Ewa Nucinska, IBS MA’11, is a senior consultant in the financial-services risk and regulation department at Deloitte in Switzerland. Brenna Schneider, Heller MBA’12, founder of 99Degrees Custom, received a $125,000 award from MIT’s Sloan School of Management in support of her efforts to use technology to help underserved communities. Her apparel company, based in Lawrence, Massachusetts, uses advanced manufacturing equipment to automate many tasks on the factory floor, then trains the workers who once performed those tasks to operate and oversee the machines. “You hear a lot of fear about machines replacing our jobs and excitement about robots,” she told The Boston Globe. “But I see there is an incredible sweet spot between the machine and human side.” She believes this collaboration can lower the cost of making clothes in the United States, luring back manufacturers who currently rely on overseas labor. Sho Garland, Heller MBA/MPP’16, was named Boston community-programs manager at Keshet. She has worked for LGBTQ equality and justice for more than a decade, including helping to defeat Minnesota’s anti-LGBTQ constitutional amendment in 2012 and supporting GLAD’s efforts in Boston to ensure transgender people have access to local shelters. While taking a social-entrepreneurship course at Brandeis, Ross Lohr, Heller MBA’16, and former Brandeis student Nathan Rothstein learned the average American throws out 65 pounds of textiles each year. In response, Ross and Nathan launched a company that made scarves and tote bags out of old T-shirts. Although consumers weren’t particularly interested in that, they were interested in quilts made from T-shirts that had sentimental value. So the duo launched Project Repat, a Boston-based company that stitches together customers’ shirts onto fleece backing. Last year, Inc.com named Repat one of the fastest-growing private companies in America.
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