Catching up with Julie Verdugo

Each Month, Marika Shiga of the Nest team, sits down with one of our very own Co-op members to get to know the talent behind our unstoppable community of supporters. This month, Marika speaks with Julie Verdugo, newly minted Nest consultant!

The Scene: Bryant Park

The Order: Iced Coffee

Marika: Tell us about your first encounter with Nest – what was it that sparked your interest?

Julie: My first encounter with Nest was via an article I read on Maiyet in the Business of Fashion in 2013. I have always enjoyed Business of Fashion as an inside-the-industry source that shares an honest portrayal of the industry, with sensitivity to social impact. The article was a beautiful piece featuring photos of Daria Werbowy in Varanasi, and it outlined Nest as a partner in the brand’s good work.

After reading the article, I kept Nest on my radar. I was working in the fashion industry at the time and seeking projects and collections with a social impact. But the fear of bad press and margin pressure to produce unsustainably, kept those projects few and far between. I decided to leave my position to focus on combining my passions for social impact and fashion and immediately cold emailed Nest to get involved with the Professional Fellowship Program. Weeks later…I found myself in Varanasi!

Marika: Tell us about your time in Varanasi!

Julie: My fellowship experience in Varanasi was life changing. It affirmed my crazy decision to leave my comfortable job and helped me to clearly see the need that artisan businesses, who often find themselves marginalized and disconnected from their target customer, have for skilled volunteers. The work that Nest was doing with Loom to Luxury and the weavers in the surrounding village was so inspiring that I was left wanting to continue work in the space. Varanasi itself is also mesmerizing, stimulating, and beyond colorful.

Marika: And now you are leading the Professional Fellowship Program here at Nest! What is your favorite aspect of this work?

Julie: Yes! I’m extremely excited about it because there is a two sided passion here – offering artisan businesses sustainable and measurable positive impacts and implementable solutions, and being able to give passionate socially conscious  talent the opportunity for a life changing and eye opening cultural experience. The fellowship encourages both sides, the fellow and the artisan business, to question their norm and previous conceptions of business, culture, and human interaction. What’s more, we are also newly growing the program to reach employee staff through corporations as well as individuals – this allows for the program to scale to an entirely new level. The value of the experience is something that the individual can now share with his or her professional employer, yielding a ripple effect of impact.

Marika: You and your twin sister are going to be leading a silversmithing workshop at Nest’s Co-op Workshop at Parsons this July. Can you tell us more about Gemelas?

Julie: Gemela has been a passion project very near and dear to my sister and I for about 7 years now. The world ‘gemela’ (we pronounce it gem-eh-la) is a hybrid of ‘twin’ in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, representing languages of countries we’ve lived in. The project is an extension of our “twinship”, and stands for the duality of craftsmanship and technology (we use both silversmithing and 3-D print techniques in our design process); and luxury and social impact (our designs support and are inspired by artists in Rio’s Favela community of Complexo Alemao, but speaks to the luxury fashion consumer).

The brand was formed during an trying time for us. Diana and I were both working as engineers in South America, when she suddenly became very sick. We both left our jobs to for her treatment in the US and through her complete and amazing recovery we found jewelry-making as an outlet for storytelling during our downtime. A hobby turned into a business. Before we knew it, Diana was healthier than ever and our business was ready for its next steps. It grew to a level that we could not fully manage on our own so we both went to Barcelona to get MBAs to determine our next steps. Since then I have become more deeply immersed in the fashion world and Diana more into that of tech, and Gemela continues to be a passion project through which we can express ourselves.

Marika: Any recent sources of inspiration, interest, or learning for you lately? 

Julie: My latest burst of inspiration has been (and usually is) my travels, which as of recent have ranged from simple nature-filled camping trips upstate, to a trip to Europe with stops in Barcelona, London, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. The standout inspirations were the simplicity and quietness I found being completely detached from the distractions of the city after hiking hours into the forest in the Catskills. I was also blown away by the sustainable and simple approach to life that I saw in Copenhagen. As one of the world’s most sustainable cities, it’s so observe the very thoughtful way of living – not to mention insanely delicious food, impressive art scene, and Danish design….

I think travel is so important as a means to remind you that your world is not the entire world. It is an reminder that people and their cultural habitudes  are all very different and can offer experiences beyond what we are used to on a daily basis. Travel pushes us to question the way we do things and the way we think by presenting us with what we haven’t seen before.

Marika: Well said! Thank you, Julie!