Ngozi Okaro Selected for Kate Spade & Conscious Company's World-Changing Women List

Ngozi Okaro is an advocate for environmental stewardship and socioeconomic justice. After attending Morgan State University, Fashion Institute of Technology, and Georgetown Law, she led education, social justice, and community-based organizations to identify and meet their missions, including the National Urban Leagues and its affiliates, INSEAD, and Yale. In 2015, Okaro founded Custom Collaborative, a New York City-based entrepreneurship and workforce development program that trains and supports women from low-income and immigrant communities to launch fashion careers and businesses. She serves the nonprofit as Executive Director.

Ngozi initially founded Custom Collaborative as a way to serve two constituencies: fashion-industry workers who deserve fair compensation, and thoughtful consumers who want sustainable fashion that fits. She innately understands the challenges facing women who love nice clothes but whose bodies do not conform to the ready-to-wear template — the majority of US clothing buyers. Custom Collaborative has now evolved to serve a third constituency: US businesses and designers who want to design and produce fashion locally, ultimately providing more work opportunities for the women in the nonprofit’s programs.

Okaro is licensed to practice law in Louisiana and New York. Among other distinctions, she is certified by New York University’s Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising, was a 2014 Environmental Leadership Program Fellow, and is a graduate of the Coro Leadership New York program. In 2019 Ngozi was named “Changemaker of the Year” by New York City Fair Trade Coalition and received “Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award” from New York Women’s Foundation.

What makes a good leader?

“My most important job is to develop the people who work with me. That includes providing honest feedback, giving them the opportunity to try new ideas, helping them recover and correct course if their new idea fails, finding external training and mentors for them, or asking them to develop agendas for their meetings with me. I do my best to ensure that they are ready for the next day and for the next job.”

See the full list here:43 World-Changing Women In Conscious Business