“Mom, I look fat.”
Those are the words that changed Kim Quimby’s life forever.
Kim Quimby, the executive director of Girls On The Run for the Hudson Valley drastically changed her life when she shifted her corporate job into helping local elementary and middle school girls.
Born and raised in Cornwall, New York, Quimby grew up watching her father run in many races.
Quimby reminisced, “Every weekend, we would all pile into the car and go to a different local road race. I was around that running circuit a lot growing up.”
In high school, Quimby joined track, and even though she was not very competitive, she still thoroughly enjoyed running.
After college, Quimby worked in a number of corporate jobs in New York City and Westchester, including Pepsi, IBM, and some other large corporations. Around this time, Quimby gave birth to her daughter Kaitlyn and moved back to the Hudson Valley community.
Once Kaitlyn was around 8 years old, Quimby began to notice a lot of negative self-talk from her daughter, calling herself fat and ugly, among other harmful phrases.
Quimby reasons, “As a mother, that’s never something you want to hear from your child. I started to do some research on my own about boosting your child’s self-esteem. This is where I came across Girls On The Run.”
Girls On The Run is an elementary and middle school program that pushes girls to build their confidence, kindness, decision making skills, and bodily awareness.
Quimby reached out to Girls On The Run (GOTR) about starting a team for Kaitlyn’s school, but soon learned this required a large sum of money and countless hours of paperwork.
After some time, Quimby was able to assemble a team of three women who were looking to invest. This team proved productive and saw the number of participants grow exponentially. Quimby left her corporate position and began doing Girls On The Run full time as a result of this growth.
Today, Girls on the Run Hudson Valley encompasses 75 locations and 6 counties: Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Ulster, and Westchester.
“I don’t like to use this word, but it felt like destiny for me to come to the program,” said Quimby
Programming became the main focus of the team of women, and Quimby found it to be one of the most important aspects of her job. This programming focuses on an anti-bullying and self-awareness curriculum.
Former GOTR participant and current junior coach of the Central Valley Elementary team, Alexandara McConnell, agrees with Quimby.
McConnell said, “Girls On The Run taught me to like running but it also taught me to be confident and treat myself and others with respect. I like sharing that with the kids I coach now.”
Quimby hopes these lessons will help the girls throughout their whole lives, whether it be to comfort others or to stand up for themselves. This became especially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Quimby says, “Many members were having issues with social interactions and values. Girls On The Run was seen as a resource for these girls to learn about each other and themselves.”
Moving forward, Quimby wants to work harder to expand GOTR into all schools, and grow their adult program, SoleMates, that supports different charities through running.