Kory’s most prominent weakness is his inability to talk about his strengths. So I’ve decided to write this for him. This is Mallory, Kory's wife.Kory is from Burbank, CA where he grew up watching his parents navigate the fashion and food services industries. He is the second of four children and spent his high school singing in show choir, playing soccer and tennis, and being voted Most Likely to Succeed. He served a two-year religious mission in Cambodia from 2008-2010 and navigated countless emotional and physical hardships in the process. We met in February of 2011 through a field study to India and were married in December of the same year. Together, we have four children, though we lost our youngest in the summer of 2022. That grief has been refining and consuming in ways we couldn’t have anticipated. We live with our family and two dogs in the mountains in Utah and spend a significant portion of time trying new recipes. We started working on TAFT - a men’s footwear brand - the year we graduated from college (2013) and sold the company in 2022. TAFT was the ride of a lifetime in many ways - building a brand, opening stores, seeing our product come to life, it was thrilling. So much happened on the world’s stage, but the things that made Kory shine as a partner/entrepreneur are, largely, unseen and intangible. Kory is the smartest person I know in every realm that I think matters - emotionally intelligent, socially adept, as book smart as he is street smart. He sees opportunities where others see loss, he sees potential where others are overwhelmed. Most impressively, though, he is a king of culture - he loves the people he works with, deeply, and that piece of the puzzle is the most irreplaceable of all. You can’t cheat authenticity. Anyone can be brilliant, but Kory is brilliance coupled with sincerity. Kory was an incredible student - straight A’s, accepted to every university he wanted to attend - he is impressive in every traditional sense. TAFT revealed in him, though, something more impressive - a depth of creativity that had previously been untapped, a skill for scrappiness, admirable grit, and real, tangible leadership skills. He is whip smart, but he’s also charisma embodied. He speaks in a way that invites others to listen, he finds real, lasting solutions to problems most ignore. He is somehow a jack of all trades and master of them too. People like him don’t come along often. I already married him (sorry!) but you can connect with him here. Best, Mallory Stevens (Kory’s wife & co-founder of TAFT)