Fashion, employing 1 in 100 people, truly is a global industry, but in a world where the cost of everything - education, housing, even lattes, - is increasing, how is clothing becoming less expensive? This talk will introduce you to the environmental and social impacts of the fast fashion industry, and give you easy tips on how to live more sustainably. Tamara Jones is a student at Ryerson University with passions for environmental sustainability and social justice. As a Global Studies major, her background is in politics, business and history. Most recently, Tamara has been published in Ryerson University’s Undergraduate Research Journal, facilitated a seminar at University of Toronto’s International Development Conference and participated in the Youth Assembly at the United Nations to discuss the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. In the coming months, she will be hosting a class about sustainable fashion where students will have the opportunity to make their own t-shirt from organic, fair-trade linen. In her personal life, Tamara is constantly researching and implementing ideas on how to lessen her impact on the environment while creating a positive impact on the global community..

Robert J.S. "Bob" Ross is Research Professor of Sociology and the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise in Clark University. The son of a teacher and a garment worker and the grandson of garment workers, Ross has cared deeply about workers and their conditions and has been learning and teaching about these matters since 1994. He is Vice-President of the Sweatfree Purchasing consortium, an organization of nineteen cities and states which are working to remove sweatshop labor from the supply chains of their public purchasing of uniforms. The author of Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops, Ross has written extensively on the global apparel industry and labor conditions and workers’ rights in it. His writings on these and other issues have appeared in variety of professional and journalistic sources.