Professor Mina Dia
1 Course • 1 StudentBiography
Mina Dia-Stevens is a 25 year veteran, fashion educator; a life-long creative; and a design entrepreneur.
Her professional and personal background is extensive. She holds a BFA in Fashion Design and has spent years sharing the knowledge that she has acquired as a fashion designer and entrepreneur with the next generation of young creatives.
Her ambition is always to nurture, educate, and assist in forging the path and passion of the next great design professionals.
Not only has she shared her talent with well-known design firms in the fashion industry; ranging from her beginnings as an intern at Tommy Hilfiger in New York to working and as a trend consultant in London, England; she also has years of experience as a design educator in secondary and post-secondary learning environments.
Her journey as an educator involved researching, establishing and implementing an extensive curriculum for 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th-grade creatives in the area of fashion and textile design.
In addition to nurturing student creativity; she developed a curricular component geared towards cultivating her students as young professionals; this includes reinforcing the importance of creative accountability, professional etiquette and social expectations within their class/work environments.
She was a faculty member for twelve years in the fashion department; at Moore College of Art and Design. She provided instruction to 3rd year and 2nd year design students in the area of pattern making, construction, illustration, and concept design in the categories of menswear, swimwear, womenswear and childrenswear.
Her professional experience includes various roles in the fashion industry; ranging from designing junior activewear apparel, shoe design, trend consulting abroad and currently expanding her family’s West African textile business into the brand; Royal Fulani Living.
Also as a design entrepreneur, she fully understands the delicate balance between nurturing an independent creative spirit and having a business mind.
She is also giving back through Royal Fulani Living Sew School, a YouTube series of free sewing tutorials designed specifically for student-designers with learning differences. With over 2,600 subscribers, She is proud to educate and inspire the next generation of creators.
Her personal philosophy as a creative and educator is based upon these words she vividly remembers hearing as a child:
“You’ve always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.” Glinda, The Wizard of Oz
This quote encompasses the mind, heart and spirit of who she is as an educator of young visionaries. She is assigned to guide each design-scholar toward the full knowledge and fruition of their creative “power”. She not only leads them through the educational process; she nurtures their creativity for a lifetime.
