ethical-fashion
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Ryan Berg
Ryan Berg is the co-founder and CEO of The Aruna Project, a Cincinnati-based athleisure bag and accessories brand stitched entirely by survivors of sex trafficking. With his wife April, he built a hybrid model that fuses a for-profit fashion label with nonprofit holistic care - transitional housing, counseling, healthcare and a living wage - to create what he calls lifelong freedom. The work started after a single TV news brief about children rescued from a brothel sent him hunting for that brothel on a business trip to India, where he found a two-mile stretch holding an estimated 15,000 enslaved women. The Aruna Project says it has helped free and employ more than 160 women across India and the Tri-State and contributed to an 86% drop in trafficking in that part of India.
Karla Gallardo
Karla Gallardo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cuyana, a San Francisco-based sustainable fashion brand built on the philosophy of 'fewer, better things.' Born in Ecuador and educated at Brown University and Stanford GSB, she co-founded Cuyana in 2011 with Shilpa Shah to create timeless, high-quality women's essentials through ethical, transparent supply chains. Under her leadership, Cuyana has grown to 160+ employees, raised $44.8M in funding (including a $30M Series C), and built a loyal customer base that includes Meghan Markle and Jessica Alba. The company achieves a remarkable 90% full-price sell-through rate — rare in fashion — and has been recognized for pioneering sustainable luxury retail in the U.S.
Shilpa Shah
Shilpa Shah is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of Cuyana, the San Francisco-based sustainable luxury fashion brand built around two words: fewer, better. A UC Berkeley-trained UX designer who spent a decade building interfaces for Disney, AT&T, and Sun Microsystems before pivoting to business school at 32 — pregnant during her first semester — Shah co-founded Cuyana in 2011 with Karla Gallardo. The company has grown into a cult-favorite direct-to-consumer brand with 7 retail locations, 150+ employees, celebrity fans including Jessica Alba and Ayesha Curry, and $30 million in Series C funding from H.I.G. Capital. At Cuyana, Shah is the architect of the customer experience, championing quality over quantity in an industry obsessed with the opposite.