Alumni Spotlight - Andra Slaats, MBA, Founder of Younited Cultures

MBA alumna Andra Slaats is an enterprising young graduate - with co-founder Iulia Mugescu, the two young Romanians decided to portray migration in a positive light and founded Younited Cultures, a Vienna-based social enterprise that uses fashion for a good purpose: raising awareness towards the added value of immigrants in Austrian society.

The initial inspiration came as Andra was tired of always reading negative reports about migrant crime in the local free papers, and realized how the constant references to the nationalities of the perpetrators was always next to their name was a driver of discrimination.

‘’I noticed there was a lack of positive awareness towards migrants, and not just refugees. I wanted to show the positive side, so I started conceptualizing the idea of how to promote migrants, and what channel I could use. It had to be something that stays with you, not like a magazine that you throw away.’’

Andra is a member of the Impact Hub, a social business hub generator Vienna’s seventh district. She discussed her thoughts with the Impact Hub founder, who suggested Andra try her hand at fashion and combine two passions. At this time she was starting to build her concept, she decided to apply for one of three MBA scholarships MODUL University was offering for Impact Hub members. She was selected for the one-year executive education program, and built up her burgeoning ideas for Younited Cultures throughout her study period.

During the Entrepreneurship and Innovation course in the MBA, Andra saw that there was potential for her idea, and developed a business plan and marketing plan as a course project.

Younited Cultures grew out of her ideas about migrants and how to tell their stories, and evolved from there.

‘’Migrants are involved in the process of creation, says Andra, ‘’which many people think we just employ them in the production, but this is the image we want to move people away from. I want to show what they what they are making, what they do, what their values are, and how they contribute to society.’’

By telling their stories through textiles she hopes that, in the popular perception, people will stop associating them with low quality human capital or job stealers.

‘’It’s my desire to show the positive side of migration, so we created a symbol, the ‘celebrate migration’ scarf. Everyone who wears it makes the statement and makes visible the positive side of migration, and the different colors on the scarf represent the each individual culture, because we’re all unique, but that’s what keeps us together. We can all coexist in a festive way, therefore it’s very colourful.’’

They have recently begun to diversify, and have added socks to their production (Andra even gave a pair to Austrian former president Heinz Fischer in a chance encounter over lunch!).

For this year’s International Day celebration at MODUL University Vienna, we will be sponsoring Younited Cultures, and pairing with them to design socks or scarves to tell the story of our international community of students, staff and faculty.