On October 15, 10 students from the School of Graduate Studies’ Global Fashion Management MPS and Fashion Design MFA programs received Bob Fisch Graduate Scholarships of $5,500 each. Additionally, all the students in both programs received Graduate Scholarship Thesis Project Completion Grants of $1,000 from Fisch. Fisch, founder and former chairman and CEO of rue21, author of Fisch Tales: The Making of a Millennial Baby Boomer and Get a Life (an Amazon bestseller), and member of the FIT Foundation board of directors, is a longtime supporter of the college.
The $5.5K Scholarship recipients were Global Fashion Management students Juliana Villegas Currea, Kathryn Duque, Gangothri Komareswaripeta, Jessica Schneider, and Jiayi Zhang, and Fashion Design MFA students Matilda Tongying Liang, Beckham Peng Han Lin, Lawson Park, Amrutha Ramkumar, and Kiki Wanjing Zuo.
Prior to the awards presentations, Fisch led a discussion with his Millennial Advisory Board Panel, comprising Stephanie Fisch, marketing/content creator and cosmetic and fragrance consultant; Bruce Apar, publisher, actor, content creator, and ghostwriter; Julie Fanning, general manager, Equinox; Jeffrey Littman, energy market strategy manager, AES; Desiree Nunes, executive/associate, KKR Global Investment Company; and Tina Rossi, private wealth associate, Merrill Lynch. The panel members introduced themselves by describing their career paths and giving career advice.
Here are some great words of advice from the discussion:
Bob Fisch: “I really embrace changing it up and I embrace reinventions. You never should lose your thought pattern of being curious. You never should lose your thought pattern of being passionate. You always should be working on developing confidence.”
Julie Fanning: “Sometimes you think you know exactly what you want, but as long as you’re open to change and willing to accept it, you never know what can come from it.”
Bruce Apar: “It’s never too late to change careers or do something in addition to what you’re doing. I think it’s a good lesson.”
Jeffrey Littman: “As important as a good idea is the presentation of that idea; it’s important to ask for feedback on how to stay focused and how to present the idea. A lot of younger people in my industry have as good ideas as more senior people but just don’t deliver them as well, but they easily could deliver them as well if they just asked for feedback.”
