Abrima Erwiah Interim Director of Fashion Programs, Executive Education, Parsons; Faculty, School of Design Strategies, School of Fashion, and Executive Education; Director of the Joseph and Gail Gromek Institute for Fashion Business, Parsons School of Design Abrima Erwiah is the inaugural director of the Joseph and Gail Gromek Institute for Fashion Business at Parsons School of Design. Erwiah, who joined Parsons in 2019, teaches MFA and BFA Systems Design and Society thesis courses and MPS Retail Design and Entrepreneurship in the Strategic Design Management program and guest-lectures in the Executive Education program. She is a luxury goods and fashion industry executive with experience in sustainable development. Erwiah is the founder, with actor Rosario Dawson, of Studio One Eighty Nine, an artisanal fashion lifestyle brand and social enterprise that is a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund recipient and a CFDA + Lexus* Fashion Initiative winner. She has worked for brands including Bottega Veneta, Cesare Paciotti, and Hermès/John Lobb; served as an advisor to the United Nations International Trade Center; and acted as a mentor for the Kering Foundation. She earned a master’s degree at NYU Gallatin, where she studied the economic impact of luxury goods in Africa, and holds a BS in Finance and International Business from NYU Stern School of Business. Erwiah is the founder of Fashion Our Future, an organization she developed with designers including Virgil Abloh (creator of Off-White) and Tanya Taylor that uses the power of fashion to engage underrepresented communities in the political process. Her design work is featured at the Sustainable Thinking exhibition at the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum in Florence and at the Musée des Art Decoratifs in Paris. Erwiah, who believes that fashion can be an agent of social change, is an advisor to companies and organizations including Gucci Changemaker, NEST, the H&M Global Change Award, CFDA Inclusive by Design, Slow Factory, Conscious Fashion, and the School of Fashion at Parsons. She is a published author and has received numerous awards, including the prestigious FIT Changemaker Award; the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Emerging Designer Award; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award from the University of Pennsylvania. Read more
Caryn Pang, PhD Part-Time Lecturer, Parsons Executive Education and Fashion Management MPS; Part-Time Lecturer, Hult International Business School Caryn Pang is a faculty member at Parsons and the Hult International Business School in Boston. Pang teaches marketing and business fundamentals, drawing on her experience of more than 15 years as a retail business executive and a consultant for businesses in the international fashion industry. Pang’s teaching philosophy is to empower students to create a roadmap for fulfilling their academic and career goals. She has worked for Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, TJX Corporation, and Macy’s and enjoys teaching students at different levels, including undergraduates, graduates, and executives. As a consultant, Pang is skilled at improving business outcomes, with successes that include creating an executive education program for The Metropolitan Museum of Art as a foundation for its strategic business turn-around plan and spearheading the launch of an online digital learning platform for an international luxury jewelry and gemstone business. Pang received a PhD from Iowa State University, where her research focuses on cross-cultural consumer behavior as it relates to global retail markets. Connect on LinkedIn Read more