Four years ago, the Gilbert Family Foundation put $10 million behind Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design as it reopened in Detroit.
According to reports, the college has now received another $10 million commitment.
The interesting part isn’t the size of the check. It’s what Pensole has built in the four years between them — and whether that first investment changed what the college could actually do.
Pensole Lewis now trains students across product-creation disciplines including footwear, apparel, color and materials, and product marketing, while its programs connect students with companies and working professionals across the design industry. Its model includes industry programs, real-world briefs, mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities.
For a Black designer, that kind of access can put industry experience and professional relationships within reach before entering the workforce. For companies, it creates a direct pipeline to emerging designers in an industry where Black representation remains thin.
Jobs will be the first thing anyone measures. Patents, licensing agreements and graduate-founded companies are the harder numbers — the ones that begin to show whether a designer captures economic value beyond the first job.
A Detroit Business School, Repurposed
Violet T. Lewis founded what became the Lewis College of Business in 1928, creating an institution that trained Black women for professional business careers when many such opportunities were largely inaccessible to them. The college later operated in Detroit from 1939 until 2013. Michigan legislation signed in 2021 facilitated its reopening as Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design.
Edwards had spent a career watching a related gap in another industry. He entered footwear in 1989, eventually became a senior designer at Nike, worked on the Air Jordan XXI and XXII, and later founded Pensole Design Academy.
The reopening combined Lewis’s history with Edwards’s industry-focused approach to design education. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation in December 2021 facilitating the reopening of the college, which was expected to open in 2022.
The Gilbert Family Foundation provided $10 million over five years as a founding supporter of Pensole Lewis. The foundation described the money as part of its effort to create pathways into high-demand jobs for Detroit residents. Target was also a founding partner through its Racial Equity Action and Change strategy.
In 2026, the foundation announced another $10 million commitment. The latest money therefore follows the original five-year commitment; it should not be described as the original grant being reannounced.
Today’s programs cover areas including footwear, apparel, color and materials, and product creation. The college’s stated model is career-focused and built around learning by doing and industry partnerships.
It’s easy to underestimate how much is riding on a footwear-focused curriculum until you consider what the job actually involves. Someone has to turn a sketch into something that can be manufactured, priced and sold — decisions about fit, materials, construction and, less visibly, which customer the company is picturing when it makes those calls.
The Partner List Doubles as the Curriculum
Pensole Lewis has built partnerships and programs involving companies across footwear, apparel, retail, technology and design. The college’s current program portfolio includes industry-connected opportunities intended to give students professional exposure and product-creation experience.
That’s not a network most 20-year-olds build on their own.
Design hiring runs on things a transcript doesn’t show: a portfolio, familiarity with the right software, the ability to respond to a creative brief and an understanding of how products move from concept toward production. A gifted student can still walk into an interview without knowing how those pieces fit together.
Pensole Lewis is designed to close some of that distance by putting students closer to working professionals, industry briefs and employers.
Edwards also brought an established industry network into the institution. In 2026, Black Enterprise reported that more than 800 students had been positioned to pursue careers with major companies including Nike, Jordan, Converse, Carhartt, Adidas, PepsiCo, Apple, General Motors, Timberland, New Balance and The North Face.
The college’s New Balance relationship offers another measure of that connection. Edwards told Black Enterprise that nearly 300 students had secured one-year paid internships through the partnership’s 10-year history, with more than 40 ultimately hired as designers.
This year it became clearer than ever that we need to make a change, especially in the creative industry where lack of diversity is a fact and a real issue. — Dr. D’Wayne Edwards
The college has not yet produced a long public record of outcomes for its own degree graduates. That makes placement counts only an early measure. Starting pay, promotions and industry tenure will become more revealing as the alumni base matures.
An Industry Built on Black Culture, Designed by Almost Nobody Black
The 2019 AIGA Design Census put Black representation among designers at roughly 3 percent. Designer Brands separately said in 2022 that Black designers represented less than 5 percent of talent across the broader design industry. Those figures measure different populations and come from different sources, but both point to a substantial representation gap.
That gap matters in footwear because the industry sells products deeply connected to Black culture.
Black athletes have helped turn signature shoes into global businesses. Black musicians have helped shape sneaker culture. Brands routinely build campaigns around cultural ideas that emerged from Black communities.
The people deciding how those products actually get made have remained far less representative.
A designer’s fingerprints are on a product months before a campaign ever runs — the shape, the materials, who the shoe fits, whose body it was designed around. Getting more Black designers into that room matters.
But once a designer is working for a company, the economic relationship changes. Intellectual-property rights can be assigned to an employer under an employment agreement and applicable law. The designer receives compensation for the work; the company may retain the commercial rights.
That’s a reasonable trade for a salary, especially early in a career. It is also why headcount cannot be the whole story.
Designer Brands Didn’t Pretend Otherwise
Designer Brands put $2 million into a 2022 partnership with D’Wayne Edwards and Pensole to develop JEMS by Pensole, which the company described as the first Black-owned footwear factory in the United States. The factory was intended to produce shoes designed by Pensole Lewis graduate students for sale through DSW.
We see the footwear industry lacking effective representation by people of color, specifically Blacks. — Roger Rawlins
The significance of the partnership was its structure. The investment was not limited to scholarships or classroom programming. It connected design education to manufacturing, retail and an ownership vehicle.
That makes JEMS relevant to the larger question surrounding Pensole Lewis.
What’s missing from most corporate education partnerships is long-term public measurement. Companies frequently report investments, scholarships, workshops and participants. Those numbers establish activity. They do not necessarily show who eventually controls a product, owns a company or participates in the economics created by the work.
Pensole Lewis could eventually set a higher standard: an annual, anonymized graduate report tracking placement, pay, promotion and tenure, alongside patents, licenses, creator payments and alumni-founded businesses.
That data would tell the college which partnerships are producing careers — and which are producing something more valuable.
The Best Design a Student Makes Might Never Show Up in a Portfolio
A young designer can help build a shoe that sells around the world and never receive another payment from it after the paycheck clears.
That is not unusual. Employment agreements can give companies rights to work created within the scope of employment. Student projects, commissioned work and licensing arrangements can operate differently, depending on their contracts.
The distinction matters because a few years inside a major company can provide something difficult to buy independently: manufacturing knowledge, industry contacts, product-development experience and a view of how large brands actually operate.
Those things can become the foundation for a company of the designer’s own.
Ownership requires a different runway.
A founder needs money for samples, legal work, manufacturing, inventory and customer acquisition. Production mistakes consume capital quickly. Retail distribution can remain difficult even when the product is good.
Pensole Lewis already teaches elements of brand and product marketing. Its industry relationships create another possibility: moving graduates from employment into entrepreneurship.
That could mean companies commissioning graduate-run studios, licensing designs from alumni, buying from alumni-founded businesses or giving designers contractual participation in the upside of products they create.
The terms would matter. A project that transfers every right to the sponsor leaves the designer with experience and a portfolio credit. A licensing arrangement or royalty clause can give the creator an economic stake in what comes next.
Eventually, the College Faces Its Own Version of This Question
The original Gilbert Family Foundation commitment was structured over five years. The foundation has now announced a new $10 million commitment, but the publicly available announcement does not establish that the new commitment carries the same five-year structure.
That makes long-term sustainability a separate question.
Pensole Lewis has to maintain faculty, scholarships, facilities and student services while building an institution that is not dependent on any single funding cycle. A broad corporate network can diversify the college’s industry relationships. It does not, by itself, guarantee financial independence. The more durable question sits on the college’s own balance sheet: how much of its future revenue and productive capacity can it control?
An endowment can outlast a donor’s grant. Equipment owned outright can continue serving students after a sponsorship ends. Licensing revenue can create another source of income. A venture fund for graduate-founded companies would go further still, giving the college a direct financial interest in the success of businesses launched by its alumni.
That would be a different model from simply placing graduates into jobs.
What comes next will show up in unglamorous paperwork — offer letters, promotion notices, patent filings, licensing agreements and new business registrations.
That paper trail will eventually answer the real question behind the $10 million: whether Pensole Lewis helped build a larger Black workforce for existing brands, or helped more Black designers claim a piece of the value they create.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did the Gilbert Family Foundation first commit $10 million to Pensole Lewis?
The foundation provided $10 million over five years as a founding supporter of Pensole Lewis. The college reopened in 2022 after Michigan legislation facilitated the revival of the former Lewis College of Business. In September 2026, GFF announced a new $10 million commitment.
Was the 2026 $10 million the same money announced earlier?
The available 2026 reporting describes it as a new commitment. AfroTech and Black Enterprise both characterize the latest $10 million as an expansion or deepening of GFF’s support. The foundation’s earlier materials separately identify its original $10 million, five-year commitment.
Did Target contribute the $10 million?
No. GFF provided the original $10 million commitment. Target was a separate founding partner through its Racial Equity Action and Change strategy.
Why do companies work with Pensole Lewis?
The college’s programs are built around product creation and career preparation, with industry-connected programs designed to expose students to professional practice. The college’s New Balance partnership, for example, has produced paid one-year internships and design hires, according to Edwards.
Who owns a product a Pensole Lewis graduate designs?
It depends on the agreement governing the work. Employment contracts can assign intellectual-property rights to an employer, while sponsored projects, competitions and licensing arrangements can establish different terms. Ownership, royalty, patent-credit and future-use provisions should therefore be examined in the relevant contract.
What would actually show whether the investment is working?
Graduate salaries, promotion rates and industry tenure would show whether the pipeline is producing durable careers. Patents, licensing agreements, creator payments and alumni-founded companies would go further by showing whether graduates are capturing economic value beyond employment. The college’s financial position after the original five-year commitment would also provide evidence of how much institutional independence the funding helped create.
