Dream Achieved: Wentworth Graduate and Entrepreneur Skates into Career Success
Relocating from Connecticut, Kevin Banahan found Boston’s cityscapes to be the perfect backdrop for pursuing his undergraduate education at Wentworth Institute of Technology. The programs were interesting, the people were inspiring, and the location was close enough to home.
His degree in Engineering also brought him unexpectedly closer to something else: his passion for skateboarding.
“At that time, skateboarding was as much a part of me as anything else, and I knew that I wanted to be going to college in a city that would give me a lot of opportunities to do that,” said Banahan, who has been skateboarding since his first year of high school. “At Wentworth, I started meeting other skateboarders, who were like-minded individuals, and even to this day I’m still friends with them.”
Now the co-founder and executive director of the New York City-based skateboarding school SKATEYOGI, Banahan received his undergraduate degree from Wentworth in 2005. He looks back on his days at the university as formative in nurturing the passion that ultimately led to his thriving business, which has been established for 12 years.
“We do classes, camps, lessons, birthday parties, and events. We have two locations here in Brooklyn: one in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and another in Williamsburg. They’re both indoor skate spaces,” Banahan said. “We have weekly classes for students as young as two. Our oldest student, at this point so far, has been 81, so I like to say that kids from two, all the way up to grandparents are welcome.”
While at Wentworth, Banahan met his wife, Yasuyo Takeo, who was, at the time, studying graphic design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). She’s the co-founder of SKATEYOGI and an integral part of the business, handling the artwork for the company’s physical space, as well as its website and operations.
“Our two skillsets definitely came in handy,” Banahan laughed.
The inceptive idea for SKATEYOGI originated years after Banahan’s experience at Wentworth, when he and Takeo attended a yoga class at a newly opened studio near their Brooklyn apartment in 2013.
“We were having a post-yoga chat with the studio owner, Jyll, and some of the other students. And someone said, ‘What would be your dream job?’ And I just blurted off the top of my head, ‘Oh, to teach skateboarding because I’d love teaching, and wouldn’t that be so cool to teach skateboarding?’” Banahan recalled. “And Jyll took me up on it and said, ‘Sure, why don't you come and teach a class here?’ And at first, I thought she meant for kids, but she was actually referring to adults and herself. At 52, she was interested in learning how to skateboard.”
That small step was the push he needed to jumpstart SKATEYOGI.
“Sure enough, I started to teach skateboarding,” he said. “In those early days, I was literally dragging a cart of skateboards up the hill to the park in the next neighborhood over and having an adult class, and it just lit me up. It was the best thing ever, and I was so, so happy to be doing that.”
Word caught on about Banahan’s sessions and soon he was teaching throngs of kids on the block how to skateboard.
“I started to have a real class, and the kids would meet up on my stoop and we would go skateboarding,” he said.
In time, the business continued to expand, borrowing its name from the grounding yogic philosophy of accessibility.
“The very first class was literally a skateboarding class for yogis. So, we called it Skate Yogis. And then after a few classes, I realized, ‘Oh, it's not just skate yogis,’” Banahan explained. “Our mission is to celebrate our differences with peace and respect. We want that to be at the forefront of our classes.”
“Skateboarding can be a little daunting, so we wanted to take a little bit of the edge off if you’re just beginning the activity,” he continued. “When you walk through our doors, you’re not going to see skulls and flames or a really macho atmosphere. It's actually going be a little more neutral or calm, and we wanted to position it that way to be more inclusive and welcoming to people.”
Initially building the space out of the fabric of a dream, SKATEYOGI now features 10 instructors, who teach multiple classes of six to eight students a week—as well as day and summer camps—across its two locations. Banahan said he’s excited about possible opportunities for the business to grow, including partnerships with other organizations to help scale up its facilities and serve more students interested in skateboarding.
Contemplating opening a third location in the future, Banahan believes it was the skills he honed during his studies at Wentworth—and the freedom he found exploring Boston’s picturesque streets and skateparks—that ultimately paved the way for the skateboarding school, by connecting him with students from nearby universities and fueling his entrepreneurial spirit.
