I got into college on my art portfolio – ceramic sculptures, black and white photography, and a bit of painting – but the “real artists” quickly scared me away and I moved into the sociology department. I studied environmentalism, popular movements, and Eastern religions, while playing in bands and generally running wild in the Hudson Valley. My senior project at Bard was a sociological survey of romantic relationships in which one parter was a dedicated meditator and the other was not. For the following twenty years I looked back on that choice of topics as almost entirely unimportant and obscure, but these days I’m finding myself re-interested in that field of inquiry.

After college I moved to Los Angeles. Shopping for T-shirts one day the cashier gave me a business card, saying I should see if I could get modeling work at the company. After my first day of shooting at American Apparel, one of the two women who ran the marketing department asked if I could write. I sent her a college paper on Zen and phenomenology and she hired me as her assistant. It was the days when Dov Charney was his most manic, and American Apparel was opening multiple stores a week in cities around the world. The downtown factory was weaving fabric, cutting and sewing garments, and doing all the design of clothing, marketing, and retail stores. With some 2,000 workers, it was the largest garment factory in the country. I was impressed with the way the company was trying to support its workers, mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants. Decent pay, health insurance, English classes, and advocating for a path to legal documentation. There was a bike shop where workers could get a bike on indefinite loan and bring it in for free repairs.

I also noticed that no one was focused on the company’s environmental footprint. I had recently seen a documentary called Dark Days about unhoused New Yorkers living in abandoned train tunnels. The young film maker had no funding, no crew other than the homeless people themselves, and shot the whole thing on 16mm before ever having enough money to develop any of the film. He was finally invited to bring it to Sundance where it won three awards. The day after seeing the film, I asked my boss if I had her blessing to petition Dov to let me oversee environmental programs for the factory. She agreed, and (remarkably) so did Dov.

So far my work has come in a series of interesting chapters. My first job out of college was at the downtown Los Angeles factory of American Apparel, during its boom years as the largest, and certainly most storied, garment manufacturer in the US – some 2,000 people under one roof on Alameda St. I was hired as an assistant to one of the women who ran the marketing department, but I convinced management to let me start the company’s first Environmental Programs positions, which I did until a cranky middle manager sent me packing.

Co-founder, CMO

Partnerships: Ace Hotel, Output, MoMA Design Store (including exclusive launch and store takeover and holiday catalog cover)

Artist and influencer engagement: T-Pain, affiliate marketing,

Business development: Eric Reis, Steve Case, 500 Startups, Warner Music Group, Harvard Business School Angels, GIPHY

Lean marketing innovative

Team from 2 to 40

Worked closely with CEO

Talent recruiting

Brand development

Two Kickstarter campaigns, setting records

TIME Best Invention

Ran PR, landing coverage in TechCrunch, The New York Times, Buzzfeed,

After ten years stepped away to pursue new projects.

Under the wing of IDEO

Pics of MoMA windows

Pic of me on stage?