Founder archive
Search the complete Yoga Founders Magazine archive and keep scrolling to discover more builders across the yoga business world.
Studio OwnerMovement helped Juri Ko navigate grief, personal transitions, and the process of reconnecting with herself. After discovering a deeper side of yoga in Hawaiʻi, she completed her teacher training and began building communities around movement...
Studio OwnerDolly Reno’s journey to founding Noble Yoga began with yoga as a place of safety, grounding, and reconnection during profound personal change. After careers in restaurants and film, she became a full-time yoga teacher and eventually...
Teacher TrainingFrom a lifelong spiritual yearning and a career in professional dance, Amy Landry found her path through yoga, Ayurveda, and India’s classical traditions. Injury and an accident ended her dance career, but unexpected teaching opportunities opened a new direction. Over two decades, her work evolved through classes, retreats, workshops, mentoring, and a 300-hour teacher training for teachers seeking greater...
Studio OwnerI’m Cassie Chechile, a wellness entrepreneur, community-builder, and former communications professional based in New Rochelle, NY. Before stepping into the yoga world, I spent nearly a decade in public relations and marketing, helping global organizations shape strategy and storytelling. I’ve also supported my husband in building a successful home-renovation business, which gave me a strong foundation in operations, client service, and small-business leadership...
Yoga TechI am an entrepreneur, artist, photographer, and fashion designer who has always sought to bring wellness and balance into the world through art, design, and conscious living. My curiosity led me to study and explore every corner of human expression—from creativity to spirituality—and this lifelong search eventually gave birth to my most meaningful creation: the Lovetuner. After years of learning and gathering wisdom from people across the world, I became deeply committed to introducing the Lovetuner as a bridge between healing and modern life. We are living in a time of deep division and instability, but also one of great potential for transformation. My mission is to bring tangible healing through love and sound—to help people reconnect with themselves and with one another...
Community BuilderI wanted to change the world when I graduated college. But I found myself sitting in a cubicle in a law firm doing work that made me question all of my dreams. I felt useless, and more than anything I felt sad. I used to sleep during all of my allowed breaks during the day, and I felt so low energy that I had to do jumping jacks in the bathroom to wake myself back up enough to be alert. I was no stranger to struggling with mental health, as I had for years, but not being connected to a feeling of purpose threw gasoline on the fire. One day, I stumbled on the yogis of instagram. I consumed their content with a crazed thirst. They made some part of my soul come alive like never before, and even though I did yoga growing up, I never realized how magical it could be until I saw it through their eyes...
Yoga TechI am a half Iranian, half Czech girl born in London and raised in the Czech Republic. At eighteen I moved back to London to study marketing because I loved creativity and psychology. That path led me into seven years of corporate marketing where I managed campaigns, worked with major brands, and learned how the digital world moves. Yoga arrived much earlier in my life when I was sixteen. My first class was Bikram only because someone told me it burns calories, and as a hypermobile teenager I was suddenly good at it. My ego loved that, but soon I realised yoga was much more than a hot room and sweat...
Teacher TrainingI’m a father, a scientist, a physiotherapist, and (many would say) a bit bananas. I love to dance, party with younger people, play guitar, sing with my students, and share good energy. I’d say I’m just a guy who likes to live and enjoy my life and help others enjoy theirs. My journey into yoga was anything but typical. At age six, my father taught me advanced breath-holding techniques — unknowingly initiating me into the world of pranayama. By age eight, an Olympic athlete guided me through exercises that helped me control and massage my internal organs using breath. I didn’t know it then, but I was learning yogic kriyas and bandhas. At 17 I was introduced to a Tibetan lama, through which I started exploring tantric (not sexual tantra but essence of tantra) philosophy and practices and after suffering injuries from conventional fitness methods, I've found yoga which provided relief for that - after that everything clicked and I dove deep into practicing more than 6h daily for the next decade...
Studio OwnerA life outside of yoga? For me, everything is yoga. That’s why my Instagram blurs the line between professional and personal. My dad brought me to my first yoga class when I was sixteen, a rebellious teenager who didn’t expect to fall in love with it. I’ve been practicing ever since. The rebellion is still there, but now it’s more focused, more useful. Part of me moving to Japan was rebellion too—it was probably the last place anyone expected me to end up, including myself. I’ve always been a traveler, and yoga has been my grounding force no matter where I go. I completed my first 200-hour teacher training in India at twenty-one, and since then, yoga has been part of my everyday life. Over the years, I’ve logged more than 1500 hours of teacher trainings as both student and facilitator...
Yoga Business CoachI come to yoga from a very different world. I spent seven years in graduate school and earned a PhD in English literature from UNC Chapel Hill. My professional life started in academic publishing, where I worked for a dozen years with Duke, Cambridge, and Oxford University Presses. Along the way, I spent six years as a public radio announcer at WFDD and WUNC, which gave me production skills I still use today for podcasts and audiobooks. Outside of work, I’ve always been an athlete. I’ve competed in everything from 400-meter sprints to ultramarathons and triathlons of every distance, even racing on Team USA for the 2008 World Triathlon Championships. I’m also a certified endurance sports coach through USA Triathlon, USA Cycling, and the Road Runners’ Club of America...
Yoga Business CoachJoyce grew up in Queens, New York, the daughter of immigrant parents from the Philippines. After graduating from NYU, she worked in publishing and later in film development at Sony in Los Angeles. Eventually, she returned to New York to be closer to family, got married, and moved to the Hudson Valley in search of a different pace of life. It was here that she deepened her yoga practice and met Amy in a Poughkeepsie studio, which, in a full circle moment, became the location of their newest studio years later. For Amy, yoga has always been inseparable from her life. She lives in Kingston, NY with her wife and daughter and is deeply rooted in the Hudson Valley community. She describes her personal and professional life as fully integrated, with yoga serving as the foundation. Her home, friendships, and professional work all revolve around building inclusive, supportive spaces. When Joyce and Amy met, their friendship quickly extended beyond the mat, setting the stage for a powerful partnership...
Yoga TechEddie Arpin is currently the CEO of OfferingTree, husband, and father of two children, and lives in Saint Paul, MN. Growing up, Eddie was exposed to meditation and mindfulness from his father’s transcendental meditation practice. Meditation would later reemerge in Eddie’s life and impact him both personally and professionally. Eddie has an undergraduate and graduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Before starting OfferingTree, he was researching transportation systems at the university with the goal of increasing safety and mobility, with a focus on teenage drivers. When he wasn't studying physics and math, he was staying physically and mindfully active...