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Pamela Bell

Founder, Prinkshop
Pamela Bell

Pamela Bell founded prinkshop to prove a model she calls “creative capitalism.”

Her social enterprise prinkshop creates advocacy graphics for our most pressing social issues and then puts them onto products that allow customers to wear what they care about. The company aims to create jobs while it spreads awareness and a passion for change. In the creative capitalism model a business can be at once profitable and socially beneficial.

An entrepreneur from the start of her career, Pamela was a founding partner of the global, iconic brand Kate Spade.

Together with Elyce Arons, Kate, Jack Spade and Pamela started the business with sweat equity, many hours and a small amount of seed money in 1993.

As with any grass roots start up her role there was varied starting with product development and production, and going onto include retail store development, e-commerce launch, merchandising, multiple product global licensing director, retail design & roll-out.

Kate Spade was known in the industry as the company whose growth was least leveraged: Kate Spade did not run on credit and did not borrow to grow. The partners financed the business for 15 years on savings and earnings alone before selling to Neiman Marcus in 2006.

Pamela co-founded the Bowery Arts Project. The Project’s volunteers teach art classes to homeless addicts at the non-medical detox unit at Project Renewal’s East 3rd street location. The project runs regularly two mornings a week.

Pamela also sits on the Board of The American Theatre Wing, who produce the Tony Awards. She is also a new member of the 3Generations board, a non-profit dedicated to helping survivors tell their stories to the world using film.

She is also a Disruptor Fellow at The Disruptor Awards, a member of the Council of Fashion Designers America (CFDA), served a 5 year term as a board member of Parsons and is a newly appointed Lang Center Innovation Fellow at The Columbia University School of Business.

With passion, as a survivor of suicide loss, a sister to two siblings who live with Bi-Polar disorder and a champion for marginalised populations, Pamela has joined Kenneth Cole’s initiative at The Mental Health Coalition as a founding Board Member and creative partner in the new movement to de-stigmatise Mental Health conditions.

You can read Pamela’s advice on starting and growing a business here.

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Pamela Bell
Pamela has mentored

NABU

NABU is disrupting poverty by leveraging technology to promote literacy, publishing children’s books for free on digital platforms in mother tongue languages.

  • NABU

Pamela was awesome and had great insight for me around marketing and growing awareness of my organisation. The biggest takeaway for me was encouragement and to dream bigger and bolder!

Tanyella Evans, Co-Founder, NABU

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