When Two Worlds Collide

Best friends Kana LiVolsi and Margaret Heidrick turned their creative skill sets into a one-stop shop for all things design with their company Dos Mundos Creative.

By Victoria Stowe

Web Exclusive

Not many people can truly say they still keep in touch with their high-school friends. Sure, there are Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and many other ways to see what that kid you knew in your 10th grade math class is doing nowadays. But fast-forward a few years after high school and it’s unusual to do any more than post a quick happy birthday message on her wall.

So, it’s quite a miracle when, nearly more than a decade after graduating high school, childhood friends Kana LiVolsi and Margaret Heidrick ran into each other at a Zumba class and decided to combine their creative-industry talents to start Dos Mundos Creative.

The story starts when LiVolsi and Heidrick first met each other in 8th grade at a sleepover. They grew to know each other throughout high school, after which, they each went their separate ways. LiVolsi ventured to the University of California, San Diego, and Heidrick went to Brown University. When their paths crossed again in 2015, it had been 12 years since they had graduated high school.

After graduating from Brown, Heidrick moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to work as a creative department producer. A few more jobs down the road, Heidrick had decided freelance work was more her style than corporate work. She moved back to Austin and, missing the Latin culture, decided to join a Spanish-speaking Zumba class. It was there the two friends were reunited.

“Margaret and I were the two rhythm-less white girls in the class,” LiVolsi says.

Through dance classes, they discovered they shared similar career paths and goals. LiVolsi had studied film production at UCSD and got her start in the world of entertainment media before transitioning to the digital-publishing industry. When 2014 rolled around, LiVolsi had come to the realization that she didn’t want to stay in the corporate world.

“I felt like I couldn’t help people,” LiVolsi says. “My favorite part of my job was working with the actual creators, the actual authors or the publishing companies and coming up with ways to help them. I wanted them to be able to get out there and be visible because it’s really hard [to do that]. I realized I didn’t want to work for anybody else and that I could do it on my own. And that’s when I met Margaret.”

After the two had their fill of rhythm-less dance classes and catching up, they decided they wanted to work together to help people tell their stories.

“We had very compatible personalities,” LiVolsi says. “She’s one of my best friends, one of my bridesmaids. We work well together. And it’s fun. It’s really fun. It makes work so much more doable.”

In February 2015, Dos Mundos Creative (Spanish for “two worlds”) was born. By June 2015, LiVolsi and Heidrick had brought on the superstar talents of Leslie Robertson, Will Crosby and Chris Sebilia, expanding their team headcount to five. The fearless five bring diverse yet complementary talents to the team. For instance, Sebilia is a former structural engineer. Fiercely creative, he brings an excellent mind for business to the group and is a great people person, to boot.

Because of the team’s wide range of know-how, DMC is a one-stop shop for all things creative.

“We like to empower everybody,” LiVolsi says. “We like to teach each other skills that we want to know so we are continually improving.”

DMC has now been up and running for more than a year. In the first year, the company was met with great success, working with more than 100 clients from both local and national locales.

Since Heidrick and LiVolsi have complementary personalities, they usually tag team the initial meetings with the clients.

“When we go into a room with clients,” LiVolsi says, “it feels very magical. Between the two of us, we can talk to anybody.”

While DMC works with a wide range of businesses, LiVolsi and Heidrick are specifically interested in female-run businesses.

“Margaret and I were both in film, which was notorious for having very few women in charge,” LiVolsi says. “We go out of our way to empower other female entrepreneurs and female-run businesses.”

Recently, the DMC team hosted its one-year anniversary party at Blenders and Bowls, a woman-owned company it’s worked with on brand redesign.

For the two best friends who started the studio, their hope for the future of Dos Mundos Creative is to keep growing without growing away from their mission.

“We want to keep growing with our clients,” LiVolsi says. “We don’t want to grow out of our clients; we want to grow with them. We want to expand our team without diluting our talent.”

For more information on the DMC team, check out dosmundoscreative.com.