People Behind the Product Series: Yolanda Brown

“Opportunity, diversification, teaching”: ISAIC in a Nutshell 

According to the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 75% of the 60-70 million garment workers globally are women. For many women around the world, work extends beyond employment into the home and community as caregivers to children, adult parents, or anyone in need. Often times, their caregiving responsibilities can interfere with balancing full-time employment—leading them to leave the workforce, as seen during the pandemic. 

Yolanda Brown, this month’s People Behind the Product spotlight, illustrates the reality that many women face. The beauty in her story reflects her resilience and tenacity to continue to pursue her dreams after selflessly serving her family’s needs for years.  

As a former schoolteacher, Yolanda left education to care for her children. During that time, she obtained multiple degrees. Once her children were old enough, she went back to work—until she began looking after her grandson. When he started kindergarten, Yolanda began searching for new opportunities in the manufacturing industry as she’s always wished to start her own manufacturing business. 

She found ISAIC (Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center), where she entered the Fundamentals of Industrial Sewing Program (FISP), even though she’s been sewing since her mom taught her when she was 8 years old. The class helped her to be more “mindful of measurements and straight lines.” Yolanda jokingly describes her sewing abilities before FISP as “horrible,” because at home she was “just chilling.” The program helped her to pick up her speed and become more “accurate and standardized as possible” in her craft. 

Upon graduating from FISP, Yolanda advanced to the apprenticeship program where she learned to operate virtually every technical solution on the factory floor. She is skilled in using the on-demand laser cuter, multi-ply automatic cutter, and numerous sewing machines. For those interested in FISP, Yolanda notes that you do not need prior experience to be successful because “the teachers are really good, and you can go at your own pace. Even if you have sewing experience, it is still helpful because it sharpens your skills.” To future apprentices, Yolanda shares the following advice: “be prepared to do production!” 

Yolanda is a champion of ISAIC’s work and wishes that more people were familiar with the programs. In response to “what makes ISAIC successful?”, Yolanda remarks “It’s the diversification, it's a lot of people here that are very creative and talented and some of them might not fit into an automotive place, so there is more freedom and range to do what you want and learn what you want.” 

Today, she works as a Sewing Specialist, and if she had the resources to bring in a new technology to improve her work—she'd “probably have more robotics here, even if it eliminated jobs to help cut down on wear and tear on peoples’ bodies." 

Yolanda explains her goal here by saying, “I hope to gain transferrable skills so that if I did decide to get another job-- I would be attractive to employers; I want to do all aspects of manufacturing to start my own company.” For Yolanda, this dream will become a reality as she participates in the worker owned factory incubation (WOFI) leadership cohort.  

Starting in January 2023, Yolanda will represent her fellow operators as a member of the first WOFI board—where she’ll spend time every month developing into a future worker-owner by learning topics related to reviewing financials, costing, management tools, sales, and more. 

Her motivation behind starting her own company stems from the recognition that “there are tons of designers and creative people in metro Detroit,” and they do not want to go to certain places because they must order in bulk to receive products. She wants to make samples for people needing smaller units, like samples for a wedding party or a small business product launch.  

As a creator, Yolanda prides herself on bringing visions to life. Yet, she grapples with the reality that people “value designers but not sewers... They do not get enough credit for being fabric engineers.” To create change and disrupt this ideology, Yolanda recommends putting a spotlight on the process to construct a product to show people “it takes a lot of ingenuity and creativity to make pieces come together.” 

Yolanda reminds us not to underestimate sewers or women because without both, there’d be considerably less creativity, innovation, and trailblazers!