Hilary Rowland
Hilary Rowland is a Canadian entrepreneur, having founded the online Urbanette Magazine, NewFaces.com portfolio site and Project Migration social enterprise.
Career
Rowland founded North America's first online women's magazine in 1995, now titled Urbanette Magazine. In 2013, Urbanette Magazine was printed and sold in bookstores.
In 1995 she founded NewFaces.com, which was the first website to publish portfolios online and provide an online database for the casting of talent and models in the film and fashion industries. New Faces was also the first company to post castings online. By the year 2000, it had over 500,000 members (models, actors and photographers) with portfolios on the site.
In 2010 she began work on a social enterprise called Project Migration, which produces apparel at a women-run eco-factory in Africa with the purpose of building water wells and supporting medical clinics in areas of extreme poverty. The objective of the enterprise is to provide job opportunities for single mothers, access to clean water and medical care. Celebrities, like Cameron Diaz, Alicia Keyes, Adrian Grenier, and Bradley Cooper have worn Project Migration clothing or accessories. As a result of the project and by November 2011, clean water has been made available to 750 people and more than 1,500 women and children have had access to medical care.
Personal life
Hilary is the daughter of Wade Rowland, PhD, professor at York University and author on the subjects of ethics, philosophy and moral theory.
She moved from Toronto to New York City in 2006, where she lives with her husband, Michael.