Klaudia Zinaty Capalbo, Professor, Marketing Consultant and Director of Corporate Relations at the Toronto Fashion Academy was appointed as the 2020 FGI Regional Director for Toronto. Impressed by her numerous accomplishments and wanting to get a sense of the energy that drives her, Spencer Magazine arranged for an interview in person.
Rose Marie Bresolin: Klaudia, I know how busy your schedule must be, so thank you for agreeing to the interview. Perhaps we can start with where you’re at right now by having you tell us about FGI.
Klaudia Capalbo: Yes, of course. FGI stands for Fashion Group International. We’re a global organization situated in 7 countries with 29 chapters all over the world and our headquarters are based in NYC. I handle the Toronto Division and we have about 200 members right now and growing. We have 12 Board members, including myself. We are a non-profit organization with approximately 5,000 members all over the world: we’re in The Dominican, Seoul, USA and London, England to name a few. It feels incredible to be leading an organization in Toronto with this kind of global reach and potential!
The organization is here to support, grow and develop, not just the fashion industry but anything that touches on fashion – interior design, visual arts, beauty, film and photography. We organize monthly events for our members, whether it’s bringing in professionals and guest speakers from the industry or providing a platform that gives our members an opportunity to network and collaborate. At our Toronto Division we provide a unique event we call Mentor’s Dinner, where we bring in 10 mentors from different facets of the industry. They sit with our members for an intimate dinner and answer questions about their careers or industry. We’ve had George Pimentel, Jessica Mulroney, Cheryl Hickey, Peter Papapetrou, Aluad Anei, Stephan Caras and Vanessa Craft to name a few.
The Mentor’s Dinner for this year was held at the Shangri-La in March. The guests were seated with the mentor of their choice and asked questions that could help them with decisions. It was a great opportunity for our members to have their moment with a mentor. Also exciting was that each mentor shared a personal story from their own career path. Another event we do, called the Visionary Awards happens in October where we celebrate key people from different sectors of the industry who have made an incredible impact on it. We really try to recognize people who give back.
To read the full story in Spencer Magazine’s Winter issue, please click 
