Orange & Blue

Issue date: 3/7/08 Section: Features

Kari Gibson, class of 2007

Carson-Newman students prepare for four years, sometimes more, to eventually graduate and go on to achieve bigger and better things. Some start work, some start graduate school, some start families and some start all of the above. With all these new beginnings, how many college students actually go on to try their dream job and to live their dream life? More than likely reality will precede fantasy and many future alums may never get the chance to even try to live out the dream. Improbably, C-N alum Kari Gibson took the chance to make her dreams come true. She hopes to make her family and friends proud, her alma mater proud and herself proud as she "struts her stuff" on the runways at fashion week, on the pages of magazines and eventually on the big screen.

Gibson is a C-N graduate of May 2007 with a degree in Mass Communication. She was also a four-year starter and a three-time SAC All-Conference athlete, a setter for the Lady Eagle volleyball team. Originally from Celina, OH, Gibson has lived in North Hollywood, Calif. since October of last year with her brother A.J.

If students don't recognize her name, they might recognize her face, as it has recently graced the pages of the March issues of Seventeen and Cosmopolitan magazine and the April issues of Glamour and Self. Gibson is featured in an advertisement for a new product by Hawaiian Tropic called Island Radiance Self Tanner. Hawaiian Tropic staff selected Gibson to be the new spokes model saying "she had a glow inside and out." She was named Miss Island Radiance at the Miss Hawaiian Tropic USA Finals and the new face of all Island Radiance products on the shelves today.

Gibson has been busy since her move to Hollywood. She signed with a modeling agency called L.A. Models to do both print advertisements and runway shows, and also with NTA Talent Agency to do commercials. Gibson laughed as she spoke of her agencies and their model management saying "I love to eat but my agency doesn't love that I love to eat." Gibson will be walking the runways at all different venues in the city, clothed in the hottest designer's lines during L.A.'s Fashion Week beginning this weekend and concluding March 21st. She will be modeling Guess, Rock and Republic, Kelly Noshimito among other designers with the who's who of celebrities in attendance.

Fashion Week will not be Gibson's first catwalk or her first celeb encounter as she has already worked a show for Bed Head cosmetics and hair as well as being a hostess and presenter at an event hosted by actor Eddie Murphy in honor of Barry Bonds. Gibson had presented a diamond bat to Bonds from the mayor of Los Angeles at the gathering.

When Gibson is not on the runway or at a photo shoot, she is at acting classes or at a commercial audition, trying to beat out her competition, just like she did on the court at C-N's very own Holt Fieldhouse. She enjoys her new classes, her new industry and her new home very much, while still missing her family and closest friends from C-N. She is attempting what so many graduates may never even try: taking a chance of a lifetime, laying it all on the line and reaching for the impossible. Gibson left the life she knew for a chance at greatness. While it was such a challenge to leave everything and everyone behind to move west and capture her dream, she said so far, it definitely remains "a sacrifice I am so glad I have made."

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