34 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

At ﬁrst glance, there wouldn’t seem to be much of

a connection in the 6,700 miles between a cattle

farm on a South Paciﬁc island and a startup busi-

ness working with fashion clothing in Southern

California.

But for IISE student member and recent Uni-

versity of Southern California graduate Soraya Levy, both

ventures contributed to her industrial and systems engineer-

ing education and her pursuit of sustainable practices.

Levy said she decided to pursue an ISE education after her

experience leading a robotics team in high school gave her a

taste for engineering.

“I really enjoyed math and the sciences and the push for

women in STEM,” she said. “The main reason I started in

ISE is that it was so broad. It allowed me to vary my interest

in STEM more in quantitative analysis and social analysis,

and it offered a lot of expressive thinking and writing, and

lot of ﬂexibility.”

Finding sustainability lessons

half a world apart

Fashion startup, New Zealand farm put ideas in focus for Southern Cal ISE grad

By Keith Albertson

The organic cattle, saffron and honey

farm in Te Anau, New Zealand, where

Soraya Levy worked included some

1,000 heads of cattle and employed

sustainable practices throughout the

operation.

Photos courtesy of Soraya Levy

September 2020 | ISE Magazine 35

Levy earned her bachelor’s degree in industrial and sys-

tems engineering in May from USC’s Viterbi School of

Engineering. She was a USC Renaissance Scholar and

Presidential Scholar and the Daniel J. Epstein Department

of Industrial and Systems Engineering Student of the Year.

After graduation, she began her career as a brand manager

on the supply chain team at General Mills’ Natural and Or-

ganics Operating Unit in Berkeley, California, not far from

her hometown of Monterey.

“Soraya is the quintessential renaissance scholar and an

embodiment of our engineering-plus philosophy,” Najme-

din Meshkati, a professor of civil and environmental en-

gineering, industrial systems engineering and international

relations at Viterbi, told ISE. “She is a pioneer and among

the growing number of equally talented and truly interdisci-

plinary-oriented ISE students at USC who I see are aspiring

and becoming a true ‘global engineer,’ to apply their truly

interdisciplinary skill set to complex sociotechnical systems

and global and public policy issues, above and beyond just

number crunching.

“Soraya and her like-minded pioneer cohort at USC, to

paraphrase the old popular Star Trek phrase, are embarking

for ‘where no ISE has gone before.’”

Levy became interested in the fashion industry, not as

much from the creative standpoint as its inner workings,

particularly its unsustainable practices.

“Toward the end of high school, I was starting to get some

kind of understanding of the wastefulness of the fashion in-

dustry and how increasingly problematic it was becoming,”

she said. “I was very interested in the fashion industry, and

not really clothing design but kind of the mechanisms be-

hind the fashion industry.”

Those concerns include the manufacture of inexpensive

items from synthetic ﬁbers made from fossil fuels that do

not decompose in landﬁlls, where 85% of garments end up,

along with the low pay and harsh working conditions found

in many developing countries. According to the United

Nations, the fashion industry contributes to 10% of global

greenhouse gas emissions.

To alleviate this, in 2017 Levy and three of her USC

Soraya Levy hikes on the Kepler Track, a popular backpacking

route located near the cattle farm. Beyond her in the

background is Lake Te Anau, the largest lake on the South

Island of New Zealand and a key focus of the country’s

environmental conservation movement.

36 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

Finding sustainability lessons half a world apart

classmates created a nonproﬁt startup

called Bloom Boutique that offers

donated clothing items both for re-

sale and to a charitable nonproﬁt in

Los Angeles. The boutique (bloom

boutiquela.org) was founded as an at-

tempt to bypass the industry’s waste-

ful practices based on three ideals:

offering a sustainable clothing option

for students, educating them about

the fashion industry and providing

service to the community.

“For the ﬁrst pillar, operationally

we would collect clothing donations

from students, clothes they would

otherwise throw away or donate,”

Levy said. “But there’s a lack of trans-

parency to where clothes go when

you donate. A lot of times they were

shipped offshore and ended up in a

landﬁll.”

The Bloom team would sort

through donated clothes and designate items that ﬁt its

“funky and colorful brand” for resale on campus during

events or at pop-up sales. Clothing that was deemed more

professional in appearance was donated to the Downtown

Women’s Center in Los Angeles, one of Bloom’s four com-

munity partnerships. In all, 100% of its proﬁts were donated

to charity, more than $3,000 to date.

“I was in charge of operations, involved with setting up

the whole infrastructure,” Levy said. “That grew into some-

thing that bridged the operations management with a cre-

ative pillar. I ended up being the person who bridged op-

erations and inventory management with the photographers

and the marketing team. We had a blog for the editorial

team as well, just to make sure we were all in alignment.”

The boutique is part of USC’s Environmental Student

Assembly, a group dedicated to campus organizations that

practice environmentally conscious work. The operation

grew from four members at the start to more than 50 by the

time Levy graduated. Yet its growth was temporarily halted

when the coronavirus pandemic took students off campus

last spring and left the staff unable to accept or pass along

clothing donations.

“The boutique allowed me and some of my peers to really

create some change at a local level,” Levy said. “I had been

learning about sustainability and production in the global

supply chain system in my ISE classes. That was a very

daunting idea, trying to implement change on that global

level, because so many processes are so messed up, for lack

of a better word.”

Levy’s dedication to sustainable practices was fueled by an

earlier project she took part in: Working at an organic farm

in New Zealand through Worldwide Opportunities on Or-

ganic Farms in early 2019.

“I wanted to learn what other countries were doing as far

as their conservation efforts,” she said. “I think something

industrial and systems engineering introduced me to and

stressed a lot is how important the human component and

the social component of any system is. I think being able

to navigate the unique, complex nature of the relationship

between these farmers, that was really something I learned

a lot about.”

While in the Paciﬁc Island nation, she helped manage

1,000 head of cattle, grew saffron ﬂowers for spice and cul-

The Bloom Boutique team takes part in Veg Fest, USC’s annual vegetarian festival. The

campus startup used such events to sell donated fashion clothing that might otherwise

end up in landﬁlls. Other clothing items were donated to a Los Angeles area nonproﬁt.

I think it was important being able to

bring it down to a personal level and talk

to the people whom you are personally

affecting – whether it’s in the fashion

industry or whether it’s organic farming

– to cultivate the knowledge of successful

practices and also unsuccessful parts of the

systems they’re unable to change.

September 2020 | ISE Magazine 37

tivated honey from beehives, all while

pursuing organic and sustainable practic-

es. She also learned from her interaction

with the New Zealanders’ culture and

farming practices.

“It was interesting living with the

farm manager,” Levy said. “At night, we

would watch the news and then have a

very candid and open discussion of New

Zealand politics, which was very interest-

ing. I learned a lot about the relationships

between New Zealand’s government and

the farmers and general public, and how

the dynamic of that relationship really is.”

The work helped Levy develop a sys-

temwide appreciation for the symbiotic

link between the farmers and society at

large and the key role each plays in sus-

tainable practices.

“It really was a special relationship be-

tween the people working on the farm

and the livestock,” Levy said. “They

practiced sustainable farming throughout

the entire operation. The various pro-

cesses and methods in place to protect or

ensure sustainable farming were also in-

teresting. They seemed to really import

every single farming practice throughout

the entire operation, not just to be able to

write the world ‘organic’ on their prod-

ucts but in order to feel good about what

products they were offering to their com-

munity.”

The lessons she learned both on the

farm and at Bloom Boutique helped give her an apprecia-

tion of how a hands-on approach for sustainable practices

can have a systemwide effect across different products and

enterprises. She found the common link between the two

ventures was making consumers more aware of the source

of their products, be it food or clothing, by improving trans-

parency and cooperation between producers, governments

and consumers along the supply chain.

“I think Bloom Boutique, as well as this cattle farming

operation, really brought it down to a personal, tangible, lo-

cal level, and that was something that we had discussed a lot

in ISE classes or curriculum,” she said. “They’re all having

to do with these global systems that were super impactful to

millions and millions of people in the world. I think it was

important being able to bring it down to a personal level

and talk to the people whom you are personally affecting –

whether it’s in the fashion industry or whether it’s organic

farming – to cultivate the knowledge of successful practices

and also unsuccessful parts of the systems they’re unable to

change.”

Levy also believes the challenges the world has endured in

2020 demonstrate how maintaining the health of both the

planet and its inhabitants go hand in hand.

“The whole pandemic has given people some time to step

back and think about the state of the world,” she said. “I also

think it’s given us an opportunity at least to see how quickly

such a massive global shift can occur. That had led to some

optimism for sustainability in general.

“That’s great to see – it brings that large global system,

that large global, extremely wasteful supply chain system

that a lot of people are focusing on now. I think it brings

it back to more of a personal level, and it seems a lot less

daunting to be able to really affect change in that system.” 

Keith Albertson is managing editor of ISE magazine. Contact him

at kalbertson@iise.org.

IISE division leads sustainable projects

Even through the pandemic, the need to promote sustainable practices while helping

those in need is an ongoing priority for industrial and systems engineers.

For the last seven years, IISE members have taken a hands-on approach at the

Sustainable Development Division’s Annual Conference Service Projects, putting

members’ lean, quality and process improvement abilities to work in support of

nonproﬁt agencies. Last year’s event included work with Habitat building homes and

with Rise Against Hunger, an Orlando food bank (link.iise.org/iseoct19_hurley)

To see a list of past service projects, visit link.iise.org/sustainable_annual2020.

IISE members take part in the 2019 Annual Conference volunteer project by

labeling food packages at Rise Against Hunger in Orlando, Florida.

Photo courtesy of Brion Hurley