Entrepreneurship Summit Luncheon

Michael Ferraro is the executive director of the FIT Design and Technology Lab (DTech) at FIT and is responsible for industry partnerships and collaborative programs for the college.  

Creative technologist, researcher, artist, and educator, Ferraro’s career spans the worlds of  computer animation, software development, virtual reality media production, fine art, commercial entertainment, and higher education.  

He came to FIT from Lehman College/CUNY, where he spent 12 years as an associate professor in the digital media program of the art department. In 2015, working with students, he won a NY Emmy for Graphics and Animation Supervision for a series of PSA’s entitled “Best of the Bronx.” 

Prior to Lehman, Ferraro founded Possible Worlds, an innovative, real-time animation studio, working for clients such as Warner Bros. MTV, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network. In the mid-1980s, Ferraro was one of the cofounders of Blue Sky Studios and served as system architect of the Academy Award-winning CGI Studio™ Renderer and production animation system. He made his first picture with a computer in 1969.

As the grand prize winner of the PETE Prize for Entrepreneurs 2022, Haley Schwartz is developing her company, Vertige Adaptive, Inc., where she has designed fashion-forward adaptive wear for people with different health challenges and disabilities, with a plan to launch on e-commerce. Schwartz said, “The adaptable clothing that exists today mostly accommodates people in wheelchairs and people with mobility issues. But there’s nothing to accommodate people with other kinds of health conditions.” Schwartz’s launch collection will target people who wear heart monitors, colostomy bags, and additional conditions she learned about from market surveys and focus groups. Vertige Adaptive was inspired by Schwartz’s own experience of living with ventricular tachycardia for most of her life and the inability to find clothes that worked with the heart monitors she had to wear. 

Originally from Chicago, Haley earned her AAS in Fashion Design from FIT. Since winning the prize, Haley has relocated her studio from a tiny NYC apartment to the Brooklyn Navy Yard (one of Haley’s PETE Prize winnings). She said, “I came to FIT for opportunities and connections like this, and [competing for the prize] was such a valuable experience – even more than any class has been.... This has changed the course of my life completely!”