Beyond book smarts, what Tracy Palac Dungo took away from her college experience at Brown University was a philosophy of how to live life to the fullest.
"Talking to friends about their schools, I learned that on our campus, more so than others, we were encouraged to have passion projects and hobbies," she said.
Whether for stress relief, to create well-rounded individuals, to help students discover who they were or remind them to find balance in life, it worked.
Dungo, 30, has been pursuing her passions ever since. Along with her serious studies in business and finance, she embarked on a steady diet of "random classes," from app development to photography, "coding for chicks" and jewelry making.
"I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, but I wanted to be my own boss at some point and wanted to construct my own M.B.A. of life and see how much I could learn," she said. "Jewelry making stuck. It was something that didn’t take a whole lot of time. By the end of a class, I had produced three rings and thought, ‘This is amazing.’
"It was a creative outlet when everything else I was doing was dry. In finance I was learning a lot about valuations of companies. It’s completely different from where I am now."
Every lesson learned is being applied to running and building her company Kalaki Riot, which she started in 2013.
"With my coding I was able to build my first website; from my photography class I was able to take my own photos for the site. It was very grass roots-oriented, just to get something off the ground and have a business. It’s been really fun trying to establish my brand."
AT THE HEART of all her designs is the idea of travel and escape. The name Kalaki Riot combines the Hawaiian variation of her name and the notion of a disruptive fusion of urban and island style.
The stark, classic lines of her jewelry are infused with island motifs such as wave crests, hibiscus, fishhooks and palm trees, made with reclaimed metals, from sterling silver to bronze. Prices range from $70 for rings to $495 for a palm pendulum necklace. Most pieces sell for less than $200.
The line was quickly picked up by resort stores such as the Cabanas at The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua, and Seaside Luxe at Four Seasons Resort Hualalai on Hawaii island.
Although Dungo, of Filipino ancestry, grew up in New Jersey, her parents had a second home on Maui that they returned to every year.
"Something about Hawaii got ahold of me. I go back about twice a year, and each time it’s like going home. It’s my happy place.
"I think everyone has their own island. Metaphorically, it’s their happy place, it calms them down."
Dungo lives in New York, where her first job out of school was working in finance and strategic planning for Ralph Lauren. Later, wanting to add to her expanding metier, she took an e-commerce and marketing job at People magazine. In such corporate environments she found a disconnect between her business uniform of black and the beachy jewelry of her travels.
Noting that raffia and wooden beads were not a good fit for the executive suite, she tried her hand at creating jewelry pieces — such as a Destination Necklace that can be handstamped with the coordinates of any place on the globe — to bridge both worlds.
Her dual-sided business card features a cityscape on one side, reading "physical location," and beachscape on the other, which reads, "mental location."
"It’s what I keep in mind when I’m designing pieces. When you can’t be at the beach, you can look down at this bracelet or ring and see a daily reminder of your happy place, that still fits in with a corporate lifestyle."
Kalaki Riot jewelry can be found at kalakiriot.com.
