Episode 1
When They Zig, Amy Sneider Zags
Toma Clark Haines - host of The Republic of Toma podcast presented by ASPIRE DESIGN AND HOME magazine - sits down with ASPIRE’s Editor in Chief Amy Sneider to share Amy’s vision behind the glossy magazine. Toma and Amy discuss how this former social worker and massage therapist changed the face of the interior design industry by thinking differently. This might not be the average career path for an Editor in Chief, but there is nothing average about Amy Sneider.
Shelter publications were an after-work escape from the sorrow seen during her days on the job in social work, but social work also brought another element to Amy’s life. It gave her a global perspective. Social work gave her an insight into different cultures and expanded her global view. She experienced international cultural and familial aspects that fed her curiosity and informed her decision to create a publication that presented a more global point of view to interior design. Amy’s second career was as a massage therapist. When she pivoted out of social work to massage therapy, it opened her up to the expansiveness of doing bodywork on the blank canvas of the human body. After some time, her husband Steve Mandel came home from his Real Estate job one day and proposed that they launch a new shelter publication. Right away, Amy saw this magazine opportunity as another way of working on a blank canvas.
In her ‘third act’ in life, she found herself at home creating a quiet beauty. As entrepreneurs of an independently owned magazine, Amy enjoyed the privilege of autonomy as she created her own republic on her pages. She found she eschewed perfection in favor of more eclectic homes and gravitated towards that European “lived-in” interior versus the anonymous perfection of stateside homes which are often over-styled.
Amy is a Capricorn through and through as the home is, after all, the Capricorn’s happy place. While the pages of her publication reflect her organized and orderly nature, Capricorns are also known for abhorring anything ordinary or boring. It’s no surprise Amy Sneider surrounds herself at home (and on her pages) with antiques and beautiful treasures from days of yore.
The mission statement of ASPIRE DESIGN AND HOME is to be a seeker and storyteller of the sublime in living. Like all things Amy puts in the magazine and her life, the word “sublime” was chosen quite carefully.
Sublime has a higher meaning.
Sublime is transcendent.
The magazine strives to share a divine heavenly beauty that not only enhances things in the real world, but helps create a more genuinely beautiful world.
Toma admits she’s a Scorpio, which is the most dangerous and passionate of the signs in the zodiac. Amy and Toma realize that these two signs of the zodiac, the Scorpio and the Capricorn, are utterly compatible because water nourishes the earth. Amy and Toma announce Toma Clark Haines’ new roles as European Contributing Editor of ASPIRE DESIGN AND HOME magazine. Amy adds that knowing Toma is a Scorpio means this new design and lifestyle podcast comes with a warning label, “The Republic of Toma is Hot Shit Dangerous”.
Join The Republic.
Find out more by visiting www.republicoftoma.com.
If you’d like to join a community of like-minded individuals in pursuit of living a life less ordinary, then become a member of The Republic of Toma Facebook Group for twice-monthly business and mindset mentoring sessions.
Follow along on Instagram @RepublicofToma.
And last but not least don't forget to check out ASPIRE DESIGN AND HOME online www.aspiremetro.com.
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