Tory Burch Foundation Honors Martha Stewart at Inaugural Founders Breakfast

Martha Stewart and Tory Burch know how to draw a crowd — even first thing in the morning.

The Tory Burch Foundation’s inaugural founders breakfast saw its doors open promptly before 8 a.m. at The Pierre on Thursday, and when programming started shortly thereafter, it was for a full room ranging from supporters of Burch’s foundation to the morning’s honorees, most notably awarding Martha Stewart with the Iconic Founder award.

“I can’t even tell you how many emails I got saying, ‘7:45 a.m., are you kidding me?’” Burch joked to a crowd that included Pamela Anderson, Aerin Lauder, Pierre-Yves Roussel, Alina Cho, Natalie Massenet and more.

The event didn’t only highlight marquee names such as Stewart. Select fellows of the foundation also received Founder Awards across industries, such as El Guapo Bitters’ Christa Cotton, AmorSui’s Beau Wangtrakdulee and Partake Foods’ Denise Woodard. Each of them shared their stories of founding and building their businesses, as well as the trials and tribulations of their respective paths.

Among them, Woodard went on to found her allergen-free snack brand after a life-threatening allergic reaction her daughter suffered at just one year old, while Cotton detailed the origins of her brand’s name (it included a bartender and her dog), and Wangtrakdulee discussed using her Ph.D. in chemistry to create reusable PPE for medical providers.

Stewart, who joined Burch for an on-stage Q&A after her panel, had words of wisdom for the cohort. “You have to really stick with your ideas and understand the massiveness of it,” she said. “If you have passion and feeling for something that you think is good, people need it and want it, then you can go do it and remember you did it.”

Though she’s evolved from author and media mogul to starting her own CBD range, it’s about “evolution, not reinvention,” she said. “There are countless opportunities for the entrepreneurial mind, so many improvements to be made. We’re in a difficult time now economically and politically, and we have to continue to do our good work and make people understand that there is a future.”

That message resonated with Burch, who, post-event, said honoring Stewart was “my number-one dream.”

As for what no one told her in the early days of her business, she said, “In my case, there’s a lot of naysayers, a lot of people weighing in and having different opinions. I think of negativity as noise and believe in yourself and don’t let people write your story.”

As the breakfast was a first of its kind for the foundation, Burch said her vision is to scale the fellowship program to more than the current cap at 50 new members annually.

“Right now, we’re serving only 50 entrepreneurs per year. They contributed $340 million to the economy last year,” said Tiffany Dufu, president of the Tory Burch Foundation. “We need to get to a $1 billion by 2030 so we’re increasing the number of women entrepreneurs and laser focused on ensuring they’re growing their businesses.”