Faculty

Profile

Suzanne has been a part-time faculty member in the School of Fashion since 2004. She is additionally an adjunct faculty member at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has taught for over 30 years, and Kent State University where she has taught since 2009. At these universities, she teaches a variety of classes in Fashion Forecasting, Retailing, Merchandising, Retail Math, Team Development and Marketing, among others. Suzanne holds a degree in Fashion Buying and Merchandising from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She started her career at Lord & Taylor as a Department  Manager of Women's Accessories and after one year was hired at JCPenney's buying executive training program. 

The majority of her career has been spent at JCPenney (25 years) in managerial and executive positions for both catalog and retail. At JCPenney, through buying, product development and fashion office positions, she gained hands-on exposure to all product categories and classifications. For five years she acted as Fashion Director for the Popular Club division of the J.Crew Group, researching and implementing trends for the women’s, men’s and children’s areas, in addition to merchandising/styling catalog spreads. JCPenney invited her to return in 1998 as the Women’s Fashion Director, where she determined the direction for product development and buying for a $7.2 billion business. Under her guidance, the division consistently achieved top performance ratings for the entire company. In this position as well as the others, she travelled extensively to the Far East and European fashion capitals to develop volume producing items and attend major industry shows for both the domestic and international markets. She has emerged as an accomplished apparel executive whose creative vision is uniquely combined with the analytical skills necessary to grow businesses in today’s competitive environment.