Katya Karlova is an American fuller bust curve/midsize model, social media influencer, content creator, and vocal mental health and self-love advocate. Now based in Los Angeles, she was born in Chisinau, in the Republic of Moldova, before emigrating to the United States as a child. Katya attended UCLA, graduating early to accept a scholarship from the University College London where she completed her master’s degree. Katya then built a successful career as a corporate executive before she began modeling to tackle her own body image issues and pursue her lifelong passion.
While Katya’s corporate career was thriving, she struggled privately with her mental health. She loved helping people shape their success stories but realized she needed to do the same for herself. As a travel and adventure lover, risk-taking and pushing outside her comfort zone were already part of her life philosophy. By taking those approaches again, Katya discovered that being in front of the camera came more naturally than she ever expected.
Through modeling, Katya found confidence, empowerment, and most importantly, self-love and healing. As a model and content creator, she specializes in working with lingerie, swimwear, travel, and lifestyle brands. Given her corporate background, she brings a unique set of skills to the table: business acumen, professionalism, a strong work ethic, and a keen grasp of marketing data & analytics. However, it’s her authenticity in showing her fun, playful, and engaging personality that’s been the key to her rapid growth on social media. Katya shares her journey with the hope that it will encourage others to find the courage to be vulnerable, step outside their comfort zones, and create their unique success stories.
Aside from modeling, at both UCLA & UCL, Katya conducted research on human sex trafficking, digging into an issue prevalent in her home country and raising awareness of its global impact. She is also a sought-after public speaker and frequently gives speeches about achieving professional success, leadership, courage, and resilience. Katya is also very involved with her UCLA community and has received several prestigious accolades in recent years in recognition of her service to the university.
What does empowerment mean to you?
To me, it’s the process of becoming stronger and more confident, feeling in control of one’s life, the way you feel about yourself and the way you carry yourself and show up in your own life. For women, this is an ongoing journey and not an easy one. We have often had to fight and advocate for ourselves no matter our chosen path in life. If you choose a high-powered career, or to be a wife and homemaker, or both, all can be criticized.Empowerment, to me, is deciding those other opinions don’t matter and instead I choose to live my life on my own terms and recognize my inherent worth, regardless of what others might think/say.
How have you empowered women globally?
I’d like to think I have that through the choices I have made, and the story I‘ve shared. I’ve been very vocal about my struggles with mental health and body dysmorphia, how boudoir photography helped me heal a lot of my body image issues, fighting for fuller bust women to be more acknowledged in the fashion industry, and showing that women can break out of the neat little boxes we are expected to occupy. Women are, and can absolutely be intelligent, successful, and well-educated, while also embracing their bodies, sensuality and sexuality. The two aren’t mutually exclusive and in fact, when we allow society to put us in these boxes, we are ignoring a very important part of our own mental health. How we feel in and about our bodies affects our confidence, our relationships and even how we carry ourselves in other aspects of our lives. I think my being an example of a woman who is highly educated and had a highly successful corporate career, leaving that behind to start my own business as a creator and curve model shows you can be as many things as you want to be. As women, we are so used to being stereotyped and labeled, it starts to feel normal so we hold ourselves back from living the lives we want and deserve. I want to show it doesn’t have to be that way.
What is your advice for women who are struggling with weight issues?
Weight truly isn’t important, but health is. The healthcare system isn’t designed to advocate for women, so you need to be your own advocate. If you are truly putting on weight while eating healthy and exercising there may be something wrong with your hormones or even vitamin deficiencies. Weight issues are a symptom so it’s important to fight to get to the root of the issue. And yes, excessive stress, anxiety and depression could also be the root issues causing your health problems or they’re a symptom of something that’s not going well in your life that you need to address. However, it’s important to note that there is no one normal body type and BMI charts are outdated. Right now, “thin is in” because of the Wegovy/Ozempic craze but our bodies are not trends!! All women have their own unique body type, and one is not better than the other. The best thing you can do for yourself is learn your body type and what foods really do well with your body and aim for health, not a number on a scale. There are so many women who chase a number, and their mental health deteriorates, as society it would be great if we had moved past this, but it appears we haven’t so the best thing we can do is independently choose health and self-love and encourage others to do the same.
Who have you admired?
Although there are many famous women I could mention here, the ones that really stand out to me are the ones few have heard of. For example, Hedy Lamarr, was an Austrian-born American actress AND inventor. She was incredibly renowned for her beauty, and she was a highly successful film star in the 30s and 40s, at the beginning of World War II, she co-invented a radio guidance system that used technology to defeat the threat of radio jamming by the Axis powers. She was a multi-faceted and incredibly talented woman in so many ways. Hypatia who lived in 355-415 AD was an Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer and philosopher and the first female mathematician we have knowledge of. Isabella Bird, who lived between 1831-1904, was an incredible 19th-century explorer who defied Victorian societal conventions of where a lady should go and what a lady should do. Despite catching the travel bug while on a sea voyage, and being told by doctors to improve her health, Bird went on to explore America, Hawaii, Tibet, Malaysia, Japan, India, China, Iran and many more countries. She was also one of the first women to be made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
These are the kind of women I look up to, the ones who stepped out of the box in which they were placed and made contributions far beyond what anyone ever expected them to or thought they’d be capable of.
Tell us about your public speaking.
My expertise in public speaking is on the topics of leadership, courage and resilience. In my professional career I interviewed thousands of leaders of all types-middle management to executives and even the C-suite. I noticed over time that great leaders all had certain traits in common; they were brave and courageous, they took calculated risks outside their comfort zone. They were empathetic and kind, it was clear they had emotional intelligence, this earned them a kind of respect and dedication from their teams that was almost unwavering. And finally, resilience, the best leaders knew that failure was sometimes inevitable, but they handled failures with grace, humility and used the opportunity to be curious, assess and learn so that they would succeed next time. That thirst for learning, even in the aftermath of a failure, would ensure their future success. I noticed that these traits were something all extraordinary leaders shared and what made them true leaders vs just managers so these are the things I would frequently share in workshops or even bigger public speaking engagements. There are hundreds if not thousands of books on leadership and yet, in my experience, it all boils down to a handful of traits that, if cultivated, would guarantee success in leadership.
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TikTok:
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