meet the pro team: rachel kim

Give us the 3 minute elevator pitch for your life thus far.

Sure thing! I’m Rachel Kim — I wear many hats, but some of them are photographer, content creator, mountain biker, dog mom, and 9 to 5er. Born and raised 30 minutes north of NYC, I always thought I was more of a city girl than someone who loves the outdoors. After studying Computer Science in college, I commissioned into the US Army as a logistics officer, where I served on active-duty for 5 years. Here is where I fell in love with being outside, my dog, Luna, getting back into photography and media, and mountain biking — these are things I spent most of my time on during my off-hours, to this day. In May of 2022, I resigned from active-duty and moved into private big tech, where I help deploy software solutions to enterprise-level organizations. In my off-time, I’m always trying to find more time and ways to get involved in the mountain biking, action + outdoors photography, and freelancer/entrepreneur communities — I’m able to find so many incredible individuals in these spaces, and I love it even more when I can find ways to bring some or all of these worlds together.

How did you find out about Wild Rye?

I would say it was almost like, 1.5 years ago now? I wanna say that I remember really struggling to find a decent pair of women’s shorts for mountain biking when I first started out… that sucked lol. Wild Rye was the first brand that I found to create women-specific riding gear; which I found out was something that was seriously lacking in the MTB industry.

Which of Wild Rye’s values align most with you personally?

I love that Wild Rye is a brand that promotes confidence through all facets of life for woman-identifying individuals. As someone who personally loves working as hard as I play, I love that Wild Rye is a combination of kicking ass and having fun while doing it.

How do you create balance in your daily life?

LOL. It’s a constant reassessment and recalibration process. Balancing a full-time job, finding ways to be active in the community and making sure I generate enough value for my audience, clients, sponsors and myself is something I am always trying to figure out how to optimize. Similar to learning new skills on the camera or bike, I take the same approach: do research, make small changes in your daily life to recalibrate, commit when you’re ready to, and always walk away with a lesson learned!

Committing to vacation time always helps to (turn off your work comms, stay away from IG, and socials). It also helps a lot when you love what you do!

What’s something that most people don’t know about you?

Most people don’t know that I was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, and swam all the way through college for a NCAA D1 team! This experience taught me many things, but a lot about sportsmanship, grit, perseverance, commitment, teamwork, and that nothing worth having comes for free.

What is a bucket list activity you have yet to do? There are soooo many! One that’s at the top of my mind at the moment right now is to do a photoshoot out in the PNW on bikes, or shoot a Pro Motocross race.

What is your go-to trail snack? I love Haribo Sour Gummy Bears and/or Sour Patch Kids — basically, gas station candy suffices for me on the trails lol

What is your go-to trail or workout music?` For endurance and/or long distance sports like running or gravel rides: country music! For Mountain biking: I like to hear all of my surroundings without distraction so typically I don’t listen to music!

What is a piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to pursue a life of mountain sports and adventures? Finding community to help ease you into the world of mountain sports and the outdoors is huge! I found social media to be a great tool for this.

What’s something that you’ve done or been a part of that you’re most proud of?

For me, graduating from West Point, and then serving on active duty is one of my proudest accomplishments — it taught me so much about having grit, being a good teammate, and more. I’m forever grateful for those experiences and looking back on my short 28 years of life, it’s still to this day one of the best things I’ve done for myself!