Nov. 10, 2011

DALLAS (SMU) –Last week, former SMU tennis player Blake Mycoskie was a recipient of SMU’s prestigious Emerging Leader Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement demonstrated by a former SMU student who had left the university after 1992. 

Mycoskie entered SMU in 1995 and got his start as an entrepreneur while he was an undergraduate in the Cox School of Business. His first venture was a campus laundry service begun during his sophomore year, which expanded to seven other universities.

He went on to launch several other businesses before establishing TOMS Shoes in 2006, combining business savvy with a humanitarian spirit. The idea grew from a trip to Argentina during which he saw countless children who were unable to afford shoes. He returned to California with an inspiration to manufacture shoes based on a traditional Argentinean design and the commitment to give a pair of new shoes to a child in need for every pair sold. To date TOMS has given more than one million pairs of new shoes to children in 28 countries.

Mycoskie recently launched a new One for One product line, TOMS Eyewear. With every pair of sunglasses sold, TOMS will help give sight to someone in need. This would be done in three ways: medical treatment, prescription eyeglasses and cataract surgery. Mycoskie’s One for One social enterprise model is now taught in numerous universities and his work has been recognized with the U.S. Secretary of State’s Award of Corporate Excellence. He has also earned the Brand of the Year Award from Footwear News and was featured in People magazine’s “Heroes Among Us” section.