Today we’d like to introduce you to Amber Torrealba.
Amber, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up in Palm Bay, Florida, sports were my life, especially skateboarding. I lived inland at the time, so basketball and other sports were also a primary focus through high school before discovering my love for skimboarding and the ocean.
During and after college, I started a skateboard company, marketing company, and managed a corporate radioshack for five years. My experiences taught me how much I could achieve with building brands and working for other companies, but my passion still led me to chase waves and be creative.
When I was 22, I started competing as women’s professional skimboarder. By 25, I realized that I wasn’t happy with my life in Florida and I was missing out on my full potential. I wanted to progress myself, my career, and ride bigger waves in California and other parts of the world. So I packed up my small car and drove across the country to start over.
Although it was the roughest time of my life, and I left almost everything behind, it changed me as a person. I had to work endlessly through the transition and I’m happy to now be working on making videos for a living, while just being myself as a pro skimboarder. This lifestyle allows me to focus on the more important things to me, such as inspiring women and working to progress the sport of skimboarding/action sports behind the scenes.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
For me, the road was never paved. I spent a lot of time going in the opposite direction of my passions, working for years on the corporate side and chasing a “well paid” business career. I have always been considered a workaholic, but I wouldn’t change it for the lessons it taught me. To this day, people haven’t seen the work behind the scenes that has allowed me to build a business for myself, but I’m happy with that as long as I’m doing what I love. I would be doing this whether it paid my bills or not. I was, for free, until it did. I think that’s the most important and fulfilling part of what anyone should strive to do. It comes from pure passion.
Even though many people haven’t heard of my sport, I never gave up on making a job and future out of it. I’m working to help pave a legitimate future in skimboarding for the talented upcoming generation today that’s crushing it. Some opportunities I look at differently than most, so being able to create videos to express that is the best part of what I do.
What else should our readers know?
Being fortunate enough to win the 2016 and 2018 Vic World Championships after moving to California was a huge accomplishment for me. But being able to travel and give back to others who are working towards their dreams is more important to me, and also what keeps me motivated to do what I do.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite memories as a child would probably have to be skateboarding all day in the summers, or catching my first wave while surfing around 11 years old. This was when I discovered my love for waves. I just didn’t know you could skimboard on waves at the time!
Contact Info:
- Website: ambertorrealba.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/ambertorrealba
- Facebook: facebook.com/ambertorrealba
- Twitter: twitter.com/ambertorrealba
Image Credit:
Paddy Mack, Justin Legall, Skylar Wilson
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