Young people can change the world. Just ask Canadian entrepreneur and international success story Ben Barry. At fourteen, Ben decided to help a friend who had spent money on modeling school but wasn’t receiving any work because she didn’t have “the right look.” Ben sent her pictures to a local magazine and three weeks later, he had successfully booked his first contract—and found his career. He started the Ben Barry Agency in 1997 while still in grade school. Today, the agency scouts and sources models of diverse ages, backgrounds, and sizes; models who have appeared in high-profile fashion magazines and on runways around the world. Fashioning Reality is the fast-paced story of a young entrepreneur whose refreshing approach is changing the fashion industry and influencing the popular perceptions of beauty in the media. Ben shares his challenges, his successes, and his struggles to run a business that remains consistent with his personal values. In running a company that makes a profit by making social change, Ben is only one in a growing movement. He outlines this new model of entrepreneurship and shares the stories of other young business people who are doing well by doing good. Ben also draws on his own experience to provide young people with advice on how to start and run a socially responsible yet profitable business. He shatters the myth that young people have to wait until they obtain advanced academic degrees and decades of experience before starting their own companies. Instead, he explains how youth have all of the knowledge and skills they need to start today. We don’t need to wait, he argues. Instead, we can fashion a new reality.

Ben Barry's profile page