractional CMO, Advisor, Brand Marketing Mentor, and the founder of Creating Forward Studio, a growth platform for beauty, wellness, design, and lifestyle brands.
She has spent the last 20 years in the consumer product ecosystem as a founder, consultant, and CMO, where she has built brands from the ground up and scaled them to multi-million dollar revenue.
Sax is the creator of Sticky Brand DNA™; a signature framework for building brands that click, stick, and convert, she is also the creator of the Creating Forward Incubator.
Christina Kuklinski is the Founder and CEO of KOOK, an ocean-first beauty brand creating high-performance, reef-safe products designed to protect both people and the planet. A Master Scuba Diver with over 200 logged dives, she built KOOK after experiencing firsthand the damage that sun and saltwater cause to hair and skin—and the lack of products that perform without harming marine ecosystems.
With a background spanning brand strategy and growth at companies like Edelman, Deloitte Digital, and American Express, Christina brings a data-driven, systems-level approach to building a more responsible beauty industry.
Under her leadership, KOOK became a certified B Corp in under a year and donates 5% of revenue to environmental restoration, helping fund thousands of mangroves to date.
Cryptic Health was founded by Dr. Maha Almohamad, a Research and Nutrition Scientist and Epidemiologist. Her good-for-you snack foods are sold at Erewhon and integrate brain health and nutrition.
The Oat Cacao Brain Snack Bar is a blend of organic ingredients like oats, cacao, MCT oil, and sunflower lecithin, plus, her Farm to Function Mushroom Stack: cordyceps, ashwagandha, and shiitake, all scientifically recognized for their brain health benefits, plus a nutrient-dense source of fiber, protein, B Vitamins, and Vitamin D.
Important note:
By attending, you're agreeing to be a part of this experience, which may or may not include pieces of content shared on social media for marketing purposes. You’re participating at your own discretion and agree to move within your comfort level.