How a Cancer Fight Led Former Bergdorf Exec Nelli Kim to Create Fashionable Orthopedic Shoes

Nelli Kim has been in the fashion industry for 20 years. But her journey to entrepreneurship began in 2014, on a volunteer trip to India. “I was really inspired by this idea of how can I do more and be of service to others, but doing what I know how to do. My gift is not to be a social worker or a doctor.” The retail veteran, who at the time was a VP and DMM of footwear at Bergdorf Goodman, followed that idea spark to first Anthropologie and then Caleres, where she began to learn about building and scaling a brand as GM of the Vince, Via Spiga and Diane von Furstenberg shoe lines. But it was an unexpected health crisis that revealed Kim’s ultimate purpose. “I was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, and that was a seven-month journey of surgery and chemo and all of those things,” she recalled. As a result of her treatments, Kim developed chemo-related neuropathy, which is nerve damage that causes tingling, numbness or pain in the hands and feet. “You hear a lot about the hair loss and the nausea, but the neuropathy was kind of unusual. I wasn’t expecting that.” Even following her recovery, when Kim

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