Meet Kiandra Peart, an 18-year-old creative artist and engineering student who recently won a prize award for over $10,000 thanks to her innovative sneaker designs. This young designer began painting on canvas but then she attempted in vain to save a favorite pair of worn sneakers. Not being the type of person to give up easily, she went online to see what other people were doing. Peart discovered the paint had to be waterproof and flexible.

Then Peart posted her first pair of sneaker designs on social media and subsequently received requests for duplication. Initially, Peart who is from Queens, didn’t receive a lot of creative ideas. Most of the characters requested were famous super heroes or cartoon characters. Still her parents Kim and Adrian Peart felt that their daughter should be paid for her work. With their encouragement she took her talent to the next level. She developed a name, a business plan and a logo. Finally, “Kustoms by Ki,” was created.

A fully designed pair of sneaker starts at $100 and the price depends on factors such as whether the customer provides the sneakers or design. At times, customers will give her an idea and she takes it from there to create an entirely new sneaker design.

In the summer of 2019 Peart, competed and won the National Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) award in the entrepreneurship category for developing “Kustoms by Ki.” The event which took place in Detroit was hosted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.) The prize was a $50,000 investment into “Kustoms by Ki” and placement in a business incubator. The incubator guides Peart through the intricacies of growing a business.

Even before receiving this award, Peart was a precocious high school junior who entered the Breakthrough Junior Challenge competition. This is a global competition for teens between the ages 13 and 18 who are tasked with creating a three-minute video describing a science or math topic. Peart produced a video about physics, where she described the fourth dimension and how we can visualize it. In September 2019, Peart was notified that she placed twentieth in this worldwide competition.

Multi-talented Peart is a freshman at Georgia Tech University studying mechanical engineering. She plans to work in her field after college and one day, hopefully, to employ other creative minds. The future holds many possibilities for this young lady.

If you would like a pair of sneakers to be designed by Kiandra Peart, you can contact her via email KustomsByKi@gmail.com or on Facebook @Kustomsbyki.