Alumna Mahvish Zaman Brings the RISE Institute to Luxury Fashion House Ferragamo

At some point, everyone who has held a job experiences stress from work-related challenges, even if they love what they do. 

Recognizing a need for resilience within the corporate sector, Mahvish Zaman (MBA ’18), senior vice president of human resources and organization of Ferragamo, partnered with the RISE Institute of Pepperdine University to introduce a six-month-long curriculum of resilience skills to the luxury Italian fashion house’s workforce. 

“What are we doing for each human being that is at our company? That is a fundamental question that guides my work,” says Zaman. “If resilience is a skill, that means it can be taught and further developed. I am so lucky that my passion and conviction met Connie Horton’s expertise.” 

This spring Connie Horton (’82), vice chancellor and executive director of the RISE Institute, teamed up with Zaman to plan a training program for Ferragamo’s management community. The goal was to promote personal and professional resilience while advancing well-being success within each of RISE's six dimensions: physical, social, cognitive, spiritual, service, and life skills. In turn, these Ferragamo managers will train their teams of employees. 

A Need to RISE

As reported in a recent Gallup Workplace poll, employers who develop a culture of well-being are likely to see benefits across organizational outcomes and in the personal lives of their workforce. For example, when an employee is thriving, they miss 53 percent fewer days of work due to health-related issues. 

At a leadership conference in Miami, Zaman found herself discussing this very topic. While considering the societal headwinds affecting the general workforce, such as how job expectations have been rapidly altering since the advent of AI, managers and executives have been grappling with how to better support their employees' holistic well-being.

Gobir, Zaman, and Horton at the Ferragamo-RISE kickoff event

A self-described “forever-student of leadership,” Zaman began to brainstorm ways to support the well-being of the Ferragamo workforce with other attendees. She wanted to offer a program that would equip employees with something beyond detached motivational platitudes, instead providing practical resources to navigate both work and life challenges with confidence. This was when a conference attendee approached her, asking: 

“Have you ever heard of Pepperdine’s RISE Institute?”  

As an alumna of the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, Zaman paid extra attention to the recommendation. She immediately went to her alma mater’s website and began learning more about the RISE program, a cornerstone of student success. Zaman was impressed to learn that RISE is a program solidly based on research, which informs a myriad of offerings including small group instruction, coaching sessions, annual forums, and fellowships in which trained faculty integrate resilience practices into their classroom experience. 

Learning that RISE had now expanded to an institute with worldwide partnerships, providing resources not only across higher education and K–12 schools, but also to community organizations and employers, Zaman was eager to adapt these resilience pillars into Ferragamo’s work culture. 

“I knew that I had to partner with RISE right away,” says Zaman. “Because if I hadn’t found a program like RISE, I would have been forging something myself. Ensuring the workforce is mentally healthy and has resilience skills was keeping me up at night.” 

“Train the Trainer” Rollout 

Zaman was delighted to find a model that fit Ferragamo’s needs: RISE’s “Train the Trainer” modality. 

To kickoff the RISE x Ferragamo partnership, this April, Horton, Zaman, and Stacey Lee Gobir (’15, MDR ’17), RISE program director, convened at the fashion house’s headquarters in New York City. There, the Ferragamo management community learned about the basics of the program while also conducting preliminary self-assessments in order to track their progress as they advance through the curriculum. 

Horton (left) and Gobir (right) speaking with Ferragamo's managers

“We kept seeing the data and hearing the stories of employers: more employees are struggling to remain resilient under heavy workloads, transitions, and critiques, which directly harms retention, productivity, and organizational success,” says Horton. “Recognizing RISE could help address the need, we were eager to include corporations and employers as new program audiences during the institute's expansion.”

The course is organized into six sections; each month will focus on one of RISE’s aforementioned dimensions. As Zaman, Horton, and Gobir’s goal is to equip the Ferragamo workforce with skills they will practically carry into their professional and personal lives, the training features highly interactive virtual sessions in which participants reflect on what they've learned and share practical ways they've applied RISE's curriculum.

When the training program wraps up in the fall, managers will be fully prepared to train their employees on RISE principles. A target by the end of the year will be to have thoroughly equipped Ferragamo's workforce—from corporate teams to frontline retail workers—with resilience skills.  

“Working with Mahvish Zaman has been a great joy. She is an impressive leader, and as an alumna, she represents Pepperdine so well!  Her ‘people-first’ priority was in perfect sync with RISE’s goals,” adds Horton. “Seeing these talented Ferragamo managers immediately and readily engaging in discussions about their team’s challenges and eagerly learning skills that could help them and their employees was a rewarding confirmation that RISE resonates with this new corporate audience.”

Setting a Standard for Business 

Though the program began only a month ago, Zaman reports glowing results from her employees. Instead of dreading Monday mornings, feeling unsupported in job-related duties ahead, the corporate culture cultivated by the RISE program has helped employees view their workplace as a trusted source of support for mental health and well-being.

“Hearing Mahvish share that our initial training was ‘a shape-shifting session for our teams!’ and was getting ‘so much amazing feedback’ was icing on the cake!” says Horton. 

Through it all, the beating heart behind Zaman and Horton’s partnership is one that upholds the utmost dignity within each individual, recognizing that each employee is a whole person with professional and personal dreams, stressors, and concerns—knowing that supporting them with the best tools possible to navigate life’s challenges helps individuals flourish and companies thrive.     

Zaman hopes for other corporate leaders to follow in the footsteps of her vision, namely that it will become a standard offering for all companies to equip their employees with the skills to RISE. 

Learn more about Pepperdine’s RISE Institute.