Lingerie Designer Mary Green Wins 'Vision Award'
Mary Green, proprietress of her eponymous lingerie company, has employed “refugees or [individuals] in political asylum from their own lands” for nearly 20 years for her 30-year-old business. Immigrants from countries such as North Vietnam, Burma and Ukraine have been placed with jobs in her San Francisco headquarters through the International Rescue Committee organization.
On June 12, the designer was recognized for her activist efforts and awarded with a “Woman of Vision Leadership” award at the Retinitis Pigmentosa International 35th annual “Vision Awards” at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi presented the award to Green, whom she called “a committed activist in many areas of social improvement and humane governments, from solar-power cooperatives to stem-cell advancement.”
The Vision Awards were created in 1972 by the nonprofit organization Retinitis Pigmentosa International Society for Degenerative Eye Disease and Related Disorders Inc., which seeks to reverse blindness.
Among the “pioneering visionaries” in the music, film, television, technology, medical research and leadership communities that were awarded this year were YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen; Dr. Dong Fen Chen, a researcher of curative stem-cell applications for blindness; and accomplished actors such as Danny Glover, Martin Landau, Stacy Keach and Malcolm McDowell.
Green was the first recipient of a Vision Award to hail from the apparel industry. —Rhea Cortado
