Luxury, Resale and Live Commerce
Mason Henry Howell earned a Bachelor of Science in fashion merchandising with a marketing minor in 2016. Today he works as a strategic acquisitions and partnerships manager at eBay, based in Berlin, Germany. He began his career at Christie's in the wine department before moving to the auction house's handbags and accessories team as a coordinator and cataloger. He later worked at The RealReal and at What Goes Around Comes Around, where he led strategic partnerships and built the company's live commerce division, developing live shopping partnerships with Amazon, TikTok, Whatnot and eBay. He joined eBay in June 2025 as a business development manager and now serves as category manager for Watches & Jewelry.
During his talk, Howell emphasized the value of authenticity when trying to establish one’s career and build relationships. He also advised students to trust their instincts and keep up with new technologies and spaces they might want to move into, including live commerce, which he described as one of the biggest growth areas in the market.
“It’s OK to trust your instincts and move into different directions,” Howell told the students in attendance, referring back to his own experiences shifting from wine to handbags at the beginning of his career.
Buying, Then Building
Kylie Gallagher graduated from Kent State in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in fashion merchandising and a marketing minor. Following graduation, she spent more than a decade in corporate retail buying roles, developing expertise in product assortment, merchandising and consumer trends. After stepping away from her career to focus on her two daughters, she re-entered the workforce in 2023 by founding Daisy Lane Kids Boutique in Zelienople, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
Gallagher told the audience that the skills she built as a buyer, including understanding the customer, analyzing sales and managing inventory, became the foundation for her business. She said that during her time at Bath & Body Works she learned about the “shopkeeper mindset,” which emphasized staying close to customers, a principle she uses to this day in her own business.
Gallagher said what she thought success looked like at the start of her career is very different from what it is today. Her advice to students preparing to graduate: stay open.
“Sometimes the career you begin with is simply preparing you for the career that you are meant to create," she said.
From Dorm Room to Manufacturing Studio
Anne Johnson, founder and CEO of Anne Cate, graduated with honors from Kent State in 2018, earning a degree in fashion merchandising and a minor in entrepreneurship for non-business majors. Her company actually began on the Kent Campus, in her Stopher-Johnson residence hall room during her sophomore year, when she designed pillows featuring city skylines to decorate the space. Today, Anne Cate is a Made in America accessories brand and manufacturer, specializing in her signature skyline purses and other customizable products, with a studio in Cleveland that produces thousands of products weekly. The company’s products are sold in more than 200 retailers nationwide, including a collection created in a special collaboration for the Kent State University Museum store.
Johnson said she treated her coursework and her business as one project. She used her business in fashion entrepreneurship class and applied what she learned in fashion technology courses to create her own artwork in Adobe Illustrator. By graduation, she said, the business had generated about $50,000 in revenue. She signed the lease on her first manufacturing studio the November after she graduated.
Johnson credited relationships built through Kent State with some of her biggest opportunities, including an introduction to the buying team at KeyBank that led to a major custom order. Her advice to students echoed some of Gallagher’s sentiments.
“My advice to all of you, especially seniors trying to figure out what comes next, is to know that your path may not go exactly as planned, and that's OK,” she said. “Take your feedback, work hard, stay curious and be open to opportunities that you may not have originally considered because this was not even something on my radar.”
