Kerry Bannigan is a social impact entrepreneur, event producer and strategic advisor spearheading global fashion, retail and media public-private partnerships that advocate for sustainable development. Bannigan curates purpose-driven activations, initiatives and content to amplify economic, social and environmental innovations.
Bannigan is the founder of the Conscious Fashion Campaign, an initiative in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Partnerships that engages leading global fashion industry events to accelerate collective action in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Conscious Fashion Campaign actively supports the Decade of Action by bridging together United Nations agencies and fashion industry stakeholders to enable the Sustainable Development Goals to scale. The Conscious Fashion Campaign partners collectively represent over $4.7 billion revenue, 800 events in 40 countries, 136,000 exhibiting businesses, 11.9 million industry attendees, and 14,700 employees.
She is a founding member of the SDG Media Zone in partnership with the United Nations Department of Global Communications and the PVBLIC Foundation. Since 2016, the SDG Media Zone has been one of the main features of the United Nations General Assembly high-level week, bringing together UN Member States, advocates, world leaders and media to highlight solutions in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. Bannigan has co-produced 18 SDG Media Zones across USA, Italy, Morocco, Germany, Portugal, France and Spain including at COP22, COP23 and G7 Environment under the auspices of the Italian G7 Presidency.
Bannigan serves as the President of the Board and Executive Committee at the PVBLIC Foundation, an innovative 501c3 organization that harnesses the power of media, data, and technology to drive social change. In 2012 Bannigan joined the PVBLIC Foundation as a Global Advisor, in this role she cultivated the team to produce the annually held Media for Social Impact Summit, Blockchain for Impact and the Latino Impact Summit co-convened at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Bannigan has provided strategic impact marketing and event advisory to PVBLIC Foundation partner programmes including It’s On US launched by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, smartwater + Michelle Obama’s Drink Up Campaign, G8 Young Leaders Summit and New York Global Leaders Dialogue.
Bannigan has executed high-impact government activations to drive economic development with the United Kingdom, United States of America, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; including the Fashion is GREAT Istanbul campaign in partnership with the British Embassy, Harvey Nichols and Department for International Trade.
With an accomplished portfolio of over a decade of pioneering events and initiatives Bannigan continues to champion fashion, retail and media as influential forces for global good and as key shapers of our sustainable future.
