Inspiring Stories from Pasadena

The heart of our mission at VoyageLA is to find the amazing souls that breathe life into our city. In the recent weeks we’ve had the privilege to connect with some of Pasadena’s finest artists, creatives, entrepreneurs and rabble rousers and we can’t begin to express how impressed we are with our city’s incredibly deep talent pool.  Check out the Pasadena’s rising stars below.

Wren Petkov

While growing up in sunny Sofia, Bulgaria I was always roping friends into making tiny films with me. I always loved drawing, but I never really thought you could do that and be a filmmaker. Read more>>

Flynn Faye

My name is Flynn Faye, and I am a trans folk singer songwriter from Santa Cruz California. I grew up playing among the redwood trees and walking the bluffs of West Cliff, all while developing a love for performing in my local theater communities and listening to my father play Beatles songs on the guitar. Read more>>

Scott Rubel

I am a California boy whose life veered off from the normal in 1968 when my uncle, Michael Rubel, started mixing concrete on the property of an old citrus packing plant in the foothills of Glendora, California. Read more>>

Isabella Freeland

I was born in Glendale, California but raised on California’s Central Coast, where my grandparents and parents built Oso Libre Winery from the ground up on our family ranch in Paso Robles. My mother served as CFO and Controller for over fourteen years, all while raising twin daughters. She taught me that women could do it all and look fabulous doing it. Read more>>

amber nelson-thorneycroft

My journey into this work didn’t start in a typical wellness space—it started in community. I spent years working in education, outreach, and advocacy, supporting individuals and families through life skills programs, safety training, and community-based initiatives. That experience taught me how to truly meet people where they are, hold space for real-life challenges, and create environments where people feel seen, supported, and empowered. Read more>>

Molly Oran

I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know I’d be a songwriter. I was in film school when lockdown hit, and singing has been my favorite thing to do my whole life, so music really became the way for me to get through that time. I found myself songwriting much more than I was screenwriting. Read more>>

Airica Hartsfield

My esthetician era didn’t start in a classroom — it started in the mirror. Like so many of us, I’d been on a long journey with my skin. Years of dermatologist visits for hyperpigmentation had given me results, but left me looking for more — a real routine, someone who actually got it. Read more>>

Julia Chasman

Julia Chasman Design started doing renovations in the Highland Park and Eagle Rock neighborhoods of Los Angeles. I began by buying an older bungalow style home that needed love, and, when it was completely restored, selling it. The second of these houses got exposure in a national magazine, and sold in a bidding war. Read more>>

Tolga Onuk

I started my journey with a Commodore 64, where my fascination with digital technology began at just 8 or 9 years old. What started as experimenting with primitive game development eventually evolved into designing websites, online games, and software applications for global brands such as Spin Master, Electronic Arts, and HYFN. Read more>>

Hilary Deckard Healy

I have always been emotionally sensitive and intuitive. Even as a child, I found myself picking up on the emotions of others and drawn toward creative outlets and conceptual ideas. More than anything, I have been fascinated by how people work—how life experiences and pivotal events shape who we are and who we become. Read more>>

Rick Kitagawa

My first memory of making art was my mom bringing home reams of dot matrix printer paper (the kind with the tear-off sides – this was the 80’s) as her office was switching to laser printers, and so I’d just have endless amounts of paper to draw on with my crayons. Read more>>

Emmett Walsh

I have been working as a fine art printmaker and publisher for the past 14 years, since moving to Los Angeles – after a short stint in New York – with my wife and business partner Patricia Valencia. Originally from London, England, born of Irish parents and ancestry, I graduated with a Masters in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art. Read more>>

Mona Holmes

How did I get my start? In a very non-linear path, which started with waiting tables in Los Angeles and being an avid reader. Back when print ruled the day, Sundays were dedicated to downtime by reading magazines, books, and newspapers. Especially the LA Weekly and Jonathan Gold’s Counter Intelligence column. Read more>>

Michelle Freeman

Immortal Masks started in my garage. My husband, Andrew is the founder of the company. We stayed a garage business for about 2 years and then moved into our first official building. I first became a more official member of the business in the office and shortly after George Frangadakis became the third owner. Read more>>

Minerva Madrigal

I apprenticed and worked at a shop in pico rivera for about 3 years. Then decided to move to montebello and open a private studio where i am able to create freely. I enjoy tattooing a lot of cartoons, y2k tribal, black work designs. Betty boop mashups have been the most popular design that i’ve put out. Read more>>

Audy Macdonald

My path to starting Hoofbeats Equine Wellness was personal. For more than 20 years, I have lived with fibromyalgia, and like many people navigating chronic pain, I spent years searching for therapies that offered any kind of pain relief. When I first came across the Electro-Equiscope, what caught my attention were case studies describing improvements in people struggling with fibromyalgia symptoms. Read more>>

Jem Jebbia

I started making sports history videos as a hobby during the pandemic- I was doing my doctoral dissertation research and struggling because the libraries and archives weren’t open. Making these videos was a way to share my passion for history with a community of fans and not feel too discouraged by the delay in my academic work. Read more>>

Jen Marchain

I’m an adult ballet dancer with 15 years of performance experience and a lifelong connection to movement, having begun dancing at the age of eight. Read more>>

Alexis Paul

I was always interested in psychology and understanding why humans did the things they did throughout history, as well as the emotional and mental impact on society. As I moved through my doctorate training I realized I had a passion working with kids and teens, in particular queer and trans youth. Read more>>

Laura & Maceo Picklesimer & Greenberg

We’ve been living in Southern California and collaborating as writers, producers and creative partners for about fifteen years. Maceo grew up in a creative family and became a cinephile at a young age before studying creative writing and film at Cal State Long Beach, where he fell headfirst into directing and filmmaking. Read more>>

Henrikh Abajyan

Everything started with a big passion and a dream. At first, I never planned to open a coffee business. I simply wanted to buy a 1 kg roaster to have fun in my garage and roast coffee for myself. After connecting with San Franciscan Roaster founder Bill Kennedy, I got excited and ended up purchasing an SF-6 coffee roaster – and that’s when everything changed. Read more>>

Annie Aboulian

I’m a literature professor and tarot writer, and my former life as an overworked and unfulfilled attorney is what brought me here. I was your typical over-achieving, involved-in-everything, college bound teen. I was even voted Most Likely to Succeed my senior year of high school. So off to UCLA and then USC Law I went! Read more>>

Bob Dornberger

I grew up in rural Alabama and luckily, was able to attend an arts magnet school in Birmingham. While I was in high school, a recruiter from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago came to my high school and encouraged me to apply. It was the only college application I did and I was accepted. Read more>>

Marwan Nassar

I picked up a guitar as a kid and fell in love with it. From taking it to school every day to playing on stages from SXSW to festivals, sharing rooms with Grammy-winning artists, and getting to work with legends like Breakestra and Bootie Brown of The Pharcyde, two of my personal favorite groups. Read more>>

Erika Nnaji

My name is Erika Nnaji, and at the heart of everything I do is a deep commitment to people — particularly those who have faced some of life’s most profound challenges. I came to social work not just as a career choice, but as a calling. Read more>>

Gloria Laino

It all started for me in the small town of Guánica, Puerto Rico, the town that helped create who I am today. When I was 4, living in New York with my mother, one of my relatives suggested to her that I move to Puerto Rico to live with my grandfather and two aunts. Read more>>

Rachel Mochizuki

Truthfully, I never imagined I’d end up where I am today, doing both psychic readings and working as a psychotherapist. Growing up, I was always on the path to becoming the doctor my Asian parents had dreamed I would be. But when I saw a psychic for the first time at 16, she told me she didn’t see me becoming a doctor at all. Read more>>

Jeffrey Lee

It all started during one of my monthly goat sacrifices, when a wizard descended over the cliffs. It was Dumbledore, inviting me to study at Hogwarts! Unfortunately, I had to drop out after a semester—I mean, 10 galleons per year?! Wizard inflation is out of control! Okay—that might be a slight exaggeration. Read more>>

Kristy Kim

I started TomoCredit, in 2019 after experiencing first-hand what it’s like to be a “credit ghost” in the U.S. As a Korean immigrant, I couldn’t have fathomed that in the States, credit, not cash, is king. I was denied 5 times for an auto loan, despite having enough money in the bank to cover the car! Read more>>

Jesús Verduzco

Born and raised in the rural Central Valley, I’ve had the privilege of living and working in the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Santa Cruz. I am a first-generation Mexican American whose parents were farmworkers at some point in their lives. They struggled to ensure that their family had more opportunities. Read more>>

Pedro Camarena

I come from a family that has been involved with agave and tequila distillation since the 1800’s. The name Pedro Camarena has been passed down for over 200 years, and I’m the 6th generation. Read more>>

Ivy Sang

Hello! I’m a songwriter originally from a small town in the East Bay Area called Brentwood, but I moved to LA about four years ago to fully pursue my career as an artist. Thanks to my grandparents’ record collection, my childhood was defined by a deep, abiding love for soul and funk music. Read more>>

Andrea Nanigian

Just like most people, my path hasn’t been a straight line, and my path to starting CarOracle really wasn’t either. I spent many years working in corporate sales, in fast-paced environments where everything moved quickly and success was measured in outcomes. It was a meaningful chapter in my life, but also one that was very consuming. Read more>>

Akeya Harmon Collins

Honestly, my story started in a really broken place. I went through some heavy life experiences that forced me to slow down and really face myself—grief, health challenges, and moments where I didn’t have control over how things were unfolding. And in that season, I had to lean on God in a way I never had before. I didn’t come out of that overnight. Read more>>