Entrepreneur in Residence

Shanley is a serial social entrepreneur, brand strategist, and service designer focused on the intersection between environmental progress, and equitable access to financial and physical health and benefits for under-represented audiences. Through her past work in manufacturing and design, Shanley contributed toward more ethically and environmentally positive supply chain practices in East Africa. As Entrepreneur in Residence, she will be positioned to continue and expand the reach of this work, while engaging with students and the GCNYC community with her current (and third) social venture, ABLE.

ABLE is creating a new model for worker’s associations across raw materials, built to create transparent engagement with, and insight-driven investment from brands. With a goal to create measurable, worker-led progress toward environmental goals, her work at ABLE began at GCNYC when she wrote her thesis, “Ankole Cow Horn: Identifying Effective Strategies for Optimizing the Supply Chain to Create Empowerment and Sustainable Development from Ranch to Consumer.” That work will be continued in her role at the center, where she will be collaborating with GCNYC’s students and academic resources to build the startup’s initial pilot. Based in Rwanda, this pilot will launch in late 2022 with a focus on creating worker-led leather transparency from ranch to tannery.