Summit Team
Jane Philbrick is an artist, educator, and writer. Her large-scale installations and sculpture range in media from ultrasound and rammed earth to magnetic levitation and found space. She works in collaboration across disciplines in science and engineering, architecture, music, finance, fashion, and performance.
Her primary practice is disruptive community-based real estate development, applying holistic and synthetic methodologies of artist practice to brownfield regeneration. The goal is equitable, ecological, compassionate society, from the ground up.
Jane is a past artist fellow, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and MacDowell Colony fellow. She teaches in the Art, Media, and Technology Program, Parsons School of Design/The New School, NYC. Prior to re-wire/TILL, she was Visiting Professor and Director of the international C:Art MFA, Valand School of Fine Art, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Jane holds a bachelors degree in East Asian Studies from Barnard College, Columbia University, and a masters in Critical Conservation from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.
Jane Philbrick
TILL: bFt Founder
Olivia Greenspan co-founded TILL with Jane Philbrick after beginning as an intern in 2013 on TILL’s predevelopment program, re-wire.
Olivia earned her B.A. from Fordham University in May 2019 in economics and psychology, summa cum laude.
Prior to TILL, Olivia worked with the New York City Bar Association on their “Opportunity to Raise Public Awareness about Climate Change and the Need for Action” campaign, indoor farming startup Agrivolution, the Verizon Foundation, and consulted BMW i3 through Fordham’s Social Innovation Collaboratory.
Olivia is the recipient of Clif Bar’s inaugural Business with Purpose Scholarship for her work on TILL.
Watch Olivia’s TEDxYouth talk on TILL here.
Olivia Greenspan
TILL: bFt Co-founder 2019
Tessa just graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology as a Presidential Scholar, Magna Cum Laude, earning a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Business Management with minors in Ethics & Sustainability, and International Politics. In her time at FIT, Tessa served as President of the Residence Hall Association (RHA). Under Tessa's leadership, RHA won FIT’s Club of the Year Award, and Program of the Year award in their first year attending the North East Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls conference. In conjunction with this role, Tessa became the leader of the Compost Crew, a student-lead initiative of four students focused on bringing composting to the residence halls on campus. Tessa and her team attended Clinton Global Initiative University for this project. In partnership with the New York Department of Sanitation, FIT’s Residential Life, and RHA, Tessa and her team were able to roll out their pilot program, which would later jumpstart a new sustainability-focused leadership role in the club.
For her work on campus, Tessa was awarded the Marion Brandriss Extracurricular Service Award, recognizing outstanding service to the institution in the area of extracurricular activities. In Spring of 2019, Tessa had the honor of speaking on a “Spotlight on Students in Sustainability Leadership” panel at FIT’s Annual Sustainable Business and Design Conference. She has also presented her work in promoting sustainability on campus to FIT’s Board of Trustees alongside her fellow student leaders, and has been featured in FIT’s Innovation in Sustainability video.
Tessa serves as Special Projects Manager of TILL, coordinating the bioFASHIONtech Summit and overseeing the bioFASHIONtech LAB @ Stamford Town Center. Passionate about community, wearable art, and addressing the climate crisis, Tessa is immensely proud to be part of a team that pulls these elements together and is working towards real and lasting progress.
Tessa Beltrano
TILL: bFt Manager 2019
While a Fashion Design student at Parsons School of Design, Yimin was selected for Remake’s Made In Sri Lanka journey inside garment maker communities to learn about the true human stories behind mass-produced fashion. Remake is a sustainable fashion non profit organization that is igniting a conscious consumer movement. During his awakening experience with garment makers inside their factories and boarding home, he realized the complexity of our fashion system and came away hoping to transform fashion into a force for good. As an aesthetic and systematic experimenter of fashion, Yimin is developing his label, yiminism, to celebrate the prestige of Chinese traditional craft with an ethical and sustainable business model. Yimin earned his BFA from Parsons in 2018 and soon after became a Remake Ambassador. Through his dedication to sustainable fashion advocacy for Remake, he was connected to TILL. His goal to continually grow the sustainable fashion movement from a new vantage point immediately clicked with TILL’s co-founder, Jane Philbrick’s mission of healing brownfields ecologically, socially and economically.
Yimin is the lead designer of TILL: bioFASHIONtech LAB’s Community Studio. Through teaching free public workshops on basic fashion making skills and working with individual clients to develop upcycled fashion collaboratively, he encourages bFt LAB guests to participate in fashion not only as consumers, but as sustainable makers. Through the platform provided by TILL, Yimin is able to research and develop an alternative model to our current fashion unsustainable system while importantly, engaging the Stamford public in this process. His residency at TILL complements his experience at Remake for his quest to be a fashion designer of sustainability: joining community engagement and alternative system development with critical reflection and grassroots activism.
Yimin Deng
Community Studio Lead Designer
Gal Yakobovitch is an Israeli fashion bio-maker working in NYC. Bridging the gap between new biomaterials and old manufacturing methods, doing so by creating Makemoretcollective.com which offers an open source knowledge exchange platform that encourages collaborations between biomaterial designers and traditional practitioners.
Gal Yakobovitch
Biomaker
René is a sophomore at Joel Barlow High School in Redding, Connecticut, where the former Gilbert & Bennett wire mill site’s political gridlock inspired him to pursue ecologically-focused community development. He began work with TILL in September as an intern under Jacob Olmedo, and hopes to inspire a rejection of the fast-fashion model in future generations. René continues to assist Jacob and co-teaches the four-week, young people's climate course Z-A.
René Itah
Z-A and Jacob Olmedo Studio Intern
Lydia is an Environmental Studies major with a double minor in Marketing and Fashion Studies at Fordham University. She is currently interning with Giada Lubomirski to create Italy's first ocean awareness week in August 2019. She is also a leader of the sustainable fashion working practicum in Fordham's Social Innovation Collaboratory and is working as lead Speaker Guide for bFt Summit participants. Lydia's interests range from sustainable fashion to waste management systems, with a focus on NYC composting. Her hope for the world is to create and utilize more efficient systems in order to combat our changing climate.
Lydia Hallet
bFt Summit Intern
Lauren is a senior at Tulane studying environmental biology.
Lauren Clement
Gal Yakobovitch Studio Intern
Randy is interested in the intersection between data, statistics, research, and social change. Coming from a background of research and analysis for a handful of campaigns in Connecticut, he applies the methodology behind statistical analysis to his work at bFt by helping conduct research on behalf of the team and assisting in the many projects bFt tackles. Randy has volunteered at The Institute of Politics and has interned on various Connecticut Political Campaigns, including the campaigns of Rep Anne Hughes and Senator Will Haskell. He is a third-year at The University of Chicago studying Statistics and Political Science.
Randy Ramirez
Data and Statistics Intern
Vân Anh (they/them) is a Việt-American digital artist and garment maker. Their work explores avenues for identity construction and world building with the use of traditional garment production techniques and 3D CAD tools. By constructing new realities and avatars to inhabit them, Vân Anh hopes to complicate notions of otherness and belonging (especially in regards to the queer, Việt identity). They recently graduated from Parsons the New School for Design and are currently based in New York City.
Vân Anh Lê
Community Studio Designer
Jacob Olmedo (b. Sheboygan, Wisconsin, lives and works in New York, NY) holds a BFA in Fashion Design from the School of Fashion at Parsons. He is a designer and artist who focuses on sustainability and the future of fashion through textiles and garments. He was awarded the Designer of the Year, Future Textiles Award in 2017 from Parson School of Fashion, the Role Models Competition from the Healthy Materials Lab, and was a finalist for the International Dorothy Waxman Talking Textile Award for his work integrating fashion and plant life. Jacob practices in-depth research, experimental material development, user testing, and garment construction, all as a part of his continuing design work And The World Will Be As One. And The World Will Be As One showcases an array of important relationships we as humans have with our clothing and our natural world.
Jacob Olmedo
Hydroponic textiles
Zinnia Upson was born in Connecticut and is now a studio art major at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Her medium is found-object assemblage, and she focuses on GMO's, biodiversity, and Colony Collapse Disorder.
Zinnia Upson
Jacob Olmedo Studio Intern
Nina is a sophomore at RISD studying textiles.
Nina Rosenblum
Jacob Olmedo Studio Intern
Ellie Sohmer is a junior at Fordham University, Bronx, New York, studying New Media & Digital Design. After growing up in the small town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, she chose to go to school in a place with opportunities she had never been exposed to before. Ellie became a part of Fordham’s Social Innovation Collaboratory at the beginning of her sophomore year, which was what brought her directly to Olivia Greenspan, co-founder of TILL, and the mission that came with it. While Ellie was listening to Olivia speak about TILL at a roundtable meeting at the Collaboratory, she realized this was exactly what she was looking for out of her college experience. Since then, Ellie has been researching and identifying compatible designers and companies, social media influencers, and micro-influencers to not only invite to the Summit, but to share the mission of TILL that caught her own interest months ago.
Ellie Sohmer
bFt Summit Intern
Huashung Hu is a women’s wear designer. Hu graduated from Parsons School of Design with a degree in fashion designer in 2018. At the age of eight she left her home in China, and moved to Busan, South Korea; after living in Korea for nine years she moved to New York City to pursue her study in fashion. Growing up as an international student with a diverse background, Hu aims to create organic yet urban silhouettes that are both delicately feminine and youthful, with in depth cultural elements for her customers. Her designs alludes a mix of eastern and western aesthetic, which reflects her upbringing. During her years of study at Parsons and her previous internship experience, Hu has became increasingly aware of the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry. For her thesis collection, she created a capsule collection using all natural fabrics and a series plant-based natural dyes to create a series of diverse color and patterns for her fabric development.
As the assistant designer of TILL: bioFASHIONtech LAB’s community studio, she continued her exploration of sustainable fashion. Hu was able to work with individual clients to create up-cycled designs, and through her engagement with the Stamford public she was able to enlighten them to diverse methods of sustainable making. Through her experience at TILL, Huashuang will continue her exploration of sustainable design and making throughout her personal designs and career in the future.
Huashuang Hu
Community Studio Designer
Randy is interested in new forms of ownership and wealth-building that strengthen economic democracy and de-commodify land and labor at the community level. As an intern with Transform Finance, he researches innovative and non-extractive finance models that community organizers put to use to build local self-reliance. Randy is a senior at Fordham University studying finance and journalism, and he is editor-in-chief of Fordham's social innovation student publication, The Innovator.
Randy Mueller
Financial Analyst & Business Development
Ingrid is a current senior at Wooster School, Danbury, Connecticut. She is a young writer and artist who focuses on raising awareness about social change and cultural identities. She is a Community Studio intern at TILL and will be working alongside ecological fashion designers Yimin Deng and Vân Anh to create garments that are both personal and sustainable. She will be attending Smith College in the fall.
Ingrid Li
Community Studio Intern
Eliana Martini is a rising senior at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California. Growing up in Laguna Beach, Eliana loves to spend time at the beach and is happiest when she is new the ocean. Her favorite subjects are english and history, and while she feels her strong suit is the humanities she has a fascination with science. Eliana is most excited about what she learn about the future of the fashion industry and its intersections with art and science during her shadowing experience in TILL: bioFASHIONtech LAB and at TILL’s inaugural bioFASHIONtech Summit.
Eliana Martini
bFt Summit Intern
Born in Manhattan, N.Y., to a family of artists, introduced to sewing at 4 and in love with design and engineering ever since, accumulated skills in a broad array of aspects of design and creation, from metallurgy and furniture craft to abstract 3D modeling and animation. Mainly driven by a Carl Sagan-inspired, undying adoration for many of the sciences, it was that continuously burning fire of curiosity and drive to learn which lead me to the LAB, where I decellularized various natural foodstuffs in experimentation and in production, as well as help create a waterproof rubberized coating out of food-grade ingredients and pattern-make and sew.
Karl-Alexander Papp
Gal Yakobovitch Studio Intern