Nina’s background is in developing innovative opportunities for positive impact. While at the University of Pennsylvania, she launched an on-campus extension of a humanitarian fashion brand that built schools in sub-Saharan Africa using the profits generated from the sale of branded apparel and accessories. It was this experience that opened her eyes to her calling: changing the world using fashion as the vehicle.
After graduating from Penn, Nina pursued finance to understand what made a company worthy of investment, because she knew she wanted to use the power of for-profit business to influence change. While working as an Analyst in Manager Research, she initiated, built and successfully launched the impact investing program at a national investment and wealth management firm. This enabled clients to construct 100 percent impact-aligned fully-diversified portfolios without sacrificing returns. This experience further emphasized the importance of aligning social and environmental impact with one's dollars.
In 2014, Nina founded Fashionkind as an educational blog on Instagram. She wanted to inject education into the narrative of fashion in an effort to influence change in how we create and how we consume. The account began to grow organically, and followers began asking where they could purchase the products that were being featured. After a deep-dive into the space, Nina found that there lacked a retail platform that approached sustainable fashion through the lens of fashion - instead of just impact - and that there was a significant opportunity to target the luxury market due to the influence it has on shaping the industry as a whole. This was how she believed she could influence the most change.
In 2016 Nina officially launched Fashionkind.com the platform. Shortly thereafter, VOGUE described Fashionkind as "living proof that traditional, time-honored craft can be synonymous with luxury, and that sustainability needn't come at the sacrifice of style."
In addition to leading Fashionkind, Nina serves as co-chair of the Consumer Behavior working group for The New York Academy of Science’s Change Fashion Initiative; as an advisor for Trade+Impact, a trade association of members from the craft and natural cosmetic sectors with a focus on women-led social enterprises in Africa and the Middle East; and on the board of Power Up Gambia, a non-profit that transforms healthcare services in The Gambia via solar energy.
Nina has been named one of the 50 most influential young women by Town & Country Magazine and was selected as one of ten mentees from around the globe to participate in Bank of America’s and Vital Voices’ Global Ambassadors Program.
