We were lucky to catch up with Narae Kim recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Narae, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
I’ve never been someone who takes risks for the thrill of it. I just fall in love with things deeply, and then I figure out how to build a life around them. And I’ve never lost. Not because everything went perfectly, but because when you’re driven by your passion, every outcome teaches you something, and every chapter helps open the next one.
Here’s what my life looks like from the outside: a Korean girl who left her family and friends settling down back home, flew to LA alone on a student visa, worked on film projects and theater productions across New York and LA, co-founded a VR health-tech startup, made several animated shorts, kept putting up immersive theater shows, and is now building a social tech startup while becoming a nutrition coach.
It looks like a series of back-to-back risks. From the inside, it’s just me following what I love.
It first started with writing and psychology, which led to theater scenic design, which brought me to the US. Then came animation, which led to VR – which I see as theater with the same magic but less limits. So I co-founded Flowly, a startup using VR for pain and anxiety management. We took an experimental creative idea and turned it into something clinically validated and accessible to people who need healing.
Passion doesn’t wait for you to finish the last thing. At the heart of everything are my people: friends, family, and strangers who become each other’s inspiration. In LA, surrounded by people from every corner of the world, I am endlessly inspired. It’s why I’m building a social tech company. It’s why nutrition pulls at me. I’ve learned that every meal we share shapes how we think, feel, and show up for the world around us. My goals have always been simple: spread more positivity and love to the people around me, and build things that help them live better.
The risk everyone sees is me refusing to pick a lane. But I’ve always found a way to merge everything together. Each passion feeds the next, and I keep moving forward.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
The shortest way I can describe myself is this: I am someone who has never stopped being excited about life.
I am a multidisciplinary artist, entrepreneur, and creator. Currently I am a co-founder of Flowly, a VR health-tech startup that uses immersive technology for pain and anxiety management. We went through NIH-backed clinical trials and built our solution to be reimbursable with medical insurance insurance, because we believe innovative, creative care should be accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford it. I am also a co-founder of Rallie, a social tech platform that helps friend groups turn every “we should hang out” into plans that actually happen, so that real connection doesn’t die in the group chat.
Alongside my work as a founder, I am a new-media artist. My work explores the connection between the mind and the body, often through immersive technology, creating spaces for reflection and healing. I believe technology can be a tool for collective resonance rather than isolation, inviting people to connect with themselves and with each other. That belief lives at the center of everything I make. I am also currently on a path to become a certified nutrition coach, because I’ve come to understand that every meal we share shapes how we think, feel, and show up for the world around us.
What sets me apart is not any single one of these things. It’s the fact that they are all connected. Every discipline I’ve pursued has fed the next one. Scenic design taught me how space shapes emotion. Theater taught me how story creates empathy. VR taught me that technology, at its best, can empower us to grow. And all of it keeps pointing me toward the same thing: human connection, and how to make it richer, healthier, and more joyful.
What I am most proud of is not a specific award or milestone, it is that I have never lost my passion. I have never stopped finding ways to have fun. I have never given up on trying to make the world a little better, for myself and for the people around me. In a long journey with many twists, that feels like the most important thing to hold onto.
What I want people to know about me and my work is simple. My goal has always been to spread more positivity and love, and to build things that help people live better, feel better, and connect more deeply with each other.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Artists don’t just make beautiful things. They imagine futures that don’t exist yet. And yet we live in a world that consumes art constantly and compensates artists barely. When we undervalue artists, we don’t just lose beautiful things. We lose the people who are quietly driving some of our most meaningful innovations.
Some practical ways I can think of: Cities and institutions need to create and protect affordable spaces, because creativity cannot survive in a place that prices its artists out. Businesses and tech companies need to collaborate with artists as genuine thought partners. And all of us need to stop asking creatives to work for free. I’ve seen that norm pushes some of most talented people out of practice before they ever reach their potential.
When we invest in artists, we don’t just get better culture. We get healthier, more connected, more imaginative communities, because art also heals. A thriving creative ecosystem is how we build a better world.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding moment to me as an artist is not the awards or the reviews. It is the moment you realize your work helped someone feel connected again. To themselves first, and then to the world around them.
I have seen it most clearly through Flowly. Our users are often chronic pain patients whose lives have become profoundly isolated. When you have severe chronic pain, you can’t go out easily or see friends and family whenever you want to. The world shrinks around you, and with it, in a lot of times, so does your sense of self.
I have watched a patient cry stepping on a virtual grass field. The kind of ordinary thing most of us walk past without a second thought. But for someone who hadn’t felt that kind of openness in months, that simple virtual space became a moment of reconnection with themselves and with their own body. And from that inner shift, something bigger opens up. I have seen patients reach out to family members they hadn’t spoken to in years. I have seen people get back in a car and drive again. Walk out their front door. Start living again.
To me that is what art does at its best. It starts on the inside. It quietly rebuilds your relationship with yourself, and from there, it gives you the courage to reach back out to the world. That is what I am always chasing as an artist. That moment of reconnection. When someone remembers who they are and feels empowered to go live like it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kimnarae.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naraerachelkim
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naraekim-design/
Image Credits
Narae Kim | Tamade, INC