Reese Fernandez-Ruiz (born 1985) is a Filipino

social entrepreneur Social entrepreneurship is an approach by individuals, groups, Startup company, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to ...

and President and Founding Partner of Rags2Riches, a sustainable fashion enterprise established in 2007. The company aims to empower Philippine-based

artisans An artisan (from , ) is a skilled worker, skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by handicraft, hand. These objects may be wikt:functional, functional or strictly beauty, decorative, for example furnit ...

, fashion and home products that follow

environmental ethics In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resourc ...

principles, and alleviate poverty in

Payatas Payatas is an administrative division in eastern Metro Manila, the Philippines. It is an urban barangay located in the 2nd district of Quezon City adjacent to the barangays of Commonwealth, Batasan Hills and Bagong Silangan. Etymology The ...

Quezon City Quezon City (, ; ), also known as the City of Quezon and Q.C. (read and pronounced in Filipino language, Filipino as Kyusi), is the richest and List of cities in the Philippines, most populous city in the Philippines. According to the 2020 c ...

and other communities around Metro Manila.

Biography

She was born Therese Clarence Arellano Chua Fernandez-Ruiz in the Philippines in 1985. She was raised by her mother, a missionary. Her mother’s work exposed Fernandez-Ruiz to the poverty in the Philippines.

Education

Fernandez-Ruiz attended Ateneo de Manila University where she studied management. She attended certificate courses for Sustainable Fashion in Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London and Art & Science of Systems Change in Harvard Kennedy School.

Career

Through her college organization, Fernandez-Ruiz volunteered to teach math, science, and reading skills in

, a community in

Quezon City, Philippines Quezon City (, ; ), also known as the City of Quezon and Q.C. (read and pronounced in Filipino language, Filipino as Kyusi), is the richest and List of cities in the Philippines, most populous city in the Philippines. According to the 2020 c ...

and home to one of the largest dump sites in the country. After graduation, she co-founded Rags2Riches together with a group of young professionals while working as the Program Assistant for the Youth Leadership & Social Entrepreneurship Program of the Ateneo School of Government.

Rags2Riches (R2R)

Fernandez-Ruiz co-founded Rags2Riches after seeing rug-weavers (mostly women) in Payatas receive little profit for rugs they crafted from cloth and scrap foraged from the Quezon City dump site, due to middlemen controlling their supplies and sales. Fernandez-Ruiz, together with the founders of R2R, sought the help of fashion designer Rajo Laurel and other designers to co-design products together with the artisans. Rags2Riches created links with factories and warehouses to provide the artisans with fabric scrap materials and opportunity to sell their products directly to customers. The company also provides artisans with education in

personal finance Personal finance is the financial management that an individual or a family unit performs to budget, save, and spend monetary resources in a controlled manner, taking into account various financial risks and future life events. When planni ...

, nutrition, and health insurance. Rags2Riches has recycled over 800 tons of scrap material and has a production facility implementing

zero waste Zero waste, or ''waste minimization'', is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages redesigning resource life cycles so that all products are repurposed (i.e. "up-cycled") and/or reused. The goal of the movement is to avoid ...

practices.

Awards

In 2015, she was on

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

''30 Social Entrepreneurs Under 30'', and she was named a Young Laureate for the Rolex Awards for Enterprise in 2010.

External links

Rags2Riches, Inc
*

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez-Ruiz, Reese 1985 births Living people Ateneo de Manila University alumni Filipino company founders Social entrepreneurs