We were lucky to catch up with Jodie Davies recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jodie, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Next Session started when my love of surfing, my awareness of ocean plastic pollution and my growing pile of used wetsuits collided. Surfing is my passion, I love it, I love the ocean, its waves, sand, all it. So watching it be filled with plastics and treated like a giant dumping ground is difficult for me. I wanted to do something.

With that, I was also aware of my growing pile of used wetsuits that was too old and leaky for me to use, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them in the trash, it seems too wasteful. Then one day I came across a video on YouTube of a guy making a ring out of denim and resin and it clicked – I decided then that I would upcycle my old wetsuits into rings and raise money for the oceans. It took many failed attempts to figure out how to transform wetsuits into jewelry but I did and Next Session was born.

Now I make rings out of used wetsuits and resin and other jewelry out of discarded surf resin to help raise money and awareness to help in a small way protect our oceans so that there is always a next session!

Jodie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

After 20 or so years as a consultant with PwC and later as IT executive with various companies, I decided to leave that career behind and follow my heart. I left the corporate world to start my own business that aligned with my passion for surfing. Before starting Next Session, I was not a jewelry maker and didn’t know how to use the tools I needed such as a lathe and cnc so I had to learn new skills.

I experimented with different ways of combining wetsuit and resin and after many failures I figured a way to make this work. I also enrolled in a machine shop class at a local community college to learn about the tools I needed to bring this idea to life. And it’s been a wild ride ever since.

I continue to play with ring ideas and expand the range. I also work with discarded resin (“surfite”) that is scraped from surfboard shaping bays. Surfite is beautiful and perfect for making unique pieces with. I have a few product ideas with both neoprene and surfite that I plan to introduce in the future.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

With Next Session I guess the best story to illustrate my resilience is how I figured out how to turn wetsuits into rings. As this hasn’t been done before and I didn’t have business partners so I needed to figure this out on my own.

I came across a video of a ring being made out of denim pieces. I thought I could actually take my old wetsuits and turn them into rings. How cool would that be! Only problem was, I didn’t know how to do that. Unfortunately, denim and neoprene are very different so I could not make rings the same way shown in the video. Without going into too much detail, denim absorbs resin so it’s pretty easy to make a cast to create rings from. Wetsuit neoprene does not so creating a cast is very difficult. I had to find a way to grind it into powder so that I could mix with resin. Even grinding a wetsuit up isn’t easy, it’s too soft. So I played around with putting wetsuit pieces in the oven to dry out before grinding. Wouldn’t recommend and it didn’t work. After a few other failed approached I decided to try hardening the neoprene with liquid nitrogen before grinding and that worked!

Then I needed to teach myself how to use a CNC machine and master ring making on a lathe. Figuring out how to use the materials and the tools both took some time and practice but now I’m super proud of the jewelry pieces I create.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I feel like most of my professional life has been pivoting. I actually started my working life in outdoor adventure retail. I actually loved this work spent my days with people that shared my love of the outdoors. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the best career to set me up financially so I went back to college to get business/economics degree.

When I was finishing my degree I was approached by PwC to join them. I worked with them for about 15 years based in both Australia and the US doing a range of consulting roles. Eventually I decided to leave as travelling as much as I was, was taking a toll. From there I went to Mattel where I was the Director in charge of IT Governance. From there I went to Guthy Renker as the VP of PMO before we spun off into OceanX where I was the VP Customer Success. In all of these roles I got to work with create teams and diverse clients. But eventually I knew my heart wasn’t in it and took the leap to follow my passion.

My first business idea after leaving OceanX actually failed. It also was focused on ocean plastics but required too much investment to get started. But what it did do was give me the space to think creatively which is how I got the idea for Next Session.

I have made big pivots throughout my working life and it’s been quite the adventure. Taking risks isn’t easy for everyone, so for me I’m really grateful that I have been able to.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nextsession.surf
• Instagram: @nextsession
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdavies051/