Auralis Herrero Lugo

• Professor at Moore, Parsons and FIT
• Founder of Retazo.Co, PD
• Commercial Product Manager at Blue Water Defense, Retazo.Co

Circularity Expert, Entrepreneur, fashion designer, and educator with over 15 years of product development and small batch production experience specializing in integrating ethical practices within the fashion industry and it’s supply chain. Auralis lectures on Ethical Fashion, Circular Product Lifecycle and Product Development at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Parsons New School for Design and In her alma mater Moore College of Art and Design, with guest lecturing at design universities in Puerto Rico such as Escuela de Artes Plasticas and Universidad del Turabo. Auralís has founded 2 fashion companies: Retazo a Puerto Rico based circular fashion platform that meshes together circular manufacturing, modular training, capacity building, and sales for long term economic development in the island of Puerto Rico; and her first business endeavor Auralis Studio, a sustainable resort wear line that was designed and manufactured between New York City and Puerto Rico.

Her experience includes strategy, circular supply chain management, responsible sourcing, client relations, training, and capacity building in American manufacturing. Auralís spent her whole career in New York’s fashion and manufacturing industry before returning to Puerto Rico full time in January 2018 to serve as the director of product development at Blue Water Defense and work on Retazo.

Her work has been featured in CNN, Glamour, Now This and El Nuevo Dia.

https://www.retazo.co
https://www.linkedin.com/in/auralishl/
https://www.facebook.com/auralisherrerolugo/
https://www.instagram.com/auralis/

Liz spencer

• Self Employed Natural Dyer and Educator

Based in San Clemente, CA, Liz Spencer also known as The Dogwood Dyer splits her time between Southern California and New York City teaching natural dyeing with the ambition to increase sustainable literacy & practices in the fashion and textiles industries. She has taught fashion, sustainability, and natural dyeing at Parsons the New School and continually teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was a venture fellow at the Brooklyn Fashion and Design Accelerator (BF+DA) for a year and a half. She has years of experience foraging, growing & processing natural dye plants. Liz also has years experience in sustainable subsistence & fiber farming with sheep, alpacas, llamas and goats.

http://www.thedogwooddyer.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-spencer-1135abb/
https://www.facebook.com/thedogwooddyer/
https://www.instagram.com/thedogwooddyer/?hl=en

Jason Torreano

• Executive Director, Inkululeko

Jason is a social entrepreneur, grant writer and fundraiser. He is the founder of Inkululeko, an organization that serves motivated South African township youth with finishing high school and moving on to university or being equipped with a skill set to pursue a career upon graduation. In his role at Inkululeko, he developed mutually beneficial collaborations with entities around the world and created a fee-for-service model with U.S. institutions to assist with sustainability.

He is a huge fan of social entrepreneurship, passionate people, his dog Adelaide (named after a small South African town in the Eastern Cape Province) and running long distances, slowly.

https://www.inkululeko.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasontorreano