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V O L . X X V I I N O. X I V J U LY 1 2 , 2 0 2 1 22 A U G U S TA / WAT E R V I L L E / C E N T R A L M A I N E F O C U S "I wanted to take 20 years' worth of lay knowledge," she says, "and wrap it up in a nice, neat bow with the certification process." She'll take more psychology classes this fall as she looks forward to embarking on her next chapter as an entrepreneur with the telehealth business she's launch- ing with her daughters. All four will offer coaching ser- vices for clients. Tozier also plans to do live streams, webinars and social media posts for a wider audience, say- ing, "I will have my hands full." Showcasing and selling collegiate art As art sales took off worldwide dur- ing the pandemic, a student-run online marketplace for college artists was launched in Waterville. e Cubby is the brainchild of Josh Kim, a product design and sociology major at Colby College, and fellow rising senior Matteo Cugno, a mechanical engineer- ing major at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. ey started out selling textbooks, fridges and other college necessi- ties through a site called Sklaza, then switched to art and a new name to reflect the "young childish energy" they wanted to project: e Cubby. It sells one-of-a-kind pieces by emerging artists at an affordable price, and claims to be the first marketplace where artists get 100% of the proceeds — and makes its money from com- panies advertising on the site to reach Generation Z consumers. e site lists around 600 artists and has around 2,500 users so far. e team continues to grow, now at six with the recent hiring of Heeya Mody, a rising junior at the Parsons School of Design in New York, as creative director. Kim had contacted her about selling her artwork on the platform before offer- ing her a job. "It was wonderful to see a platform that's not just another corporation that values themselves over their audience, but rather one that actually celebrates their users and cares about their artists," Mody says. "Knowing this and seeing the posting about the creative director position opening, I knew I had to be a part of this initiative." Kim won the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs' Top Gun contest this May and was named the Central Maine Growth Council's 2020 Emerging Leader of the Year. e Cubby now aims to scale up by partnering with social media influencers on TikTok and Instagram; using public relations to build wider name recogni- tion; and looking at partnerships with other companies and brands. Kim, who makes pottery as a creative outlet, hasn't yet shown or tried to sell his work online. He also prefers the term "maker" over "entrepreneur," say- ing: "I definitely like to think of myself Well-versed in virtual services long before the pandemic, she shifted her lat- est business plan after opening a bricks- and-mortar holistic wellness center in Waterville on Feb.1, 2020 — only to have to close it a few weeks later. She's starting Bless Your Body with her three grown daughters, with a focus on stress management includ- ing what Tozier refers to as "intelli- gent nourishment." "Before the pandemic, the idea of personalized wellness and bio-indi- viduality and telehealth was starting," she says. "e pandemic has moved those things forward way faster than I believe they would have otherwise." at includes treatment for mental and emotional health, she says, noting, "People recognized just how vulner- able they really were. Now people are embracing a whole different way of wanting to interact with health and wellness professionals." Tozier's career path to health and wellness has been a long and winding one, decades after she was a stay-at- home mom on a military base looking for an outlet when she started selling Tupperware and discovered she had a knack for it, working her way up to executive manager. Later after a divorce, she left a minimum-wage bank job to start a one- person medical transcription business serving local doctor's offices and hospi- tals; she learned the terminology first by studying Stedman's Medical Dictionary. When electronic medical records became more widespread and demand for her services waned, Tozier retired from that activity in 2014. Confronting her own past as a vic- tim of childhood violence eventually led her to explore holistic wellness as a means to heal herself as well as oth- ers, and to take psychology classes at Kennebec Valley Community College and enroll in the school's Institute for Integrative Nutrition. » C O N T I N U E D F RO M P R E V I O U S PA G E I'm excited to see where we can go. — Tiffany Lomax Memory Lane Cards LLC I definitely like to think of myself as somebody who will make things the rest of my life, whether that's a startup or business venture or pottery or music. — Josh Kim The Cubby P H O T O / C O U R T E S Y O F J O S H K I M P H O T O S / C O U R T E S Y O F T I F FA N Y L O M A X C OLBY C OLLEGE S TU DENT C OM PANY: The Cubby, Waterville Josh Kim, 21 C OLBY C OLLEGE R EC R EATI ON S ERVI C ES DI R EC TOR C OM PANY: Memory Lane Cards LLC, Waterville Tiffany Lomax, 31 The Cubby's creative director, Heeya Mody, is a student at Parsons School of Design. Here are some examples of the site's art offerings. P H O T O S / C O U R T E S Y O F T H E C U B B Y

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