A new era awaits

With a global economy accelerated by disruptive new technologies, supply-chains and modes of consumption, the demand and drive for sustainability intensifies. The sweeping changes to legacy business models presents challenges and opportunities across our collective economic ecosystem.

The immediate threats require a reimagining of entire industries and our economic system, with increasing emphasis on rapid and radical innovation in the design of new ventures, business models and capabilities. This brings to the forefront regenerative processes that redefine success to fully encompass what is valuable and possible.

My work incorporates dynamic capabilities and design-thinking within the innovation economy to define, build and establish projects, programs and business models that redefine growth, resilience and success for the new economic era. I work in the heart of the innovation economy to design for connection and impact.

I am a strategy director and social scientist practitioner with a background in program design, capability development, research, communications and entrepreneurship. I design and direct programs and channels for Sales Enablement and Market Insights at SVB. I also provide management services to e-commerce founders in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle space.

As the founder of the Austin Fashion Initiative (AFI), I brought together over 1000 entrepreneurs and professionals in the fashion industry, building a local community with global connections. I have also served as a US State Department mentor and invited speaker, participating in programs such as the Uzbekistan Business Leaders (UBL) Fellowship program, the German Marshall Fund's YTILI European program, the YLAI South American and the YALI African initiatives, serving promising entrepreneurs from each continent.

I am a founding advisory member of the Independent Fashion Advisory Board (IFAB), an international network of professionals connected through a shared interest in fashion, retail and creative technology. I have also served as a visiting scholar for Texas State University, an entrepreneur-in-residence, spoken at SWSW & TEDx, and am an enthusiastic volunteer with Ballet Austin Guild.

My research, stemming from my prior doctoral work, examines the business development capabilities of entrepreneurial brands in the fashion and creative industries. My PhD from the University of the Arts London, London College of Fashion produced a framework for the brand development and internationalization processes of entrepreneurial designer fashion enterprises (DFEs). Now, I’m turning my attention to the intersections of fashion, economics and entrepreneurship.

Through my writing, I explore the development of fashion as a potentially regenerative industry that connects every human to our global economic system. My work explores how theories of sustainability and circularity can be applied with technology and entrepreneurial disruption to reform our global economic system to serve the health, prosperity and longevity of our collective humanity, environment and planet.

My background and experience has led me to recognize the importance entrepreneurship and innovation holds for our creative industries, global economy and humanity, and how financial resources can open up access to this complex and dynamic ecosystem. I apply my work as a leader, mentor and coach for entrepreneurs in the innovation economy, and a builder of communities, programs and organizations.