Awar Odhiang was at her after-school job at Market Mall when a chance meeting changed her life. She was 17, folding sweaters at Old Navy when renowned agent Kelly Streit approached her and asked her if she wanted to be a model. Odhiang, as it turns out, was already a model and had an agency.
She also had no idea who Streit was. But Streit saw something in her and he has a history of recognizing the perfect look and talents for an international career. Over the years, the founder and owner of has discovered a number of stars of the modelling world, including , Tricia Helfer, Kim Noseworthy and Paul Greene.
He also worked with Lisa Kauffmann, a supermodel in the 1980s and 1990s who had signed Odhiang to her agency a year before Streit spotted her at Old Navy. “I was very oblivious to what modelling was,” says Odhiang, in a phone interview from New York, where she was about to board a plane for another modelling job in Capri, Italy. “When he did come up to me, I was very shy at the time.
Not very extroverted in any way. But when he came up to me it was a bit of a shock, to have someone express that much support and interest in me was very surprising. It felt very good as well because I felt that he saw the beauty in me that I didn’t see in myself.
So that made me feel really good and gave me confidence as well.” It was a friend on her high school basketball team who convinced Odhiang to try modelling and introduced her to Kauffmann. But in 2017, the former supermodel w.