Sally Holmes is the Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire, multi-platform brand that covers fashion, beauty, politics and culture for women with power, purpose and style. Holmes has been with Marie Claire since 2018, first as digital director, overseeing all content for the brand's website and social platforms. Under her leadership Marie Claire has increased its traffic, achieved record e-commerce growth, and won an ASME award. She started her career at New York magazine as an editor for their website before moving over to The Cut ahead of its relaunch in 2012. She later joined Hearst Magazines in 2014 as the senior news editor at ELLE.com before taking on the role of deputy editor in 2016 and then executive editor in 2017. During her time at ELLE.com, Holmes received a Magazine Media Award nomination. Born and raised in New York City, Homes graduated with an Ebglish major and French minor from Boston College. She now lines in Brooklyn with her husband and twin daughters.
Marie-Claire Daveu began her career as a technical advisor to the cabinet of Prime Minister, Jen-Pierre Raffarin, before becoming Principal Private Secretary to Serge Lepeltier, Minister of Ecology and Sustainability. In 2005, she became Director of Sustainable Development for the Sanofi-Aventis Group. From 2007 to 2012, she served as Chief of Staff to French Politician, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, working in various secretaries of state and then at the Ministries of Ecology, Sustainability, Transport and Housing. In 2012, she was appointed Kering's Chief Sustainability Officer and Head of International Institutional Affairs. She sets out strategy and ambitious objectives as well as implementing a set of best practices within the Group and the Houses. Today, Kering is a pioneer and recognized leader in sustainability. A French national, she is a graduate of the Paris Institute of Technology of Life, Food and environment Sciences (ENGREF). She also earned a postgraduate diploma (DESS) in public administration from Dauphine University, Paris.
Galia Loupan is chief content officer at Marie Claire International. After a brief stint in publishing, she joined the international department at Marie Claire in 2009 as a translator of Russian. Moving up the editorial ladder in the following 14 years, she is now in charge of the editorial strategy and global projects for the 26 editions of Marie Claire around the world. A lifelong Parisian from a cosmopolitan, immigrant background, she loves to interact with and learn from diverse cultures, and to champion Marie Claire's strong values and sense of style and beauty around the world.
Kerry Washington is an Emmy-winning, SAG, and Golden Globe-nominated actor, director, producer, and activist. In 2016, Washington launched her production company Simpson Street, whose projects include HBO's Confirmation, Netflix's American Son, Emmy award-winning ABC special "Live in Front of a Studio Audience," The Fight, and Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere. Washington's recent directing credits include "Insecure," "Scandal," "SMILF" and the pilot episode of upcoming series "Reasonable Doubt." Recent projects for Washington include The School for Good and Evil as well as Unprisoned, a comedy series for Hulu in which she stars opposite Delroy Lindo and also serves as an executive producer. Later this year, Washington will be releasing her first memoir, Thicker Than Water. Washington is a lifelong activist and founder of Influence Change (IC21), an initiative that partners with nonprofits to increase voter turnout. For her efforts, Washington has been honoured as one of TIME Magazine's 2022 Women of The Year. Washington is a member of a coalition working to found The Roybal School, aiming to drive change across the entertainment industry for students from underserved communities. Since 213, Washington has served as both a brand ambassador and creative consultant for Neutrogena. In 2020, she became a creative partners to Aurate, releasing multiple collections in collaboration with the direct-to-consumer luxury jewelry brand.
Aurora James, Creative Director and Founder of luxury accessories brand Brother Vellies and founder of the non-profit advocacy organisation, Fifteen Percent Pledge, has long worked to make the global economy a more equitable place of historically excluded groups. Founded in 2013, Brother Vellies began with a mission of keeping traditional African design practices and techniques alive. The brand supports artisan communities around the world, creating timeless pieces that celebrate different cultural histories and honor the individuals that make them through fair labor practices and job creation. In June 2020. in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Aurora founded the Fifteen Percent Pledge, a non-profit advocacy organization that urges companies and individuals to make a long-term commitment to increased diversity and representation across their business practices and buying habits. Since its founding, The Pledge has signed 29 pledge takers including Nordstrom, Vogue, InStyle and Sephora U.S., and helped over 625 companies launch their products with pledge takers. In 2021, Aurora became the first Black female designer to receive The Founder's Award in honor of Eleanor Lambert and was named one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. Lastly, James is adding memoirist to her vast accomplishments with her literary debut, WILDFLOWER: A memoir. The extraordinary memoir of struggle and perseverance offers new ways of envisioning economic equality for everyone - from leading activist and fashion pioneer.
Angel Chang is a zero-carbon womenswear designer who has been working with ethnic minority artisans in southwest rural China for the past decade. She began her career designing for Donna Karan Collection in New York and Chloe (See by Chloe) in Paris, and received the Cartier Women's Initiative Award and Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award for her first eponymous label. In 2012, Angel moved to a remote mountain UNESCO villages of Guizhou province, rural China, to learn the traditional fabric-making techniques still practiced there by the indigenous Miao, Dong and Buyi tribes, Following in the footsteps of her ancestors going back 14 generations, she rediscovered her ancestral roots and the plant dyes used in traditional Chinese medicine. Her workshop Atelier Angel Chang was created to bring global appreciation for indigenous cratmanship and to revive traditional fabric-making practice in need of urgent safeguarding. In 2020 she launched ANGEL CHANG as the first ever zero-carbon womenswear collection made to seed-to-button entirely by hand (without electricity) using ancient techniques that follow the cycles of nature. She now collaborates with indigenous weavers in the American Southwest, Central America, Eygpt and India.
Hitha Herzog lives in a world where fashion, retail, finance, investigative journalism, and data research all co-exist in perfect harmony - a.k.a., New York City. She is Chief Retail Analyst for H Squared Research a data-driven, retail insights and research firm and author of the book "Black Market Billions: How Organized Retail Crime Funds Terrorists" published by FT Press. When she not expanding her business and advising early-stage companies, she is raising awareness about the criminal activity linked to the black market. Forbes magazine recently named her as "one of the most influential South Asian women in the United States." She has had a numerous television appearances as a national retail and consumer spending expert and has been a correspondent and contributor at ABC News, Bloomberg TV, Fox Business and CNBC.
Starting as a Parsons School of Design student where he studied Design & Management, Hassan Pierre launched his label reinventing high-end vintage fabrics before founding MAISON DE MODE. As a pioneer of the sustainable fashion movement, he has extended his experience and voice to numerous panel discussions including the 2015 NGO Conference at the United Nations, SXSW in 2018, Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in 2018, Future Sustainability Summit in 2019, and Harvard Business School's Retail and Luxury Goods conference in 2021. Additionally, Hassan holds a position on the Board of Well Beings - an environmental and animal conservation NGO, is also a Member of the CFDA Fashion Awards Guild and heads Fashion Trust Arabia's Strategic Development Committee
Natasha Franck is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EON. EON's mission is to connect every item with a Digital ID to power new sustainable systems and business models, and bring transparency, intelligence and integrity to commerce. Retail's leading Digital ID platform, EON brings identity, interactivity and intelligence to objects in the world around us. Smart, connected products are re-defining how customers buy, sell, own and connect with products. With Digital ID, brands connect directly with customers to deliver sales, services, and sustainability, and profitably scale circular, data driven business models. Before founding EON, Natasha worked in smart cities and sustainable urbanism at Delos and Jonathan Rose Companies. Natasha holds a Bachelor's Degree from Georgetown University.
Abrima Erwiah is currently co-founder and co-creative director of a social enterprise called Studio One Eight Nine that she co-founded with actress and activist, Rosario Dawson, which is focused on achieving social impact as it relates to education, economic/employment opportunities, and empowerment. With the mission of using fashion as an agent for social change, Studio One Eighty Nine seeks to provide a platform to help promote and curate African and African-inspired content through various projects such as media and cultural events and projects. Studio One Eighty Nine curates an online magazine, offers marketing & communications services and creates a fashion collection working with local artisans called Fashion Rising. Fashion Rising is an artisan-produced fashion collection launched in support of V-Day's One Billion rising, working to create awareness of One Billion Rising, to stop violence against women and empower women by building sustainable fashion and artisanal businesses. She is a former marketing and communications executive for Bottega Veneta, a luxury-goods company under Kering where she stayed for nearly a decade. In 2012, she was appointed a Marketing & Communications Executive Mentor by the Kering Foundation for Women's Dignity & Rights, to an organization based in Uganda called AFRIpads that makes affordable, washable, sanitary napkins to help curb school absenteeism for girls skipping school when they have their period mostly in the rural areas. Based out of Ghana, West Africa, Erwiah is also working in partnership with the United Nations International Trade Center Ethical The Ethical Fashion Initiative which links the world's top fashion talents to marginalised artisans in East and West Africa, Haiti and the West Bank. She is also the Director of the Joesph and Gail Gromek Institute for Fashion Business.
Sara Holzman is the Style Director for Marie Claire. Over the seven years with Marie Claire, Sara has reported on the ever-evolving world of fashion - covering both established and emerging designers within the industry while covering the trends across the world's fashion metropolises in New York, Milan, and Paris. Prior to Marie Claire, Sara held fashion positions at Lucky and SELF Magazine. She has a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Dr Joyce F. Brown is president of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), a specialized college of art and design, business and technology of the State University of New York (SUNY). Appointed in 1998, she is the college's sixth president. Throughout her career, Dr brown has been a strong advocate for public higher education and has demonstrated a sophisticated knowledge of the many communities that make up New York. Most recently, Dr. Brown created The Social Justice Center (SJC) at FIT, a first-of-its-kind initiative in higher education , which is a groundbreaking effort to address the systematic problems faced by BIPOC youth, college students, and working professional in the fields that drive the creative economy. The SJC offers meaningful support and services to help BIPOC students and employees succeed in the creative industries, including fashion - and significantly increase diversity and equity within these industries. Dr Brown is FIT's first woman and first African-American president. Dr, Brown earned her doctorate and master's degree in counselling psychology from New York University and her bachelor's degree from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, where she served as a trustee from 1994 to 2000. She also received a certificate from the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University.
Saad Amer is a climate activist and the Founder of Justice Environment, a social impact consultancy that helps businesses, governments and nonprofits navigate sustainability and the just tradition. He is a consultant to the United Nations and served as an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC AR6 report. As a major voting rights organise, he has mobilized millions of voters and organised campaigns featuring the likes of Vice President Al Gore, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Taylor Swift. As an Advisor to the National Parks Conversation Association, he helped secure $6.5 billion dollars in funding for the National Parks. He has researched the impacts of climate change on the ground in the Indian Himalayas, co-created Harvard University's inaugural Sustainability Plan, and discovered a new Hybrid species in French Polynesia. He has written for National Geographic, PBS and the World Bank., has spoken as the US Department of State, Patagonia and TEDx and has been featured in British Vogue, Nature and the New York Times. He went to Harvard University where he studied Environmental Science and Public Policy and was a Fellow at Yale University's Public Voices on the Climate Crisis with The OpEd Project.