The "Values-Based Leadership" course is designed to develop leaders who can navigate complex organizational environments with integrity, empathy, and a commitment to sustainability. Through a combination of theoretical frameworks, practical applications, and real-world case studies, students will learn to lead with purpose and influence and develop their career paths in alignment with their personal values. 

Building a new sustainably-focused fashion business, or shifting an existing business not currently managing sustainability considerations, requires a specific set of skills, considering all needs of the business from supply chain to marketing messaging. As the world changes and demands a new paradigm for operating a business – eschewing the former singular goal of profit for shareholders and replacing that with the need to serve a wide range of stakeholders – a new knowledge base, a greater flexibility and an entirely different skill set is required to succeed. Success under such a paradigm is not just doing better than before but actively doing good.

This module covers the range of considerations specific to operating with a positive-impact lens but general to every fashion business, focusing on supply and value chain management, competitive conditions, innovation, risk management, communication approaches, consumer power, holistic costing strategies, regulation, and measuring business impacts.

Embedding sustainability or positive impact considerations with an organization, business, community, or other complex system requires a diverse skill set, long term vision, and flexibility. And while the academy offers useful theoretical and practical tools for those hoping to tackle issues of sustainability within the fashion industry, much of the progress being made is coming from those grappling with the issues within the industry in real time.

This module connects students directly with leading practitioners of sustainable and impact focused fashion, who confront sustainability management issues daily within their respective organizations. Through guest presentations from a different industry practitioner each week, students will engage in dynamic discussion, readings, and writing assignments in order to understand real challenges, current motivations, and shifting stakeholders for sustainable-focused fashion businesses.

This course covers the human, community, and labor stakeholders and systems necessary to understand and appropriately engage to advance environmental sustainability, human dignity, and positive impact considerations within the global fashion system. Without a sufficient understanding of these areas, fashion sustainability practitioners cannot hope to address the deeply intractable economic, environmental and social problems within the supply and value chains of a fashion business. Looking across all tiers of the supply chain in arguably the largest labor intensive industry in operation today employing a disproportionate amount of the global female workforce, this course investigates the complicated labor history of the fashion system, the way in which power is managed within that system, geopolitical influences, the impacts and limits of transparency, the economic dynamic of labor within a globalized fashion industry, and metrics, approaches, and tools for advancing a more equitable fashion system.

Raw materials and textiles are an important component for any fashion business as textiles are the single largest material and cost component for any fashion product. Materials are also the likely starting point for any fashion business considering their own sustainability strategy. As the fashion industry increasingly acknowledges its known challenges and attempts to rectify the worst impacts, it is imperative that those who serve in sustainability and impact roles driving change for a fashion business understand the ‘wicked problems’ embedded within material considerations within the fashion industry and understand the strategic approaches to navigating complexity for greatest positive impact. 

Students will develop the comprehensive understanding needed to leverage materials to drive company impact goals. This module covers the complexity inherent in the diffuse and global fashion supply chain, the limits and potential for transparency within the material supply chain, circular materials, material innovation, costing, metrics and measurement tools and platforms, and certification. 

In this course, students are asked to investigate a fashion industry issue, collect relevant data to inform a proposal aimed at driving practical solutions. Drawing on the proposal developed in Research Methods for Fashion Design and the practical approach developed in Sustainable Fashion Strategy, this course asks students to finalize the thesis project proposal and plan, and progress and deliver the completed project. Students are required to demonstrate critical awareness of business practice, relevant theories and research techniques, and approaches. The project element of the course in particular offers students the opportunity to apply course concepts, theories and techniques, draw on internationally published literature and good practice, and develop and interpret knowledge about fashion industry and sustainability management practice learned throughout the program. 

Unlock the power of data to drive sustainable impact with "Introduction to Quantitative Analysis." This course equips you with essential tools for applied research in sustainability, harnessing the growing volume of data to support informed decision-making. Dive into data analytics, visualization, and effective representation techniques that are crucial for crafting business strategies with a social impact. Explore statistical methods tailored for practical sustainability applications, learn best practices in data management, and master problem-solving skills using SPSS. Through engaging hands-on exercises, you'll transform data into actionable insights, enabling you to tackle real-world challenges and lead your organization towards a sustainable and impactful future. Join us to turn data into your most powerful ally for positive change. 

Fashion is a concept with many meanings and practices. It is at once a shared global language, a tool for developing personal identity and understanding affiliations with others, and an industry increasingly under fire for its destructive environmental and social practices. To best understand the layers of practice and meaning within the concept of fashion, fashion must be understood and approached as a system. By exploring fashion as a system, it is clearer to see where the system is most resilient, where it is most flexible, why many solutions to date have failed to affect meaningful change, and where the system finds partnership in other systems.

This course introduces and explores the system of fashion, comprising three facets: the material culture of fashion, the symbolic system of fashion, and the global industry of fashion. Leveraging Donella Meadows’ approach to systems thinking, this course asks participants to see fashion

and the fashion industry through a holistic lens encompassing practices of representation, consumption, distribution, and production in order to better understand system behaviors, goals, feedback loops, and opportunities for disruption. This course covers a range of topics intended to appropriately contextualize fashion throughout history and within the globalized world of today as well as introducing participants to frameworks such as sustainability, theory of change, and the UNSDGs.

This course aims to develop foundational skills in fashion-focused social science research that are needed for basic and applied research at the Master’s level oriented to the successful completion of the final thesis. Students will be introduced to logic, research design, measurement and sampling, methods of data collection and analysis, and research ethics. Students will consider the unique data conditions of the fashion system and engage with the facets of data stewardship and best practice. Students should be able to critically evaluate new concepts, ideas, evidence, and empirical data from a range of sources, develop sound and logical arguments, and transfer their skills into practice.

Building a new sustainably-focused fashion business, or shifting an existing business not currently managing sustainability considerations, requires a specific set of skills, considering all needs of the business from supply chain to marketing messaging. As the world changes and demands a new paradigm for operating a business – eschewing the former singular goal of profit for shareholders and replacing that with the need to serve a wide range of stakeholders – a new knowledge base, a greater flexibility and an entirely different skill set is required to succeed. Success under such a paradigm is not just doing better than before but actively doing good.

This module covers the range of considerations specific to operating with a positive-impact lens but general to every fashion business, focusing on supply and value chain management, competitive conditions, innovation, risk management, communication approaches, consumer power, holistic costing strategies, regulation, and measuring business impacts.

This course covers the human, community, and labor stakeholders and systems necessary to understand and appropriately engage to advance environmental sustainability, human dignity, and positive impact considerations within the global fashion system. Without a sufficient understanding of these areas, fashion sustainability practitioners cannot hope to address the deeply intractable economic, environmental and social problems within the supply and value chains of a fashion business. Looking across all tiers of the supply chain in arguably the largest labor intensive industry in operation today employing a disproportionate amount of the global female workforce, this course investigates the complicated labor history of the fashion system, the way in which power is managed within that system, geopolitical influences, the impacts and limits of transparency, the economic dynamic of labor within a globalized fashion industry, and metrics, approaches, and tools for advancing a more equitable fashion system.

Raw materials and textiles are an important component for any fashion business as textiles are the single largest material and cost component for any fashion product. Materials are also the likely starting point for any fashion business considering their own sustainability strategy. As the fashion industry increasingly acknowledges its known challenges and attempts to rectify the worst impacts, it is imperative that those who serve in sustainability and impact roles driving change for a fashion business understand the ‘wicked problems’ embedded within material considerations within the fashion industry and understand the strategic approaches to navigating complexity for greatest positive impact. 

Students will develop the comprehensive understanding needed to leverage materials to drive company impact goals. This module covers the complexity inherent in the diffuse and global fashion supply chain, the limits and potential for transparency within the material supply chain, circular materials, material innovation, costing, metrics and measurement tools and platforms, and certification. 

As visual language becomes dominant in an online consumer marketplace and the greater world, how do we understand and potentially leverage the provenance, relevance, value, worth, and cultural power of fashion for positive impact? How do we address its capacity for negative impact? By interrogating the exchange between consumer desire and corporate fashion marketing, this course proposes further investigation of their inherent duopoly. We will consider fashion as an indicator of social affinities, aspirations, privileges — and also of personal, societal, and environmental costs and benefits. As traditional notions of value shift, how might the ever evolving notion of fashion be reshaped considering a more inclusive range of stakeholders and the impact on climate?

Using a range of modalities, this course covers concepts of cultural diffusion, in-groups and out-groups, modern and historical consumer culture and their relationship to globalization, consumer behavior, and overconsumption.

As one of the first industrialized sectors and one of the industries which fueled the Industrial Revolution, the fashion industry has a powerful manufacturing history which continues today. What does it take to make a garment? What are the processes typical to any fashion business to bring a product to market? What is the relationship between craftsmanship and value in the fashion system? And above all, what impact do these processes and products have on the sustainability or impact of a product, and ultimately the industry and system as a whole? This course focuses on Tier 1-2 of the supply chain and explores the relationship between craft, manufacturing, and sustainability for the fashion industry.

This course covers a range of topics including product development, garment production methods, intellectual property and cultural appropriation, pre-consumer waste, manufacturing technologies, manufacturing certifications, measuring impact, and manufacturing sourcing strategies aimed at advancing sustainability and social impact goals within a fashion business.

The "Values-Based Leadership" course is designed to develop leaders who can navigate complex organizational environments with integrity, empathy, and a commitment to sustainability. Through a combination of theoretical frameworks, practical applications, and real-world case studies, students will learn to lead with purpose and influence and develop their career paths in alignment with their personal values. 

Embedding sustainability or positive impact considerations with an organization, business, community, or other complex system requires a diverse skill set, long term vision, and flexibility. And while the academy offers useful theoretical and practical tools for those hoping to tackle issues of sustainability within the fashion industry, much of the progress being made is coming from those grappling with the issues within the industry in real time.

This module connects students directly with leading practitioners of sustainable and impact focused fashion, who confront sustainability management issues daily within their respective organizations. Through guest presentations from a different industry practitioner each week, students will engage in dynamic discussion, readings, and writing assignments in order to understand real challenges, current motivations, and shifting stakeholders for sustainable-focused fashion businesses.