Stacey Edgar, PhD, is the Executive Director of the International Folk Art Market (IFAM) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The mission of the International Folk Art Market is to create economic opportunities for and with folk artists worldwide, supporting the work of artisans serving as entrepreneurs and catalysts for positive social change.
An award-winning social entrepreneur, educator, and researcher, Stacey brings over 20 years of experience working with artisans globally. Before joining IFAM, Stacey spent 5 years as an assistant teaching professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, Leeds School of Business in the Social Responsibility & Sustainability Division. She continues to teach remotely in the Executive MBA program. Prior to moving into academia Stacey founded and led Global Girlfriend, a fair trade enterprise she founded that partnered with over 250 women-led artisan enterprises in forty countries. She built a multi-million-dollar market for handcrafted apparel and accessories through e-commerce and wholesale partnerships with premier retailers including Whole Foods Market, Target, and West Elm as well as 1,500 boutique retailers nationwide.
In 2017 she co-founded Trade+Impact Association, a global non-profit trade association advancing women-led social enterprises, where she has led the Handmade Futures Summit since 2020, an annual virtual gathering of over 300 artisan sector stakeholders in partnership with Williams-Sonoma, Inc. and the Handmade Futures Initiative, a diverse working group of makers and buyers advancing folk artists priorities in the global economy. She has consulted governments and global NGOs including the US Commerce Department Law Program, USAID, UK AID, Prospero Zambia, AgExport Guatemala, and Aid to Artisans. Stacey’s mission is to highlight the power of global artisan work in providing economic opportunity, community and cultural preservation.
Stacey has been honored by the Microsoft Corporation as a recipient of the company’s Start Something Amazing Awards, by Organic Style as one of their Women with Organic Style, by Multichannel Merchant magazine as a “Maven of Merchandise.” She earned her PhD, MSW, and BSW in social work from Colorado State University, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Western Illinois University respectively. She is the author of Global Girlfriends: How One Mom Made it Her Mission to Help Women in Poverty Worldwide, co-author of a chapter in Handbook on the Business of Sustainability, and her most recent research study Artisan Social Enterprises in Zambia: Women Leveraging Purpose to Scale Impact was published in the Social Enterprise Journal.