Audrey McLoghlin, founder and CEO of Frank & Eileen, has made a career out of transforming moments of adversity into opportunity.
Audrey McLoghlin, Founder and CEO, Frank & Eileen
“I’m obsessed with silver linings,” said McLoghlin, who launched her company during the uncertainty of the Great Recession.
McLoghlin’s positive and creative thinking has certainly paid off. She began Frank & Eileen with a unique mission to reinvent women’s button-up shirts with the best Italian fabrics in the world. With a strong dedication to ethical manufacturing and empowering women entrepreneurs, Frank & Eileen has become a B Corporation-certified leader in sustainable fashion.
Driven by these core values, McLoghlin launched the Frank & Eileen Giving Pledge in 2020—a $10 million, ten-year initiative to support women entrepreneurs through education. After fulfilling the initial pledge early, this year, Frank & Eileen doubled its Giving Pledge to $20 million to support the education of the women leaders of tomorrow.
McLoghlin discussed her fearless approach to entrepreneurship and philanthropy during an October Innovative Leadership (iLead) Speaker Series event, a fireside chat moderated by Susan Brennan (Assistant Dean, MIT Sloan Career Development Office).
Jumping into entrepreneurship
When asked about her career journey, McLoghlin explained that she initially did not set out to become an entrepreneur in the fashion industry. She entered college unsure of what career she wanted to pursue.
“I had no vision of what I wanted to be when I grew up,” said McLoghlin. “I just knew I wanted to build something.”
Since she loved math, McLoghlin ultimately decided to study industrial engineering at Georgia Tech. After graduation, McLoghlin worked for an MIT engineering startup in Boston. When the dot-com bubble burst, she saw it as an opportunity to rethink her career path. Motivated by her passions for manufacturing and textiles, she moved to Los Angeles to learn about manufacturing and eventually began working in the fashion industry.
That same passion would later inspire McLoghlin to found Frank & Eileen. One day while working at a factory, she discovered a book of squares of Italian menswear fabrics. She was immediately intrigued with and impressed by the beauty and quality of these fabrics.
“I knew there was nobody using these fabrics in women’s clothing,” said McLoghlin. “So, I wanted to set out to reinvent the button-up shirt for women using these insane menswear fabrics.”
McLoghlin’s vision turned Frank & Eileen into the influential brand that it is today. However, she was quick to point out that she did not wait for the perfect time to launch her business. She simply threw herself into it, a mindset that she encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to adopt.
“Just do it if you’re excited enough about it,” she advised.
As McLoghlin’s business grew and she became a parent, she began thinking about her time more strategically. She acknowledges that pursuing entrepreneurial passions can be challenging, especially for women juggling their careers and family responsibilities.
Considering all the demands placed on entrepreneurs, McLoghlin does not believe in balance. Instead, she believes that people only have three buckets—areas of focus such as self, career, and family. The self bucket involves self-care activities like exercise, getting enough sleep, or reading a book. This bucket can be difficult to prioritize, especially for women.
“I think you need to really fill up your own bucket so you can take care of the other ones,” said McLoghlin.
She explained that this means that women are only left with two “buckets” to devote to other priorities like their careers, children, and relationships.
“Maybe you can have it all, but not at the same time,” McLoghlin said. “So, you’ve got to really pace it out.”
Leading through impact
As an entrepreneur, McLoghlin has made sure to devote time to focusing on her company’s values in addition to its products. Frank & Eileen partners with ethical and sustainable manufacturers to create garments using high-quality natural materials. The company also emphasizes transparency and traceability in its supply chain. Frank & Eileen describes its values using the acronym BETTER: B Corp-certified, Empowers women, Transparent, Traceable, Ethical, and Responsible.
Becoming certified as a B Corp was a major milestone for the company—one that came out of yet another uncertain time. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, McLoghlin first sprang into action to tackle challenges caused by the sudden global closure of all retail stores carrying Frank & Eileen. However, as her schedule cleared due to travel restrictions, she quickly identified a silver lining. She now had time to complete the B Corp certification process, which requires extensive documentation.
After applying, she learned the company had been accepted—but that wasn’t all.
“We got the highest impact score of any woman-owned globally recognized apparel company,” explained McLoghlin.
Three years later, the company was recertified and continues to lead with that distinction. The B Corp certification not only communicates the company’s strong values to its customers, but also to potential team members. As Frank & Eileen grew, McLoghlin realized that she needed to hire like-minded team members to take on some of her responsibilities. Having a clearly defined set of values helps to attract candidates who resonate with these values.
“You set up this kind of world, and you attract the kind of person that wants to be in your environment,” McLoghlin said. “And they tend to be much more successful in staying long term.”
McLoghlin’s long-term thinking about her business extends to its impact. At the end of 2020, McLoghlin established the Frank & Eileen Giving Pledge to commemorate its B Corp certification.
“I said, I’m going to pledge $10 million over ten years to help create more women entrepreneurs because I think that one single change will change the world,” recalled McLoghlin.
Figuring out how to create this impact through philanthropy involved a learning curve. McLoghlin decided that she would collaborate with higher education institutions teaching entrepreneurship to learn how she could work with them to help create more women entrepreneurs.
One of these partners is MIT Sloan, which came on her radar after she did a Google search for the top higher education institutions in entrepreneurship education. After speaking with the school, she established the Frank & Eileen Female Leaders Fellowship, which supports women MIT Sloan MBA candidates. The fellowship is endowed, so it will support women students in perpetuity, an impact that is not lost on McLoghlin.
“That's very gratifying in and of itself,” reflected McLoghlin. “I'll be long dead, and amazing young women will be changing the future going through MIT.”
Inspiring the next generation
The Frank & Eileen Female Leaders Fellowship was only the beginning of McLoghlin’s involvement with MIT Sloan. Frank & Eileen has since sponsored a capstone project on demand forecasting for students in MIT Sloan’s Master of Business Analytics (MBAn) program.
Looking ahead, Frank & Eileen is working with the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship on a project to educate young entrepreneurs in grades 7–12 on disciplined entrepreneurship. This 24-step framework for building a successful startup was created by Bill Aulet, SF ’94 (Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice; Managing Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship).
McLoghlin is excited for this special opportunity to help the next generation of leaders build an entrepreneurial mindset at a young age. After all, she knows firsthand how cultivating this mindset can transform someone’s future.
“If you can get in there and change a young person's mindset of how they see themselves in the world and what they think they can do, you get them early and that's going to change their whole trajectory of life,” she said.
Held by the MIT Sloan Office of External Relations in partnership with the MIT Leadership Center, iLead showcases inspirational leaders who have made an impact on their organizations and communities through innovative management. This iLead was co-hosted by the Entrepreneurship Club, the Sloan Women in Management (SWIM) Club, and the Retail & Consumer Goods Club.
