Learn
Guild members receive access to Nest Connect, an exclusive digital learning platform that houses a growing library of business development e-courses, toolkits, and templates for small businesses prepared by industry experts.
Photo credit: Marissa Baca
All of our programs and resources are free for Nest Guild members. If you are not yet a Guild member or you don’t know your member log-in details for Nest Connect, please email artisans@buildanest.org.
Building + Protecting Creative Businesses
Protecting creative work is just as important as creating it.
Nest is proud to present Building & Protecting Creative Businesses, a seven-part educational series on the legal and business foundations behind today’s creative brands. From intellectual property and contracts to product development, market trends, licensing, collaborations, and counterfeiting, this series breaks down what makers and creative entrepreneurs need to know to build with confidence.
Join Nest for live, virtual conversations and dynamic e-learning courses designed for creative entrepreneurs, designers, makers, and growing brands.
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Join this live, virtual workshop to discover how intellectual property shapes creative businesses, innovation, and brand protection. From creative ideas and product development to trademarks, ownership, and enforcement, participants will gain practical insight into protecting what they create in today’s competitive marketplace.
Session Presenters: Elisheva Jasie and Rosena Sammi
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Enroll in this self-paced e-learning course and explore the fast-changing world of reselling and counterfeit goods. Learn how brands identify, combat, and prevent counterfeiting while gaining insight into the growing resale market, emerging industry trends, and the strategies shaping modern brand protection and secondary commerce.
Course Instructors: Elisheva Jasie and Rosena Sammi
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Explore this self-paced e-learning course and discover how to build your business from concept to consumer and avoid legal pitfalls. From design and innovation to manufacturing, distribution, and quality control, participants will gain insight into the strategies businesses use for how to design, source, and commercialize products responsibly and legally.
Available on Nest Connect on July 7
Course Instructors: Elisheva Jasie and Rosena Sammi
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Join this live webinar and discuss trends within the US markets and explore how these open up growth opportunities for your brand, along with best practices to apply to international companies.
Session Presenter: Karen Gibbs
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Join this live, virtual workshop for a practical introduction to the fundamentals of contract law. Explore what makes a contract legally valid, and how to best utilize these legal assets for safeguarding your work and intellectual property, while gaining insight into the challenges and considerations involved in these agreements.
Session Presenters: Elisheva Jasie and Rosena Sammi
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Join this live, virtual session to discover how brands unlock growth through licensing and strategic collaborations. Learn how intellectual property and brand value can be leveraged to build impactful partnerships, create new products, and drive long-term business expansion.
Session Presenters: Elisheva Jasie and Rosena Sammi
Meet the Instructors
Elisheva Jasie
Elisheva Jasie is a seasoned licensing and legal executive and beauty industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of intellectual property, brand strategy, and business growth. Her expertise spans business development, startup incubation, M&A, commercial transactions, licensing, and IP strategy.
Elisheva has structured and led high-impact licensing partnerships across the fragrance, beauty, fashion, and luxury sectors, collaborating with globally recognized celebrities and brands including Beyoncé, Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Burberry, and Kylie Jenner.
Elisheva is the founder of Alchemy 7, an advisory boutique that helps luxury, fashion, beauty, and consumer brands drive revenue, expand brand awareness, and amplify their values through strategic alliances, collaborations, and licensing partnerships. In addition, she teaches at Parsons and provides strategic consulting to nonprofit organizations.
Rosena Sammi
Rosena Sammi designed and crafted jewelry collections under her namesake line for more than a decade. Her jewelry was sold at all the leading department stores, worn by A-List celebrities such as Rihanna and Blake Lively and was featured in the likes of Vogue. However, she grew disenchanted with the rise of fast fashion and the lack of diversity in the jewelry industry.
So was born ‘The Jewelry Edit', a multi-brand e-commerce jewelry boutique carrying over 75 different designers, driven by a mission of social responsibility and diversity. In 2025 Rosena went on to launch The Jewelry Edit Foundation, a non-profit focused on providing the next generation of jewelry talent with resources, mentorship and a supportive community.
Prior to her roles in fashion, Rosena practiced corporate law for almost a decade at leading law firms in New Zealand and New York. Rosena is admitted to the New York Bar and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Parsons School of Design. Rosena has also guest lectured and spoken at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, Fordham School of Law and Princeton University.
Karen Gibbs
Karen Gibbs is a global speaker, strategist, and systems builder with over 30 years of experience helping artisan enterprises and handmade brands in 70+ countries expand their markets. As Co-Founder of ByHand Consulting, she advises entrepreneurs, funders, and institutions on scaling sustainable businesses and develops frameworks that drive market access, funding pipelines, and economic transformation for artisan businesses. She partners with Shoppe Object on the Global Artisan Project, providing marketing coaching and promotional support to global brands, and serves on the Board of the International Folk Art Market as liaison for artist education programs. Her prior work includes board service with Aid to Artisans and Hand/Eye Fund, co-founding a successful wholesale lifestyle company, and consulting with USAID, the World Bank, multiple UN agencies, ITC, and dozens of foreign governments.
Founded in 2007, ByHand Consulting is a boutique consulting firm which creates marketing strategies to increase sales for global artisan enterprises, develops business coaching programs for social entrepreneurs, and forms sourcing partnerships to bring innovative handmade products to market.
Sample Courses
Course Demo
Capture Craft: Elevating Your Product Photography
Developed by professional photographers, storytellers, and entrepreneurs, Gabriela Sapon (Gabriela Sapon Photography) and Yassir Mohamed (Yasyas Films), this course is designed to equip artisan businesses with tangible insights to elevate product photography and optimize images for various digital platforms.
Learning Objectives:
Styling, angle, and aesthetic tips for various product types
Managing a photograph library of product images
Strategies for best utilizing product images on websites and social media
Course Demo
Contracts & Confidentiality: Royalties, Sampling, & Agreements
Within this informative session, Attorney and Associate Director of Fashion Law Institute Jeff Trexler walks artisan and maker business leaders through the role of contracts and confidentiality and provides insight into important agreement frameworks such as design royalties and sampling for artisan & maker businesses.
Learning Objectives:
Components of a well-designed contract
Importance of wording in contracts
Four-dimensional fashion contracts with terms being found in purchase orders, formal agreements, tech packs, and samples
Featured Instructors
Our instructors are experts in their field and lend that knowledge and industry experience to Nest Guild members by volunteering to lead courses, mentor, facilitate workshops, or provide consultation services with handcraft businesses in our Guild.
Mallory Solomon
Mallory is the CEO and Co-Founder of Salam Hello, a Moroccan-based rug company that works directly with local Amazigh women all over Morocco.
Tsui Yuen-Pappas
Tsui is a creative executive with over 25 years of experience working in the fashion industry. Her career started in design and had since expanded to include sustainable global sourcing and manufacturing, of designer ready-to- wear, footwear, and accessories.
Support
Nest Fellows are experts in their field and lend that knowledge and industry experience to Nest Guild members by volunteering to lead courses, mentor, facilitate workshops, or provide consultation services with handcraft businesses in our Guild.
Are you interested in teaching a course or leading a workshop for the Nest Guild?
Let us know →
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A Perspective on Craft
Explore the histories, experiences, perspectives of your fellow Nest Guild members who share how they celebrate craft, community, and culture.
The Nest Guild is a community for makers committed to the responsible production of craft products either yourself or with artisans. If you are directly involved in the design and/or production of craft-based products, this community is for you.