There are too many barriers to accessing the education and experience required to become a footwear designer in the sports industry. Rather than waiting on higher education to solve some of those obstacles, we created a solution to this problem by building a new pathway for creators to pursue a career in footwear design: S.E.E.D. (School for Experiential Education in Design).

S.E.E.D. is a 2 year program at the adidas Brooklyn Creator Farm in partnership with Pensole Academy that acts as an alternative to a university education for Footwear Design. The program is an Open-Source education model meaning that we tap industry experts inside and outside of the adidas brand to teach, guide, and mentor students while they work on developing Leadership and Design skills through working on real products that will go to market.

For today’s episode, we welcome the leaders behind adidas S.E.E.D. — Liz Connelly and Cheresse Thornhill-Goldson. A bit about Liz, her career has been focused on identifying high potential talent from non-traditional pipelines and designing programs, processes, and experiences to help that talent reach their full potential. She began her career innovating recruitment and talent development strategies in small business within both the sports and food industries. She joined adidas in 2016 as a part of the Talent Acquisition organization. In 2019 Liz co-founded adidas S.E.E.D. (School for Experiential Education in Design) and moved to Brooklyn to launch the program. Liz now consults on various talent related projects and continues to lead all talent and brand initiatives for SEED in her most recent role as the Senior Manager of Education and Growth for adidas. A bit about Cheresse, she has been in the footwear industry over 13 years. Her career began in Beaverton, OR at Nike where she was a footwear designer for 10 years before moving back to her hometown of Miami, FL to teach design at both the high school and college levels. In January 2020, Cheresse made the move to Brooklyn, NY to lead the adidas S.E.E.D. Program as the Design Director. Cheresse is part of the team that’s transforming the footwear industry and cultivating the next generation of diverse design talent.

Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at hello@advdes.org to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!