Women are making their mark, and they’re doing it in highly technical positions.
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Randy Rubin is co-founder and vice chairman of Crypton, a Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based fabric manufacturer. She takes distinct pride in pointing out that on any given day, most of us will likely sit on a fabric she helped create.
“I’m willing to bet that if you go to a mall, restaurant, hotel, nursing home or hospital waiting area, you’re going to be sitting on Crypton, and I get so excited when I know I’m sitting on our technology!”
但是鲁宾并没有轻易取得成功。在90年代初期，鲁宾和她的丈夫从他们家的地下室开始了他们的公司。他发明了Crypton，这是一种重型，耐污渍的织物，看起来不重要。她弄清楚了如何申请专利，但他们需要某人制造织物。
鲁宾谈到他们的第一次访问时说：“看不到一个女人。”“我们去了工厂，所有高管都是人。”
尽管如此，鲁宾还是设法达成了一项交易，以生产他们的第一种面料。从那里，她飙升。
Since that early factory visit, Rubin’s company has grown by leaps and bounds. Crypton has manufacturing operations in North Carolina; today it holds 25 different patents and has sold more than 150 million yards of Crypton fabric. It also acquired Nanotex®, a leading fabric innovation company, and recently was named best in innovation at the International Textiles Alliance (ITA) awards gala.
“We invented this fabric and had very little money, but we were gutsy. We always say that we were never both scared on the same day,” Rubin said.
Today, the brainchild of Rubin and her husband is still one of the most innovative brands in the textile industry.
她说，当他们开始时，她可能是一条源头的鱼，但鲁宾认为他们帮助改变了行业。“我们创造了一个理由，为什么仅通过许可美国磨坊来使用我们的技术来获得美国工厂的业务。
我们成为了他们的一个重要组成部分business because they had a protected brand to sell,” she said.
While Rubin was a bit of a pioneer, women in leadership positions are increasingly common within the broader textile industry.
南希·卡西尔（Nancy Cassill）博士就是这样的例子。2000年，她是第一位招募北卡罗来纳州立大学纺织学院的女教授，这是世界上首要的纺织品研究机构之一。
Now associate dean for academic programs – another first for a woman – Cassill says there are more women coming to the college looking to get into the textile industry than ever before. In fact, 72 percent of the college’s student population was female in 2016, compared to just 43 percent in 1998.
Several reasons explain the uptick.
One is the college’s focus on pre- and post-production areas of design, brand marketing, new product development and global sourcing. Another is its work to build stronger partnerships industry-wide.
作为塑造美国下一代才华横溢的纺织制造商的这一努力的一部分，Cassill帮助创建了全美唯一的时尚，纺织品管理和时尚和纺织品设计学士学位。她还成立了学院的行业顾问委员会，该咨询委员会由22位纺织高管组成，目前正在努力创建一个新的学生生活中心，以培养学生的领导和职业发展。
But Cassill also believes women are drawn to the industry’s growing emphasis on product diversification in apparel, home/furniture, industrial and more.
“我认为女性具有出色的审美和创新思想的真正优势。女性在家中大部分与纺织品相关的购买，我认为女性对市场和消费者的购买和购买方式有很好的了解。”
至于未来？
“我认为该行业的遗产是男性的。这正在发生变化，但是还有很多工作要做。这就是为什么我们正在加强学术课程，成为准备充分的人，并吸引来自各种背景的学生的原因。”
And Cassill says women in the industry are strong leaders. “There are several who are truly viewed as strategic thinkers, and I think they’re great role models for all of our students.”
琥珀·布鲁克曼（Amber Brookman）是其中的榜样之一。She says women look at the world differently than men and believes that’s served her well in her role as CEO of Brookwood Companies Inc., one of America’s most technically advanced textile companies and a substantial supplier of diverse woven and nylon products to the United States military.
Brookman manages close to 500 employees between the company’s headquarters in New York and its manufacturing operations in Connecticut and Rhode Island. “Textiles are interesting because they take a massive amount of technical knowledge to do them well.”
尽管如此，布鲁克曼承认她有点陷入了行业。她是一位顶级模特，出现在电视和跑道上，参加了奥斯卡金像奖，甚至与芭芭拉·斯特雷桑（Barbara Streisand）打网球。然后，在30岁时，她决定朝着不同的方向前进。“就高级时装行业的女性机会而言，您有推销员，您有陈列室的女孩，我从不想成为任何人的女孩！”
A referral and a knock-em-dead interview helped her land a fashion director job for a company called Allied Chemicals.
“他们制作了尼龙纱。我对此一无所知，但他们还是雇用了我。我从成为榜样到拥有秘书和办公室，我不确定该如何处理他们中的任何一个。但是盟军是一个工作的好地方，并在财务上支持我在纽约大学的高等教育。”
She became an expert in her field. Within a few years, a customer offered her a new job opportunity, where Brookman would open a division for the design and marketing of sports-related textiles.
“一件事导致了另一件事，我最终控制了整个公司。那家公司是布鲁克伍德。
“We have a unique hiring policy that hires people for what they bring to the table. You have to be smart, nice and work hard. You have to have talent and brains. I don’t need good old boys.
“那是女人的观点。”
She said she has carved out her own niche as a woman running a huge company in the textile industry.
“The fascinating part about being a CEO is that you have to provide the vision that helps the company stay successful through good times and bad — and that is an art, not a science. You have to really care about what happens to the company and put the good of the company and its employees first.”
编者注：本文出现在188BET金博宝下载courtesy of the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) as part of the “American Textiles: We Make Amazing™” campaign. NCTO is a trade association representing U.S. textile manufacturing. Please visit ncto.org to learn more about NCTO, the industry and the campaign.
November/December 2017
