A mentor at Araliya Fashions, Sudhanshu Singhal till April 2022 headed the Africa operations at the Ethiopia based Kanoria Africa Textiles PLC. Araliya Fashions aspires to create a world class sourcing organisation, enabling global buyers to develop a robust, responsive and agile supply chain.
It is creating strategic associations and forging partnerships with manufacturing set-ups across product categories and working closely with them on product development, benchmarking processes and overall effectiveness.
Araliya seeks to leverage its team's extensive experience and exposure to product development and handling sourcing and supply chain for large retail brands and manufacturing experience of handling world class profitable operations across multiple geographies and sourcing locations.
Tetyana Solovey is a PhD sociology student at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on upcycling of worn clothes. It is shaped by her academic interests in the sociology of the body, consumption, material culture, and affect theory, as well as extensive experience in the fashion industry as a journalist, editor, and curator.
With over 15 years of experience in leading media, she spent seven years as Fashion Features Editor at Vogue Ukraine and two years as Editor-in-Chief of the online media platform Buro. As an editor, she focused on the cultural and political aspects of fashion and sustainability advocacy. During this time, she successfully developed and led editorial projects aimed at promoting the integration of the UN Sustainable Development Goals across print and digital platforms in the fashion and luxury sectors.
She is also a 2022 Chevening Scholar and graduated with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a Master’s in Media and Cultural Studies.
Dr Amanda Spry is a Senior Lecturer of Marketing at RMIT University, Australia. She received her PhD and postdoctoral fellowship training from the University of Melbourne and previously worked at Cardiff Business School, UK.
Amanda writes on the critical role that brands play for consumers, companies, markets and society. She is particularly interested in the capacity and versatility of brands to drive a company's bottom line, to engage in sociopolitical activism and to contribute to societal transformation.
Before completing her PhD, Amanda worked as a research consultant at Colmar Brunton (now Kantar). She regularly contributes to Australian and international media outlets as a branding expert.
Thomoas Stanton is an AXA Research Fund Fellow in Loughborough University's Division of Geography and Environment. His research expertise is in the field of freshwater pollution, with a particular focus on plastic, microplastic, and natural textile fibre pollution. Stanton has postdoctoral experience in stakeholder engagement and environmental policy, through which he has developed a particular interest in the relationships between different stakeholders and the environment.
Dr Charles W Stewart’s long career in textiles was filled with manufacturing, academia, and technical development, sales, and service. His many experiences came from a diverse range of international suppliers of textile dyes, chemical auxiliaries, fibres, and industrial enzymes to establishing and operating Tumbling Colors, a global resource for custom colour and finish development.
Having recently retired, Stewart continues to expand and share his vast knowledge regarding colour, colourants, and colourisations.
Tara Stringer is a PhD candidate (Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice & Faculty of Business and Law) and sessional academic with a background in marketing, consumer behaviour and fashion. Her research focuses on ethical consumption and sustainability along the fashion supply chain and the impact of fast fashion on consumer behaviour. With a focus on consumer perception towards modern slavery, her current research aims to understand barriers to pro-social consumer behaviour.
Valérie Swaen has a PhD in Economics and Management Sciences from UCLouvain and is a Full Professor of marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain School of Management, Belgium) and at IESEG School of Management (France).
From September 2019 to August 2024, she was the president of the Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations (LouRIM, UCLouvain). She is also leading the Louvain CSR network that gathers and supports researchers and practitioners who seek to put responsible leadership and sustainable production and consumption at the heart of their research and strategy. She held different corporate chairs in CSR (with companies such as Solvay, Spadel, SNCB).
Prof Swaen studies corporate social responsibility from different fields of management, even if her main research interest concerns stakeholders’ reactions to CSR communication. She has published academic papers in international journals such as Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, and Marketing Letters, among others.
Mariko Takedomi Karlsson is an interdisciplinary scholar in Human Ecology currently employed as Postdoctoral research fellow in Environmental and Energy System Studies at the Department of Technology and Society at Lund University, Faculty of Engineering. Her interests include feminist theory, political ecology, sustainability, environmental justice, labour rights and political economy.
Samantha Taylor is a 3rd generation garment producer with 20 years industry experience. Having worked across fast fashion, high end and sportswear, in all parts of the value chain, she established The Good Factory in 2020 to provide complete supply chain transparency and bring sustainable products to a wider audience by working directly with brands.
The Good Factory provides strategy and product services including ESG, sourcing and materials, and end of life strategy, product creation through product development, garment technology and production services.