From Bombs to Bracelets — Disrupting Violence in El Salvador With Ariela Suster
·34 min
1. Line of Sight Podcast features Ariela Suster and Sequence Collection, a social enterprise rooted in El Salvador.
2. Karen Rundy, Director of Alumni Solutions at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University, interviews Ariela Suster, the CEO and Founder of Sequence Collection, because her fashion brand is tied to violence prevention.
3. The episode asks how a fashion business can disrupt the cycle of violence in El Salvador while creating employment.
4. Ariela says El Salvador has six million people and has lived through civil war and gang-related violence for 40 years.
5. She describes growing up during the civil war, with shootings in her home, attacks in her home, car bombs, and her brother’s kidnapping.
6. She says the kidnapping happened after the peace treaties were signed, during a wave of kidnappings that became newsworthy.
7. Her brother was held underground, blindfolded, and handcuffed on the way to school.
8. She says he was the youngest person kidnapped and the longest time kidnapped in that period.
9. After a year of healing, he returned to school and later attended Stanford.
10. Ariela says he now lives in New York, is married, and has a baby.
11. She explains that she studied fashion after college, moved to Boston and New York, and landed an internship at Harper’s Bazaar.
12. She later worked for years at InStyle magazine as a fashion editor.
13. She says the job was glamorous but never felt truly like her.
14. She returned to El Salvador to address violence using only her fashion background and professional contacts.
15. She says Sequence began when she put bracelets in a suitcase, took them to New York, and showed them to friends.
16. She says the brand was featured in magazines because it carried both the message and the purpose.
17. Ariela says around 75 artisans have worked with Sequence, and most are men rather than women.
18. She says her workshop was in gang territory and the men came because they wanted belonging and an alternative to violence.
19. Her tone is reflective, specific, and practical, and Karen Rundy asks direct follow-up questions about safety, leadership, and scale.
20. People interested in social enterprise and fashion should listen; listeners wanting only product talk may skip it.
