Entrepreneurship & Advising

Entrepreneurial Impact

Designing Businesses for Justice, Equity, and Sustainability

As an ethical entrepreneur and sustainable design pioneer, I have built, led, and exited ventures that sit at the intersection of design, equity, and sustainability– ventures that drive positive change through triple-bottom-line values—balancing people, planet, and profit —long before these principles became widely adopted—to create impactful, future-focused businesses.

DIGS: A Pioneering Venture in Sustainable Design

In early 1991, I founded Duchamp’s Irreverent Guiding Spirit, Inc. (dba DIGS) as an experiment in values-based entrepreneurship. As one of the first design companies in the U.S. to work exclusively with sustainable materials and artisan cooperatives, DIGS redefined what design businesses could look like. Selling wholesale to top doors and stores globally, whose collections won numerous awards and were often seen in style, home, and trend magazines and newspapers.

Over the next decade, the company evolved into multiple entities:

DIGS Design Agency (1995): A consultancy partnering with international development organizations like USAID, supporting S.M.E.s and community-led design initiatives around the world.
DIGS E-Commerce (2000): An early-stage digital platform created to help international impact designers working with artisans in marginalized regions enter and thrive in the U.S. market.

Each extension of DIGS championed design as a vehicle for social and environmental justice, proving that businesses could be both ethical and economically viable.

In the late 2010s, after almost 20 years of successful operations and global collaborations, I exited DIGS through a strategic sale. The decision was rooted in my desire to expand my impact through education, mentorship, and systemic change-making. The sale enabled me to transition fully into academia and impact innovation, while leaving behind a profitable, values-aligned business that has influenced how future design entrepreneurs think about sustainability.

Continuing to reimagine more equitable and sustainable business model structures, I co-founded MakeOurFuture.coop in 2022—a global consulting cooperative dedicated to helping organizations transition toward equitable and inclusive practices. This venture drew on my entrepreneurial legacy while pioneering transparent agency models and pay parity frameworks for the next generation of business.

My entrepreneurial philosophy has always been clear: Business is a tool for transformation. Through DIGS and beyond, I’ve utilized entrepreneurship to test new systems, empower underserved communities, and contribute to shaping a more just economy.