In this Alumni Spotlight Q&A, AJ Rawls shares his journey from UCSB student to an entrepreneur in the crafting and creative coworking industry. He reflects on the experiences and pivotal moments that shaped his path, including his passion for hospitality, leadership, and crafting. AJ discusses how his UCSB education, involvement in student organizations like Toastmasters and a cappella, guided him toward his entrepreneurial ventures. He emphasizes the importance of adaptability, community building, and following one’s passions in his role as the founder of The Crafter’s Library, a creative coworking space in Santa Barbara. AJ’s story highlights how his UCSB experience laid the foundation for a career defined by innovation, connection, and making creativity accessible for everyone.
Q: What drew you to UC Santa Barbara for your undergraduate years?
So I grew up in LA—unfortunately in one of the towns that is burning right now—but I grew up coming up to Santa Barbara. It was always that beautiful, sort of vacation destination. When I was graduating high school, my family decided to move out of California, so when choosing a college, I decided I wanted to stay in California to still have that opportunity. I was choosing between UC Davis and UCSB, and I couldn’t say no to living on the beach!
It helped that my sister-in-law had gone to UCSB, so I was familiar with the college culture and things like that. It had great programs for what I wanted to study, Global Studies & Political Science, so all of that sort of came together to help me choose UCSB. Best choice I made, though!
Q: How has your career path followed or pivoted from what you expected as a UCSB undergrad?
So, when I came into UCSB, I thought I was going to do what my family did, which is to go to law school. Everyone in my family is a lawyer but me. That’s why I was a PoliSci major, but quickly that changed. I did UCDC after my first summer, loved the experience, but knew I didn’t want to go into politics, which is sort of why I thought I’d go to law school.
Then, the subsequent summers, I worked at the Family Vacation Center, and I loved that! I worked at the front desk, I was a front desk supervisor for two summers, and loved the hospitality aspect of that job. So, I wanted to move into the hospitality world. My first job out of college was actually working for a hotel in Washington, D.C., thinking I was going to go work at corporate Hilton or Marriott because they’re headquartered out there. In fact, one of the alums that would go to the Family Vacation Center worked at Hilton at the time, so she was sort of telling me about all of this stuff—it was fascinating!
But I didn’t love the lifestyle of front-office hospitality, the front-line of hospitality, it was a really difficult lifestyle to have a social life with, so I decided to change. I didn’t get a job with anything to do with my major; I was a healthcare consultant for a little bit, the admin side of it. But I wanted to get back into hospitality, which was my background having that experience working at UCSB.
So that’s when I started my tour company, and I really, really enjoyed it. And a lot of what I learned in the hospitality experience at the Family Vacation Center has helped me—not only in the tour company—but also in my retail career owning The Crafter’s Library.
Q: How have your majors, Political Science & Global Studies, helped to develop your professional passions?
In studying Political Science & Global Studies, you’re taught really how to think critically. So it helped me understand my values—what I want in the world, what I want to give to the world and what I want to receive from the world. So that has been a tremendous value, and I think that is not only something that I carry in my professional life but also my personal life.
Understanding who I am, what I am, the systems that I want to contribute to and where I can make change when I can. Those are things that I definitely did learn in college through my majors. Whether it was political theory, like “What is justice?” and things like that in Political Science, or how these global systems interact with one another and is there such a thing as ethical capitalism, which we talked a lot about in Global Studies.
That has really shaped my worldview and my entrepreneurial guide, making sure that I give back to the communities that give me so much. Those are values that I learned in my majors at UCSB and things that I carry with me till this day.
Q: Can you tell me about your experience at UCSB? What drew you to join clubs like Toastmasters and participate in activities like acapella and the EAP program in Paris?
UCSB was an amazing experience for me! My freshman year, I was actually intimidated by the reputation of the school. I chose to live on the substance-free floor my freshman year because I had never been around parties or anything like that, and I made amazing friends. I also chose to live on campus my second year with some of those same friends from my first year. I loved living on campus. I was in San Raf my second year, so close to IV but still not in IV, which was lovely for me.
I knew I wanted to be involved. I’m a social introvert, so having a reason to go and meet people is really great for me because I’m not just going to be like, “Hi, I’m Andrew, nice to meet you!” But, if I share something in common with them, it’s a lot easier to make friends. I grew up doing choir, so acapella was sort of a natural pathway for me.
And, again with my majors and my ideas of potentially going into politics, public speaking was super cool to me. The fact there was a Toastmasters club on campus—that was the first thing that I joined when I got there. Some of my closest friends I made through both BFOM and through Gaucho Toastmasters. Definitely would recommend that to anyone!
Yeah, I loved both of those opportunities, and they actually led to subsequent opportunities! Gaucho Toastmasters led me to my job working at Career Services my sophomore and senior year. When I was working at Career Services, that’s when I found the job for the Family Vacation Center, which sort of sent me down my career path.
So it’s amazing and surprising how those little things can dramatically affect the course of your life!
Q: What memory do you look back on most fondly during your time at UCSB?
Oh gosh, there’s so many! I mean, the parties that we would have with our friends, the social groups that I was a part of, the concerts that I sang in, the relationships that I built. It's not one specific memory, it’s just the general feeling of love and support that I received from my professors, from my colleagues, from my mentors and from my classmates.
I mean, I was honored and shocked and surprised and humbled that I was nominated and received a University Service Award my senior year for the work that I had done. The people that I met back then are still supporting me now. I still work with the Family Vacation Center now with The Crafter’s Library—those were connections I made back then.
So when I think about my favorite memory, it’s not a specific time or place. It’s more just the people that I met that have shaped and supported me my entire life.
Q: Can you tell me about Fiat Luxe Tours, the tour group you founded in Washington, D.C.? How did your time running a tour group influence your approach to starting The Crafter’s Library? Do you see any parallels between the two ventures?
So I started the tour company in 2014, Fiat Luxe Tours. “Fiat Lux” means “let there be light” in Latin—which is kind of a fun little nod to my UC roots. I loved talking, I still do love talking, and I figured I would want to get paid for it, so that’s why I started the tour company. I was able to translate my love of politics, of history, of all of these things that I studied in school, and I really did make a good living doing it and telling people what there was to know and see in D.C. My UCDC experience was fantastic for that. Both of my majors actively helped me understand the context of the sights and the places I was seeing in D.C. and telling folks about, so that was really cool!
I loved being self-employed. Working at Career Services, I learned a lot about what it meant to be an entrepreneur. The career counselors there were incredible mentors for me, which was also fantastic. I wanted to start it because, I don’t know, I guess ego is the main reason I started the tour company. I wanted to be self-employed to see if it was something I could do. It was an unearned confidence that I had but it was something that was instilled in me that if I’m a Gaucho I can sort of do anything, which was pretty cool.
Being an entrepreneur is transferable no matter what you’re doing—whether you’re doing tech stuff or you’re doing retail or you’re doing hospitality, or whatever it is. A lot of the skills I learned running my own business at 24 translated into being able to have a brick-and-mortar store. Because I was successful running my tour company, I had the courage to take the lead to run my craft store which is now in its fourth year here in Downtown Santa Barbara. So that definitely helped.
I learned a lot. I learned the value of connections, I learned the value of marketing, I learned the value of networking from the tour company which I brought into my experience starting the store here. So there was a lot that I did carry over. The parallels, I mean it’s still a service, whether it’s providing a tour or providing a retail experience. So there were a lot of things that did carry over between both. I love interacting with people, I love having conversations with people and I love sharing my knowledge. I teach a lot here at The Crafter’s Library, which to me is very similar to giving lectures while I was on tours in D.C. So I’m able to bring the best parts of both businesses and keep that as sort of my passion.
Q: What motivated you to return to Santa Barbara and establish a creative coworking space like The Crafter’s Library?
So when I was 29, in 2019, I was a military contractor in the middle of the South Pacific. I worked for the army, on U.S. Army Garrison Kwajalein Atoll. I ran our middle school and teen center for the children of service members and contractors that were deployed there. I loved what I was doing there, it was a very difficult year socially because it was a very conservative island and I am an openly gay man so that was weird to navigate. So I only did a year on the island, but I loved the fact that there was a place that the kids could go—they could use the stuff at the center, they didn’t have to have their own stuff, there were classes being taught and there were adults that could help them with things like that.
And I kept thinking how cool it would be if there was a place like that for adults, especially for the adults that did the types of crafting that I did, which didn’t really seem to exist. I got really into sewing—that was sort of my gateway into the craftworld—and I kept looking around like, “Are there places I can go around and borrow a sewing machine or do I have to have my own setup?”
Most crafting hobbies are very expensive, especially if you’re just trying to figure out if it's something you want to do or not. So I decided if I want this, I can’t be alone in this idea and that is what inspired me to start The Crafter’s Library.
When I was thinking about where to do it, I had been living in Washington D.C., until I was in the Marshall Islands. I was going to go back to D.C. to basically just expand my tour company, but this was January of 2020 and we all know what happened in March of 2020. So tourism shrank, there was no way I could stay in D.C., people were not hiring for the skill set that I had at the time—event planning and stuff like that.
So I ended up bouncing around between family and when I decided to go ahead and no longer be the millennial in his mom’s basement, I was looking at places I wanted to live. I loved D.C.—I still love D.C.—but I was tired of the air hurting my face in the winter time. I had some friends that were moving back to California. My best friend was in New York and she wanted to move to Santa Barbara as well, so she sort of convinced me, like okay twist my arm to go back to one of my favorite cities in America.
I knew the culture of Santa Barbara. Again, I had those connections at UCSB. I knew the crafting nature of the town with the art walk every Sunday down on Cabrillo Blvd, all of the art galleries, the 1st Thursday art walks and all of that. So I thought that a creative coworking space would probably do well in this community. Again, here we are almost four years later doing well!
Q: What is your favorite aspect of your career?
I have had a very nonlinear career path, and so one of my favorite things to do is to tell people that if you told me five years ago I would be here in Santa Barbara opening a craft store, I would be like, “I’m sorry, what are you talking about? I don’t do crafts.”
So many people think that they have to go to school and they have to go to grad school and they have to do the thing that they went to grad school for. I am living proof that: (1) you don’t have to go to grad school, and (2) you don’t have to stay in the same career path. Not only in the same career but in the same industry. I have bounced between retail, hospitality and healthcare and I’ve loved it. It’s been super interesting, and I’ve met so many different types of people in my career.
From people that have had their masters in public policy and working for politicians that are implementing laws, to people that have taken my tours in D.C. that are starting out in their career. I’ve met so many different types of people that have inspired me. And so my favorite thing about what I have done in my life is be nontraditional. I didn’t follow that straight, narrow path. I was open to options, I was brave—or stupid enough—to take these different risks and it has been an amazingly fun journey so far.
I am nowhere near done and I’m looking forward to what the next 5, 10, 15 years will bring me!
Q: In what ways do you stay connected to UCSB as an alum?
Living here, I go to Isla Vista all the time to go to Freebirds, it is still the best Mexican food in town. So there’s that! I work with the Family Vacation Center in the summertime to do art classes there, which is amazing. So I get to be on campus for that.
I work with the acapella group, BFOM, the one that I was in. I have them come to my store and I do a masterclass with them to do a rehearsal before their concert, which is super fun. I’m still in touch with a lot of my friends that went to UCSB.
I just like keeping tabs on what’s going on, if there are Arts & Lectures events that I want to go to, making sure that I go to things like that, whether it’s on campus or downtown. I’m fairly active with the university and really happy to be in Santa Barbara to take advantage of being so close.
Q: What would you tell a prospective student considering attending UCSB?
Do it! UCSB is whatever school you want it to be. I obviously know it has a party reputation, but I am living proof you don’t have to party. I did not have a drop of alcohol until my 21st birthday, and I had an amazing time my freshman, sophomore and junior year.
UCSB can provide you with any opportunity that you let it. I studied abroad in Paris for an entire year, which was something that I don’t know if I would’ve done if I was at a different UC. I made some of the most incredible friends. I mean my freshman-year dorm looked out on the beach—how could you beat that? It provides you with such a unique geographic experience. It’s a suburban campus with the benefits of a biggish city: there’s culture, there’s art, there’s entertainment.
It is a small enough environment that you can thrive and you can make a name for yourself if you advocate for yourself and stay active on campus. But it is also big enough that you can blend in if that’s what you want to do. You’re getting a world-class education at a state school price, if you’re in-state.
The support that you get when you hear other Gauchos, especially after you graduated, is amazing. Like if I meet someone that comes into my store that’s a Gaucho I always say “Go Gauchos!” and they always say it back. The alumni support has been amazing.
It was the best choice that I could’ve made. It brought me out of my comfort zone my freshman year for sure. I feel like I grew and matured and appreciated the world a lot more because I was forced to interact with people very different from myself, which I feel like UCSB really brings into itself because of things like being on the beach, being such a great school and having great programs and stuff like that. So yeah, that’s what I would say!