Stephanie Benedetto 06L

Thanks to Hollywood star and entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher, Stephanie Benedetto 06L was able to transform Queen of Raw from a bootstrapping company on a shoestring budget to the thriving company it is today.

Grand prize winner at the 2018 WeWork Creator Awards, hosted and judged by Kutcher, Benedetto credits the $360,000 prize money for giving Queen of Raw the last boost to make it to launch.

On a mission to solve the world’s water crisis, Benedetto’s Queen of Raw is a platform for businesses to recapture value from their wasted materials instead of burning them or sending them to a landfill. The company matches buyers with sellers to quickly sell discarded raw materials at affordable prices, giving people access to materials they didn’t have before.

So, how does this solve the water crisis? Each scrap of wasted material contributes to water waste—more than 700 gallons of water is needed to produce just one tee shirt. Since Queen of Raw’s launch, the company has enabled businesses to sell more than $120 billion dollars’ worth of excess fabric. Without meaningful and overall change in the textile industry, two-thirds of the entire world’s population will face shortages of freshwater from the textile industry alone. And, as of today, Queen of Raw has saved more than one billion gallons of water, enough for almost 2 million people to drink for three years.

Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn, and visit Queen of Raw's website.