Kevin (he/him) created and donated custom PPTC soaps to our club which have been given out as event prizes. You can even win your own custom made soap at PPTC’s Virtual Award’s Night on February 20th! Read more about Kevin here:

Kevin with a bar of the PPTC soap he makes

When did you join PPTC? What aspects of the club are you most involved in?

I joined PPTC in 2019 as I started training for my first marathon (NYC 2019). I knew about the club from several friends, races, and seeing members running in the park. I had been training with some folks at the Off the Hook Track Club where I met a few PPTC members, including Allan Co and Mary Johnston. And as we all know, the club's friendliness is infectious, and seeing the camaraderie during races like the Al Goldstein Summer Speed Series was giving me some serious FOMO. So I joined. I was still pretty much a lurker, though, until this past year. I think COVID made me yearn for more social interaction, and even though most of my involvement has just been talking online, sharing training plans, and suffering through 30-day yoga challenges as some sort of excuse for "strength training" with a few other members, having the club has really helped me stay motivated with running and has given me some much needed social connection.

Tell us about your running history. How did you get started? Do you have any future running goals?

I ran in high school and then gave up running for many years (my cigarette habit demanded all of my time). After I finally quit smoking, I wanted to get back in shape to climb a mountain where my cousin was getting married one summer. So I started running again, and then decided to do some races, and now I'm fully back to being obsessed. In terms of goals, I know time-based goals can be problematic, but I would be really proud of myself if I could break 17:00 in a 5k. It will be tough, but goals are supposed to be hard to achieve, right? I enjoy having goals and a plan to work from, but I also just get my best thinking done while going for an easy loop or two after work.

What do you do for work?/Tell us a little about it.

I am the Manager of Product Development at the Modern Language Association, so I'm a pixel-pusher that tries to improve our association's members' user experience and help to brainstorm new digital products to serve them better. You might know the MLA from high school and college (MLA style), but we're also a membership organization like PPTC–just for literature and language professionals as opposed to runners. So I spend a lot of time thinking about how to best engage with members and how I can use my job to make their jobs easier. I often think about how well PPTC does at engaging with its members and fostering an organic sense of community around a shared passion when I'm trying to solve a problem at work.

An inside look on the soap- making process: Kevin cutting the soap into shapes

Tell us about your soap making business. How did you start it? What is the process like to make custom soaps?

A friend and I started Soapso about 4 years ago. We've both always been crafty; my background is in design and Jen can basically make anything. I think the first idea I had was to make wedding save-the-dates out of soap, which is obviously a terrible idea because they'd wash right away. But something about the idea of whimsical and custom soaps stuck with us, so we started Soapso.

To make our soaps, we:

1. Sketch our designs

2. Polish them up and finalize them on the computer

3. Pour big colored sheets of soap

4.Cut all of the individual shapes of soap out once the sheets cool

5. Layer the shapes together in molds

6. Pour clear soap on top

For most of our custom soaps, we use additional tricks like adding water soluble "paper" or using glycerin to paint details onto the shapes. It's a time-consuming process, but it definitely scratches our creative itch.

A fun fact or anything else you'd like us to know about you?

I like to accumulate other obsessive hobbies in addition to running. I love mushrooms, and I find it wonderfully relaxing to go on mushroom hunts in Prospect Park (or anywhere else, for that matter). Sometimes I forage them, but mostly I like to just find and identify them. Mushrooms are incredible, and they're almost everywhere you look (next November, try to find the giant maitake mushroom that grows from the base of an oak tree in a tree pit right outside the Park Slope Armory). Also, before COVID, I loved making pottery, but haven't been in the studio since March. Finally, I'm a struggling but enthusiastic chess player. Now that I think about it, all of these hobbies–running, foraging, pottery, chess–are similar in the sense that they're challenging, at times frustrating, but ultimately they encourage a sense of peace in imperfection and satisfaction in the process.

PPTC is a diverse and supportive team. We want to celebrate the diversity of our club and membership. We welcome and encourage everyone to share your stories with us.

Interview by: Jana Trenk (she/her)

Text and photos by: Kevin Romoser (he/him)

Member Spotlight | Kevin Romoser: PPTC member and small business owner