Episode 64: Vanessa Barboni Hallik
Join Lori and her guest, Vanessa Barboni Hallik, as they discuss how entrepreneurs can incorporate philanthropy with sustainability in their businesses. Vanessa is the founder and CEO of Another Tomorrow, a B Corp Certified end-to-end sustainable design company. She talks about how her quest for her life's purpose led her to the world of fashion, where she uses sustainable and holistic practices as the foundation of her business. Stay tuned!
Here are the things to expect in this episode:
How Vanessa found her way into the fashion industry
Another Tomorrow's sustainable and holistic approach to fashion
Different ways of informing consumers about your philanthropic causes
And much more!
Another Another Tomorrow:
I started Another Tomorrow in January 2018, while on a sabbatical from my former career in emerging markets finance.
The original purpose of this break was to take a pause and reorient my career toward sustainable finance. However, as I began to dig deeper into the root problems of many of our global challenges, I was surprised and devastated by what I found in the apparel industry and its enormous impact on people, the environment, and animals.
Clear information was difficult to come by, and the more I educated myself, finding clothing I felt good about became even harder. Realizing I couldn’t just ‘unknow’ what I now knew, I felt a responsibility and a purpose I couldn’t ignore.
My mission is to create a truly sustainable and compassionate company with a three-pronged approach of providing a foundational wardrobe of ethically and responsibly made clothing, education, and a platform for activism to amplify our collective voices.
Another Tomorrow is the result of an incredible collaborative effort across our team and suppliers around the world. I’m so grateful for each of them and look forward to introducing you to everyone who has helped bring this vision to life.
Connect with Vanessa!
Another Tomorrow: https://anothertomorrow.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessabarbonihallik/
Another Tomorrow’s Partner Organizations
Tasmanian Land Conservancy: https://tasland.org.au/
Care International’s Made by Women program: https://www.care.org/our-work/education-and-work/dignified-work/made-by-women/
Compassion in World Farming: https://www.ciwf.com/
Custom Collaborative: https://www.customcollaborative.org/
Vanessa’s Personal Philanthropy
Trust for Public Land: https://www.tpl.org/
Accountability Counsel: https://www.accountabilitycounsel.org/
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard: https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/
Connect with Lori Kranczer!
Website: https://www.linkphilanthropic.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorikranczer/
Episode Transcript
You're listening to the positive impact philanthropy podcast where we share the journeys of everyday philanthropists as they incorporate philanthropy into their lives. Philanthropy is a personal journey and through the stories we will share here. We hope that it sparks something in you, and how you can make your own philanthropic impact in the world. I'm your host, Lori Kranczer attorney, philanthropic advisor and legacy giving strategist. Together we're gonna explore what it looks like to be an everyday philanthropist and make a positive impact in the world. Before we get started, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode posted on Wednesdays. Today I’m really excited because honestly I have a long list of guests that come onto the show and I've been incredibly excited for our guest today. Her name is Vanessa Barboni Hallik, founder and CEO of Another Tomorrow. And I'm gonna let her talk about her background because it's incredibly interesting. So Vanessa, welcome.
Thank you. It's such an honor to be here. I'm really excited about our conversation. Me too, obviously. So why don't you share a little bit about you and what you do?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll start with what Another Tomorrow is and then I'll dial way back because I think that one of the fascinating things about all founders is they kind of bring the sum total variance to their work. So another tomorrow is an end and sustainable apparel company with a platform for education, action and a real commitment to a technology enabled circular economy. And you can kind of think about us as taking farm to table in the form of a closet, and we do so for women's wear. But how this all came about is a very long story that started, I suppose in Grinnell, Iowa, which is where I was born. And I grew up in a really kind of like hippie academic, techy family. And I certainly could not have described it this way as a kid but I think I really grew up having this sort of an eight sense of problem solving at the intersection of disciplines and just kind of a great curiosity about the world, which I think also comes about from growing up in a landlocked plays are kind of always looking outward. So that was you know, that was sort of my upbringing, lived in a series of small college towns in the Midwest and then Rust Belt and ultimately made my way to Berkeley. At one point, I thought I was going to be an architect that seemed like the best possible way to do this on paper, quickly disabuse myself of that notion and found myself very much by accident actually, in the world of traditional finance. So I spent many years at Morgan Stanley focused on emerging markets and ultimately rebuilding a lot of the businesses that needed rebuilding after the financial crisis. But one of the things that I was constantly in search of was how to bring my energy into alignment with my sense of purpose and where I felt like I uniquely could have a positive impact on the world and, gosh, I tried so many things. I mean, I actually left my job three different times. The first time I thought I was going to be an immigration attorney and a second time I went to do a degree in environmental, energy and environmental policy. And, you know, finally in 2017, I ended up taking a sabbatical. And I thought I was actually gonna stay in finance and just at that stage, you know, given my long career could have moved my way. into sustainable finance. And the sabbatical was just it was such an opportunity, I think, with a little bit of a safety net to just take a more curious stance on the world, and I really tried to just dig in and understand how are these major industries really throwing off these significant negative externalities and you know, having followed this space for a long time, a lot of what I found, wasn't that surprising. But when I got to fashion, I was floored. I was really shocked by the magnitude of the impact by the complexity of the impact by the low level of awareness, really people in industry as well as consumers, which is such an important precursor to action. And I felt really, really compelled for the first time to be a part of that solution. And at the same time, it was also getting even more deeply involved in some of my own personal philanthropic work, which I'm sure we can dig in to, to the to extend that’s interesting, but it's just to say that I decided to ultimately, you know, take this multidisciplinary problem solving approach to an industry that badly badly needs it.
So this is I'm seeing so many interesting things in here and obviously, I love fact also you started that you are interested in being an architect because I can see you being a builder. So your career, you you're creating a lot of different things and not seeing through your whole professional career here. So because not everyone would go from finance or architecture to finance and then go into fashion. And so because do you have a background in anything with retail or fashion
Zero and I knew I knew one person in the entire industry when I decided to make this leap. So you know, they say their founders need to be a little bit naive and a lot optimistic. And I think, certainly both.
Well and they're separate things. It's really what you you're you built a business. You know, fashion is the content. And so this is really interesting. And I know also you're very philanthropic and just with also your sustainability. So I'd love you to address how you have worked that into your business model. Awesome.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think that a lot of times when you see challenger brands, Challenger companies come about, they try and take, you know, one specific slice of the problem and solve for that. And it was interesting that in looking at fashion, we really didn't feel like we could do it that way. We really looked at it and look at this system holistically and said we need to really drive systems change in terms of how we do things and in terms of the normative changes where we think we can actually have the biggest impact and so is it okay, you know, what is a science based approach to a holistic and a value set look like and in the case of fashion, we chose to focus on a number of different areas. One is looking at animal environmental and human welfare holistically. So really from the raw material stage, and we so often forget that fashion is by and large an agricultural product, but really looking at that from the fiber level all the way through every single processing. You know, I could spend an hour with you talking about how we actually do that practically. But just to say that we have a really tight matrix of decision making that focuses on all three of those. We've also focus deeply on making sure that the lifecycle of the product is as long as it possibly can be, and that we're facilitating that circular economy and resale strategy. So every product we've ever made is born digital, so every single one has its own unique digital identity, which allows us to offer a completely authenticated resale, and in a category where over half of clothing items end up in a landfill within the first year, which is pretty staggering. One of the most important things that you can do is extend you know the lifecycle of the product. And then really more broadly, when we think about, you know, normative change we really focus on again clothing as an asset, you know, swinging the pendulum back from disposability, and fast fashion to clothing as an investment, again, to normative change around transparency. So every single item that we make has complete consumer facing transparency, you can scan the QR code, and you can see its entire journey, and why we made the decisions that we made to get to that end product which in a very opaque industry is really important. We published all of our data on open apparel registry, which again is like kind of unheard of in the industry, and we really believe in accountability. So we were a B Corp from the get go. We were certified within six months of our launch. We're certified climate neutral. So really kind of taking this holistic approach toward sourcing circularity, transparency and accountability. And then of course, on the philanthropic side, we have 1% for the planet membership and we have four incredible organizations that we partner with in a really strategic way.
And how did you choose those organizations that you're supporting?
Yeah, so they really mapped back to those first three value pillars that I referenced animal environmental and human welfare so on the environmental side, we work with the Tasmanian Land Conservancy, which is an incredible organization in Tasmania, Australia. It happens to be where a couple of our major wool farms are, and we've come to find that biodiversity is so incredibly critical. And so we work closely with Tasmanian Land Conservancy we actually have our own separate trust within that organization and they do incredible work to restore biodiversity within Tasmania. We work with CARE International and the human welfare piece. They have an incredible made by women program that really supports garment workers, predominantly in Southeast Asia and in Africa. We actually don't produce in either of those regions, but because fewer than 10% of garment workers are thought to earn a living wage. We felt like partnering those jurisdictions is gonna be really important. On the animal welfare side, which gets way too little attention. In this industry. We partner with compassionate world farming, which is really working to end factory farming. And they've done some great work with us and raising awareness on some key issues within our industry with our community. And then finally, and this was actually an addition that we made after our B Corp. Initial View Corp journeys we've worked with a great organization here in New York City called Custom Collaborative and really the B Corp process shown such a light on the fact that we've focused so much on our global supply chains and we felt like we could make an even bigger impact than we had been at home. And so Custom Collaborative was here in New York City. Really working to train and provide dignified work for you know, low income women here in New York City. Okay,
so this is I mean, this is I'm like speechless. All such amazing work that you've done. And so many questions are going through my mind but one of the things I want to just ask you about like how do you show up to your constituents or your customers? About your, your philanthropic side, your sustainability, which is basically baked into everything that you're doing? So I'm curious because a lot of our listeners have their own businesses or female founders, they're looking to, you know, how do they encourage their or they're already incorporating philanthropy or they're interested in incorporating philanthropy. How does that show up to their customers?
Oh, that's such a great question. Because it's tricky, you know, and as you just heard, you know, we're doing a lot of things and sometimes that's a lot. And so we find that we really, we think about connecting at different levels based on people's curiosity about a particular subject. You know, I think that everyone connects with different aspects of what we do in a different way. And we really believe in meeting people where they are their level of curiosity. So you know, if you don't want to buy anything from us, but you just want to learn about sustainability. We have a really robust section on sustainability on the website, and you can just get kind of get lost in that and hopefully that helps to inform your decisions, whether you're an individual or brand. When it comes to communicating what we do at the product level, there's a lot of basic information on the website and then there's you know, incredible connected products piece, where you get to actually activate the product and see that yourself and we love to see how many people actually do that. It's a really, really high percentage which is quite surprising, you know, even to us, which is really really exciting. And then, you know, we do a lot of work in the media. You know, I end up speaking a lot because a lot of these things are you know, as we're talking about things you kind of have to unpack, so I love podcasts because it is a real opportunity to dig in and kind of peel back layers of the onion. And then we do a bunch on social media, but we do find that, you know, everyone resonates with something differently. But one of the things that's been most satisfying to me is that so many of our customers have learned through their engagement with us as a brand and that was actually one of the major reasons why I started a brand was that that consumer relationship through brand is so incredibly powerful. And that's been a real pleasure and we really try and listen, you know, we want to know what people are curious about, concerned about whether they have questions. Our VP of sustainability actually host open office hours every two weeks. It's like an ask me anything format, so feel free to schedule with Tara. But yeah, it's a dialogue.
Yeah and I love that. I think these are really good lessons and tips for people that want to integrate it more inside their business. So can we get a little more personal here. I really want the business model is incredible but I also want to ask about you and I know that you mentioned there's some philanthropic initiatives that you're supporting and I also want to go back to when you were first inspired to be philanthropic to give back and whatever way that you do.
You know, I think it was one of those things that was just kind of in the water growing up. And I think it was kind of a value system that my parents sort of imparted in terms of a sense of responsibility as a person and I think that you know, certainly as I've gotten older I have such a sense of gratitude for being in the position that I'm in where I have the option of of being more philanthropic and so it's just I think it's a it's an intuitive place for me to be but I think it's also you know, I think it's a way that we all find it to give sort of our unique talents to the world as well. You know, when I was in finance I was you know philanthropy had a different relationship with it. In some respects, it was a way for me to put energy in different places that I couldn't do during my day job. So it's a you know, I think it's very personal for everyone, but it definitely comes from a sense of responsibility.
That’s great and so which issue areas are you personally drawn to? Either you personally for yourself, your family, your community?
Yeah. So you know, I've tried to take a relatively strategic approach to the way that I focus on philanthropy to really have those organizations that I'm more deeply involved with and sometimes that holds and sometimes I you know, get a little more scattered from time to time as things cool things progressed, but my current commitments are one Trust for Public Lands. And so the reason I connected with Trust for Public Land was that I was really inspired by their history of conservation work. But what actually really nailed it for me was they do these incredible climate resilient community centric playground work and if you haven't seen it in New York City, you have to see like the before and after is insane, but it's at its core, it has this incredible participatory design process. So it is driven actually by the students. And when I went to I think where was it I have to remember the name of the school in Queens. It was incredible. But that was what did it for me is to really see this collaborative design process that was creating meaningful seed of community that was also climate resilient, and kind of was a gift that kept on giving. So that's Trust for Public Land. It's really land for people's kind of their mission. So I wasn't thinking about the people part when I first got curious and they totally just I got super involved on the advisory board here in New York. I'm also involved with the accountability Council out in San Francisco. They do community space work globally to ensure that communities that are impacted largely by multinational development projects, have access to representation and remediation. And so I think that's been really really incredible work. I still encourage everyone to learn more about what they're doing. I'm on the board there. And then the most actually, I guess, that was neck and neck with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, or I'm also on the board and again, you know, really focused on, you know, the policy end of things and human rights and the things that encompasses so many different things. And I think my work and supply chain has really informed the critical nature of that. But it's interesting that I would have told you years ago that I felt like a combination of equity and really conservation issues. In particular conservation issues was what was driving me. And what's been really interesting as I've gotten involved is you can kind of see this through line of community and people and agency and so that's really come to represent a significant component of like the lens through which I think about philanthropy and impact. Well, it's a very common thing. Many people when I'm working with them think that the one issue area or several issue areas that they're interested in the beginning, when they’re being strategic about their philanthropic planning, is that that's not necessarily going to be holding for the remainder of their life they will change. And as, as their circumstances change with their business, their community where they're living when they see impact. So it is fluid. And I think that you gave a very wonderful example of your experience and so other people can learn from that you can change with the issue areas that you're supporting doesn't have to stay the same forever. So that's wonderful. So we're getting to the close and this has been really informative. I love the blend of sustainability and philanthropy. A lot of people mistakenly think they're the same. They're different. So I love your example and everyone should check out Vanessa's website to see all the incredible information she has on about sustainability and to learn about it. But I'd love to know from you what you consider your legacy today?
You know, I started to put more thought into this when I knew this question was coming and I would say that one of the things that I really come to recognize is that the awareness is the precursor to all action. And without that, you know, really nothing changes. And so I think about my legacy is really building awareness and providing access to tools and it kind of goes back to that cover of the whole earth catalog. It says like access to tools, which I think was one of the things that so first start things for me. And so really, in everything that I do is how can we raise the level of awareness, and how can we make it easy for people to act? And those are the two things that I really try and bring to the table. That's great and that your impact will be felt for generations potentially, maybe you won't even know what your impact will be as your legacy which is a true legacy. So thank you for that.
So you mentioned so many different resources, organizations and we want to list them all so you don't have to repeat the organization's now we're going to pull all that information and put it in the show notes but where can people find out more about you and Another Tomorrow or any other organization you want to mention?
Incredible so yes, the sustainability website rather the sustainability component of our website, which is anothertomorrow.co has a tremendous amount of information including our philanthropic partners, and a lot in terms of our own policies and decision making processes within fashion, which hopefully are quite informative. We also do a tremendous amount of work on advocacy, focusing on policy issues and legislative change in areas that we think are crucially important in the industry. You can find a series of petitions on the magazine component of our website. So again, anothertomorrow.co under the magazine section, and then you're most welcome to find me on LinkedIn. I'm fairly responsive, better on LinkedIn than email I find but
we'd love to hear from you. And I'm just going to throw in my two cents that besides all the incredible work that the business is doing, you have wonderful products so you certainly everyone should check out the products. It's beautiful fashion, you're gonna go down the rabbit hole like I did, I'm sure of Another Tomorrow. So yes, please check out the products that and the fashion that they are putting out. It's incredible. So with that, I want to thank you Vanessa, for joining us. This has been an incredible interview and really informative for so many of our audience members that are looking to ways to incorporate philanthropy, with sustainability in their businesses, and I think you gave some incredible examples. So thank you for that.
It's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And for everyone else.
We will see you next time. Take care.
Thank you for joining us. I hope we provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. You can tune in every week on Wednesdays when new episodes are dropped. We'd love to hear your feedback. So leave a comment and a rating about what you liked and what you'd like to hear more about. And if you liked the episode today, make sure to share it to raise awareness about the story to inspire other women to take action. I'm Lori Kranczer and until next time, you can make a positive impact through philanthropy every day. Thanks for listening.