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NO. 478 | A JWC MEDIA PUBLICATION
WOMEN SUPPORTING WOMEN THROUGH ROWAN COLLECTIVE, WILMETTE’S LIZ PRIOR IMPACTS THE LIVES OF WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD. BY ALLISON DUNCAN THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND
Wilmette's Liz Prior spent 25 years in advertising, co-founding a digital agency in 2006. As she approached the 15th anniversary of launching her own business, Prior began thinking about another venture that would allow her to use her years of experience in a more meaningful way. “Work has always been such a big part of my identity,” she says. “My kids were getting older and I was going through a divorce, so it felt like the right time to invest my time in something new and purposeful.” A seed of an idea eventually grew into what is now Rowan Collective, a lifestyle brand with a mission aimed at increasing women’s income in developing economies around the globe by leveraging both their diverse artisanal skills and the raw materials of their regions. The goal? To improve their lives as well as the lives of their children and communities. Influences came together to inspire Prior in launching Rowan Collective: international travel and charity. From 2015 through 2018, Prior had taken a variety of trips abroad with her children, including two service trips to Central America.
“We visited orphanages in Guatemala and Nicaragua, then traveled to Tanzania and Ecuador, and I was struck by the amount of handmade goods being produced primarily by female groups in all of those places,” says Prior. At the same time, Prior become involved with Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit organization founded by Christy Turlington Burns dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother, everywhere. One of the tenets that stuck with Prior is the idea that when you can get income into the hands of women in developing economies, they typically reinvest 90 percent of that money back into their families and communities for needs like healthcare, clean water, solar power, and education. Those experiences combined to shape the concept of Rowan. Prior spent the first 10 months of 2018 in planning mode, making contacts with local artisans and vendors, traveling to meet potential partners, and finalizing an initial assortment mix. “I landed on Kenya as a country to launch with, as I have a close friend who was born and raised there and knew she could help me navigate some of the logistics,” says Prior. “I Continued on PG 10
Liz Prior, founder of Rowan Collective. PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIA PONCE
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