The New Factory
Alia Sarastita
Advocacy
Alia is the Co-founder and CEO of The New Factory, a worker-owned fashion upcycling co-operative on a mission to reduce landfill-bound textile waste and drive social and promote circularity in fashion. Partnering with fashion brands and companies, The New Factory collects, sorts, and upcycles textile waste into eco-friendly merchandise, apparel products, and new upcycled solid panels for interior design materials.
Passionate about fashion industry reform, Alia believes circularity should not merely be an environmental fix but also a path to advancing social and economic justice in the sector. She is also currently active on related research and advocacy campaigns in her capacity as part of the Fashion Revolution Indonesia affiliate.
Before founding The New Factory, Alia spent over eight years at the intersection of business, technology development economics, working for institutions such as the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Southeast Asia, a think tank based at the Department of Economics at the MIT. She holds a business & finance degree from the School of Business and Management ITB, and a master’s in comparative politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
