Presenters and Panelists

Dr. Joyce F. Brown, president of FIT since 1998, is a highly regarded educator and academic administrator with over forty years’ experience in public higher education. She held a number of senior administrative posts at the City University of New York (CUNY) before arriving at FIT, including acting president of Bernard Baruch College and vice chancellor of the university. Prior to her appointment at FIT, she was professor of counseling psychology at the Graduate School and University Center of CUNY. Dr. Brown has also served as a New York City deputy mayor during the Dinkins administration. At FIT, Dr. Brown has led an ambitious multiyear strategic initiative that has transformed the college. She has built faculty ranks, increased technology, enhanced student services, expanded the curriculum with innovative new programs, and renovated facilities. She has invigorated the college’s culture with groundbreaking initiatives in diversity and sustainability. Under Dr. Brown’s leadership, sustainability became a key element of FIT’s mission. Her early participation in the Clinton Global Initiative University formalized a commitment to sustainability that was reflected in the college’s physical plant, curriculum, and public programming. She established a Sustainability Council that promotes dialogue, campuswide activities—including the annual Sustainability Business and Design Conference—and manages grant programs for related projects. FIT has been honored by both New York City and New York State for its leadership among public institutions in the field of sustainability.

Associate Professor, Fashion Business Management, Fashion Institute of Technology

Ann Cantrell is an associate professor in the Fashion Business Management Department at FIT, with a focus on sustainability. On campus she is an advisor to the Ethics and Sustainability minor as well as the Style Shop and a member of the President's Council on Sustainability. In the fashion industry, Ann's focus was on planning and then product development at companies such as Brooks Brothers, Ralph Lauren, and Coach. With an (S)MBA and a focus on both environmental and economic sustainability, Ann has also been a shop owner for the past fourteen years in Brooklyn, New York. Her store, Annie's Blue Ribbon General Store, is a community staple in Park Slope. 

Founder and CEO at For Days

Kristy Caylor is an entrepreneur and sustainability visionary. She brings a unique understanding of the circular economy to For Days, a company she founded with a mission to keep textiles out of landfills. For Days rewards consumers for recycling their used textiles in any condition through the company’s Take Back Bag program and helps them spend those rewards on sustainable products.

Before founding For Days, Caylor co-founded and was president of Maiyet, one of the first ethically driven luxury retailers. She sourced, built, and oversaw a network of artisans across 14 countries; launched Maiyet on the Paris runway; opened a store in New York; and sold the collection to major retailers including Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus. and Saks. Caylor spent her early career launching and growing businesses for Gap, Inc., including Banana Republic Petites and Banana Republic Japan, and was instrumental in leading Gap’s Product (RED) division.

Her recognitions include The Voss Foundation’s Women Helping Women Honoree (2014), the Glossy 50: Fashion Digital Front Runners (2018), and Entrepreneur’s 100 Women of Influence (2022). Under Caylor’s leadership, For Days was named one of Fast Company’s Brands That Matter (2022). She is a member of the CFDA and has worked with the UN Foundation, the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Consumerism, the Lexus Fashion Initiative advisory board, Cradle to Cradle’s Fashion +, and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Textile Initiative. She holds an MBA from the University of Southern California and a BS in industrial engineering from Northwestern University.

Technologist, Spatial Experience Design, FIT

Steven Ceraso is the lead technologist working with the Spatial Experience Design program. He has a deep history of and knowledge in the fields of sculpture and woodworking and currently helps students with their installations and display work. He has also been teaching furniture making through FIT’s Center for Continuing and Professional Studies for more than seven years.

Assistant Professor, Textile Development and Marketing, FIT

Whitney Crutchfield is an assistant professor in FIT’s Textile Development and Marketing department and an adjunct instructor in the Textile/Surface Design department, serving the FIT community since 2016. Her expertise lies in woven textiles and textile dyeing techniques, with a particular emphasis on low-impact methods and materials. Crutchfield is the founder and owner of We Gather, an educational textile studio in Brooklyn. She previously held positions at American Eagle and Martha Stewart Living.

Fashion Designer,  Andrea Diodati

Assistant Professor, Fashion Design, FIT

Andrea Diodati is an award-winning fashion designer and entrepreneur. After seeing the wasteful nature of her wholesale fashion line, Diodati created a direct-to-consumer brand that used 3D modeling to facilitate customer collaboration. Users could codesign dresses that were custom-made in New York City using deadstock fabric. Diodati’s industry experience includes designing runway for Anna Sui as well as freelancing for Kate Spade and Alice + Olivia. Presently, Diodati is interested in how digital fashion can replace single-use garment consumption.

Fashion Designer

Mallorie Dunn is a New York City-based fashion designer, consultant, and educator. An alumna of FIT and Pratt, she worked in the juniors sector of corporate fashion before deciding to switch to freelance work. Through the freedom that a freelance schedule allowed her, she was able to launch her customizable, inclusive, and sustainable clothing line, SmartGlamour, in 2014.

Founder, Senza Tempo

Kristen Fanarakis spent nearly 13 years working on Wall Street before launching Senza Tempo, working on the foreign exchange trading desk for firms such as Merrill Lynch and Citibank. She later went on to work at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, in the Center for Financial Policy, and she currently leads the small business policy focus at the Milken Institute.

Fanarakis grew up in North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA) and its Kenan-Flagler School of Business (MBA). She also holds an MS in international economics.

She grew up watching old movies with her grandmother, which created a love of vintage and classic fashion. Form and function are equally important in Fanarakis's design philosophy. It's about making life easier for women. A businesswoman frequently on the go and like the iconic American designer Claire McCardell, she generally designs clothing to solve problems for herself.

Founder, Izzy Zero Waste

Izzy Zero Waste Beauty, the world’s first zero-waste makeup line, is 100 percent reusable, refillable, recyclable, and carbon neutral. It took home 15 major beauty awards in the first year of business. During her tenure at Izzy, founder Shannon Goldberg was featured in the Amazon Women’s month roundup, named Yotpo’s “Amazing Women in E-commerce” for Innovation, and Business Elite’s 40 under 40. 

Before Izzy, Goldberg served as the general manager of the facial and skincare division at Ideal Image; the vice president of marketing for Madonna’s luxury skin care line, MDNA SKIN; the executive director of global marketing for Peter Thomas Roth Clinical Skin Care; and the brand manager for Ling Skincare. In addition, Shannon created 4N21 Skincare and transformed it into a bestselling product line for ShopNBC and QVC UK. 

Currently, Shannon is an executive board member at Izzy and serves as the head of entertainment and influence at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, serving a mission that is near and dear to her family’s heart. 

Instructor, Fashion Business Management, FIT

Faces and Places in Fashion is taught by Caroline Gordon, who has been an adjunct professor at FIT since 2018, teaching in both the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology and the School of Art and Design. Gordon has worked in the fashion industry in New York City for 16 years across multiple American brands, including Ralph Lauren and Ann Taylor. She has experience in women’s wear and children's wear, with a focus on buying and wholesale sales.

Curator of Education and Research, The Museum at FIT

Melissa Marra-Alvarez is curator of education and research at The Museum at FIT in New York City. She is co-curator of the Food & Fashion exhibition and co-editor of the Food and Fashion book (Bloomsbury 2022). Her previous exhibitions include  Moda Hoy! Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today (2023), Head to Toe (2021),  Minimalism/Maximalism (2019), and Force of Nature (2017). Marra-Alvarez’s research interests include intersections between fashion and the natural world, the relationship between fashion and popular culture, and fashion as visual culture. She holds an MA in Museum Studies: Fashion and Textile History from FIT.

Sustainability Strategist and Partner, Hyloh

Laura Novich is a sustainability strategist and partner at Hyloh, a global consultancy making a positive impact through the application of materials, processes, and circular design thinking. With an incredible depth of understanding when it comes to materials reuse and research methodologies, Novich can measure the impact of consumerism. In doing so, she enables businesses to better manage their product life cycles. Novich trained in environmental science and earned her MA in Sustainable Interior Environments at FIT. She has worked as a materials researcher at Material ConneXion and a project manager at the NYC Center for Materials Reuse.

Fashion Designer

Elisa Palomino, PhD, fashion designer, has 25 years’ experience in the fashion industry at John Galliano and Christian Dior. Until recently, Palomino was the BA Fashion Design: Print pathway leader at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. As an international fashion lecturer, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies Center and held fellowships at the Library of Congress and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. 

Assistant Director of Engineering and Sustainability, FIT

Al Palmaccio joined FIT in 1995 as a director of engineering for Ogden, which then held the college’s Buildings and Grounds contract. In 2005, he was promoted to director of the physical plant, and in 2019, when UG2 took over as the college’s Buildings and Grounds contractor, he became assistant director of engineering and sustainability.

Everyone has a part to play in reducing FIT’s carbon footprint by turning off lights and computers when not in use. But Palmaccio has played perhaps the largest role. By managing energy-efficient equipment upgrades to FIT’s facilities – steam-powered heating and cooling, LED lights, and water-saving washing machines, for example – he has overseen a 58 percent reduction in the college’s carbon emissions since 2007, when FIT began participating in the New York City Mayor’s Carbon Challenge.

He has worked with the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) to help fund these upgrades, by participating in their retrofit and demand response programs. For this work and more, DCAS named him a 2017 Energy Champion.

He has also helped the college achieve recognition for outstanding performance in the demand response program from the New York Independent System Operators and New York Power Authority. On hot summer days, when electricity use is at its peak, he manually shuts down chillers and reduces fan speed to minimize the college’s consumption, thereby easing strain on the grid.

Professor, Science and Math, FIT

Karen R. Pearson, PhD, is a full professor of chemistry, chair of the Science and Math department, and chair of the Sustainability Council at the Fashion Institute of Technology.  Her work focuses on the development of intersectional curriculum, programs, and research directed toward preparing the next generation to address our biggest global challenges.  This work is grounded in a cross-disciplinary STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) approach that unites education, sustainability, and workforce development. 

Pearson is the recipient of numerous awards, including a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the President’s Award for Curricular Innovation, and she has been acknowledged as one of the top 100 of most influential women in STEM.  Her work has resulted in multiple National Science Foundation and National Endowment of the Arts grants and numerous peer-reviewed articles.  

Founder and CEO, Hometown Flower Collective

Jaclyn Rutigliano is the founder and CEO of Hometown Flower Collective, a Long Island-based sustainable floral design studio and pop-up flower truck. After more than 15 years of working as a publicist and branding/marketing expert with start-ups, nonprofits, and travel companies, she started designing flowers as a form of stress relief, giving her a way to reconnect with nature and have a method of creative expression. It was then that she realized she had inherited the “floral gene,” following in the footsteps of her parents and grandparents as a third generation florist. Having previously worked with the slow fashion movement, she applied her learnings about ethical and sustainable sourcing and responsible business and became committed to launching a sustainable floral design studio, working exclusively with locally grown flowers. She launched Hometown Flower Co., alongside her husband, Marc Iervolino, on Mother’s Day 2019, the biggest day of the year for flowers, with a commitment to changing the status quo of our expectations for and relationship with flowers.

Assistant Professor, Science and Math, FIT

Evelyn Rynkiewicz, PhD, is an assistant professor of ecology at FIT. She earned her PhD from Indiana University and subsequently conducted research as a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Edinburgh (National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow) and Columbia University. A disease ecologist, Rynkiewicz’s research investigates co-infection in wild mice, focusing on how parasites and pathogens interact with each other and with the host immune system. She teaches classes in ecology and biology, with her overall goals being to increase science literacy among non-science majors and to give students the confidence to bring ideas of the scientific process and understanding of the natural world into how they think about their careers. Rynkiewicz is the FIT faculty advisor for the Biodesign Challenge program.

Assistant Professor, Science and Math, FIT

Julian Silverman is a materials chemist and assistant professor at FIT. His research focuses on creating sustainable ingredients for consumer products from renewable and waste resources.

Secretary of Sustainability, FIT Student Government Association, Direct and Interactive Marketing ’23 

Brooke Singer is the current secretary of sustainability for FIT’s Student Government Association. In her studies at FIT, she seeks to implement sustainable practices and environmental advocacy. Singer graduated magna cum laude with her associate's degree in Fashion Design from FIT and is currently majoring in Direct and Interactive Marketing while minoring in Ethics/Sustainability and Psychology. She is also involved in FIT athletics as the goalkeeper for the Tigers soccer team. In 2021, she was awarded FIT Athlete of the Year for her performance on and off the field. Outside of school, she promotes gender equality as she shares her story online playing semi-pro women's tackle football for the state of New York.

Founder, floral ave.

Nancy Brooke Smith has been obsessed with recycling, upcycling, and waste for most of her life: Her first upcycling project was a Barbie camper she fashioned out of her brother’s discarded toy truck. She considers herself a craftivist, wearing and selling her upcycled and mended clothes with pride and purpose.

After a long career as an art director, Smith started floral ave., a sustainable design business that combines her loves of fashion, collage, and zero waste. Her designs are crafted from street finds and embellished with inventory gathered from years of thrifting and scavenging and her grandmother’s leftovers. She calls her technique “clothing collage” because, rather than restructuring garments, she covers flaws with a myriad of materials and visibly mends and combines damaged pieces. 

She loves the spontaneity of upcycling, craftism, and visible mending in particular. One never knows how a garment will evolve. Visible mending by design is imperfect. As a craftivist, Smith goes one step further, embracing flaws with embellishments and cheeky patching, shouting “Hey, cool fix here!”

Associate Curator of Costume, The Museum at FIT

Elizabeth Way is associate curator of costume at The Museum at FIT in New York City. Her exhibitions include Global Fashion Capitals (2015), Black Fashion Designers (2016), Fabric in Fashion (2018), Head to Toe (2021), Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip Hop Style (2023), and Food & Fashion (2023). She edited the book Black Designers in American Fashion (2021) and has contributed to several edited volumes, exhibition books, and Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture. Way holds an MA in costume studies from New York University.