Biography

Bob Bland is the mother of 2 young daughters, a social entrepreneur, startup & nonprofit executive, international speaker + advocate for domestic manufacturing, sustainable supply chains and design entrepreneurship education. She is also a women’s rights activist and one of the National Co-Chairs of the Women's March on Washington. On January 21st 2017, she organized over 5 million people to march worldwide in a historic, women-led demonstration- the largest single day protest in United States history.

In March 2020, she co-founded Masks For America, a non-profit volunteer coalition that has raised $1M from 15,000 grassroots donors + donated 1,500,000 masks and other PPE to frontline essential workers in 250 locations across the US, Puerto Rico and Tribal Nations. Her project is women and people of color-led, locally + nationally.

For her work on the Women’s March, she has received numerous awards including Forbe’s 50 World's Greatest Leaders, Time 100's Most Influential People, Glamour’s Women of the Year Award, Working Mother Magazine’s 5 Most Powerful Moms and New York State’s Woman of Distinction.

From 2016-2019, Ms. Bland served as Co-President and Board Member of Women's March National, a 501(c)4 nonprofit social and political advocacy organization. Co-founding and building this movement alongside some of the most passionate & visionary women of our era has been the honor of her life.

The mission of Women’s March is to harness the power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change, and we have already seen an impact in the 2018 & 2020 Elections, when a historic wave of women took office at the local, state and national level- many inspired to leadership + action by their experience with the Women’s Marches or subsequent actions.

Women’s March continues to grow and evolve as a movement of nonviolent resistance, committed to dismantling systems of oppression and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity and respect.

Previous to her work with Women’s March, Ms. Bland was already an established entrepreneur, speaker and advocate with 15 years’ experience in the fashion + manufacturing industries. Her previous social enterprise, Manufacture New York, remains at the very essence of the foundational rework of our economies that must be done in order for women, creatives, manufacturers, their families and communities to thrive. MNY served as a case study at The United Nations and in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Seoul, Los Angeles, Raleigh, Las Vegas, Washington D.C. and NYC.

Her dynamic team of creatives and changemakers at MNY spent 5 years rethinking the Made In USA fashion ecosystem (design, development, distribution) and creating a new, vertically-integrated business model that has helped launch the transformation of apparel & textile production for the 21st century. At their Manufacturing Innovation Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, they provided comprehensive support for startups at the intersection of fashion, sustainability and technology and successfully helped launch 150 new American businesses, primarily led by women and BIPOC people that have retained and created hundreds of jobs.

The mission of Manufacture New York was to reawaken and rebuild America’s fashion industry, foster the next wave of businesses, and create a transparent, sustainable global supply chain. MNY built a national coalition of over 10,000 designers, makers, manufacturers, technologists, academic partners and business leaders that support this important work.

Bob has made numerous radio, TV and documentary appearances including CBS Evening News, The View, NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour and SiriusXM for both Women’s March and Manufacture New York. She has been featured in many books, including NYT's bestseller Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Round the World, as well as Sustainable Fashion: Past, Present & Future (2015), We Own the City (2014); and the film “Making It In America: Empowering Global Fashion, as well as many films and TV series focused on the Women’s March.

Outside of her professional work, Ms. Bland enjoys spending time with her 2 young daughters, Chloe and Penny, and her partner Michael in their beloved home of Brooklyn.