Profiles In Impact: Keath Carter

As a first-year at Pomona, Keath took Introduction to Human-Centered Design in the spring of 2019, and followed it up with Advanced Human-Centered Design that fall. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Keath stepped away from school for several years to launch his own fashion line—before returning to Pomona in the fall of 2025 to complete his degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

How I broke into the fashion world was like this: I snuck into a Kanye West listening party, guessed his shoe size, and gave him a prototype of the sandals I was working on. Two days later, he wore them to this black-tie GQ Magazine event, where he broke the dress code: black tux jacket, khaki pants, and my sandals.

I used the pics on social media and got my first wave of sales. I remember seeing the Shopify deposit hit my account and thinking, Okay, maybe this is real. Maybe now I can actually afford to live in SoCal.

That was my break. The part before that was the Hive.

I’d come to Pomona from Chicago as a Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major, and I found the Hive almost by accident. I thought design was about what looks good and feels fresh: creating things you think are beautiful. 

The Hive broke that open. Fred pushed me to see that design isn’t about handing people your idea of what’s right. It’s about getting out of your own head and seeing what’s actually going on with them. One of my first projects focused on parking signs in L.A. They drove me crazy. You’d get ticketed and think: Maybe I technically broke the rules, but the real problem is how impossible the signs are to read. At first, I created a policy recommendation. But then I realized that nobody looks at a policy paper. So I turned it into a rubric that people in city government could use to evaluate signs: Are they clear and concise, do they work for all the Spanish speakers in the neighborhood?  

But even a rubric is overlookable. So I tried to imagine the scenario where people would be discussing street signs. They’re sitting around a table, and after a while, they get thirsty. And they reach to take that sip, and glance at their coaster…so that’s where I put my rubric. And I broke it down, so each coaster got a different line from the rubric—to give each person one value to keep an eye on—which then sets up the people around the table to work as a team.

Then the pandemic hit, and they closed all the campuses. And I didn’t want to go back home to Chicago, because I’d fallen in love with Southern California. So I framed it as a design challenge: All right, Keath, how might you design a sustainable life in SoCal? And I followed the process I’d learned: start by empathizing—which in this case, meant looking hard at myself. What do I love? What am I good at? Fashion started to emerge as the direction. But not just making cool clothes. I had to make money at it.

You’ve got to go past Do I like this idea? to What do people really need? Past “fashion as making cool stuff” to “fashion as a business.” When I co-founded Verrochio’s Workshop, I took the factory relationships I’d built, and started using them to help other people make things—T-shirts and other goods for companies like Sony, Warner Brothers, and even Vanguard. But I was never going to win against the big manufacturers who can get you the cheapest swag. My value proposition was: I am a designer who can help you bridge the gap between your customers and their unmet needs. So when Lumicera wanted to give their people a gift to celebrate their one-millionth sale, they asked me for the usual stuff: branded water bottles and backpacks. If I’d just been a merchandiser, I would’ve written down their order and manufactured a thousand pieces. But I knew a bag full of random stuff wasn’t going to make Lumicera’s employees feel loved. So I started observing how people operated in their offices. And there weren’t many people walking around with plastic water bottles; nobody was wearing a T-shirt. But everybody had these zip-up vests. So I convinced the client to reallocate funds to make something that would show their employees that they’d been seen. To create a gift that was an act of caring. 

The point is not to empathize because it’s a nice thing to do. Empathy is a tool for learning: it opens us up to the evidence the world gives us. Empathy gives reality a chance to chew on your idea, and point you to the parts you still need to fix. 

I developed deep trust with my clients by showing them I wanted to uncover the problems they faced. A lot of my B-school friends gloss over the soft skills. But if you’re the one who cares enough to find out the truth about your customers’ reality, then you get the deal. The things I don’t understand about you are a chance for us to get closer.

written by Dan Coleman

published by Salina Muñoz