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Curatorial director Matilda McQuaid from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, led designers, marketers, and futuristic fashion powerhouses through a discussion about traditional and modern clothing materials and practices that are reshaping what we wear to be in harmony with the planet. Watch here!

About the Participants

Matilda McQuaid is acting director of curatorial and previously head of textiles at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She oversees curatorial and exhibition programming. As a curator she has organized nationally and internationally acclaimed architecture and design exhibitions with accompanying publications. Formerly at the Museum of Modern Art for fifteen years where she curated over thirty exhibitions, McQuaid is also an accomplished author and editor on art, architecture, and design, with many books, exhibition catalogues and articles to her credit.

Joelle Firzli is a multicultural and multilingual independent researcher and entrepreneur with an interest in global visual culture and cultural sustainability. Firzli is the co-founder of Tribute Collective, a responsible retail and multidisciplinary platform based in Washington, D.C. and the regional director for Fashion Revolution USA. Her work has been presented worldwide and featured in peer-reviewed journals, popular magazines, and book chapters and at various conferences.

Daniel Grushkin is founder and executive director of Biodesign Challenge, an international student competition and education program that partners artists, designers, scientists, and students to imagine and create the future of biotechnology. He is editor in chief of Biodesigned, a quarterly publication dedicated to art, design, and biology. And he is the founder of the Biodesign Sprint, a program that partners companies with the biodesign community to generate biodesign solutions. He is co-founder of Genspace, a nonprofit community laboratory dedicated to promoting citizen science and access to biotechnology.

Tierney Thys is a National Geographic Explorer, biologist, author, filmmaker, research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, and the co-creator of Around the World in 80 Fabrics. As a scientist, veteran storyteller, and Nat Geo Expedition expert for more than twenty years, she is committed to catalyzing biodiversity conservation through art and science. She serves on the science advisory boards for Think Beyond Plastic and Plastic Pollution Coalition and was a member of the TED Braintrust.