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On the wall of a warehouse on Santa Clara University property, Liz Pham proudly displays her latest accolade: a forklift certificate. The written exam was easy, but the driving test required three attempts.

Why would a distinguished fashion designer who had worked her way up from a Vietnamese immigrant family growing up in San Jose, through a brutally competitive fashion school in Los Angeles, where only one in three graduated, to a globe-trotting design director, return home to work in a warehouse?

Because she’d made millions of dollars for other people, designing for their tastes, and it was time to create her own line that was true to her roots, a California aesthetic that would stand out from the old guard of luxury fashion. A Silicon Valley startup that would shake up the fashion world. And, true to form, one that required its founder to do everything, including operating a forklift.

In her decades of travelling the world for the major labels, Liz had learned not only how fashion is designed but how it’s manufactured. She could easily spot the difference between a hand-cut and hand-stitched, old-world garment or accessory versus the same item laser-cut and machine-stitched in a modern factory. But what she couldn’t find were handmade pieces free of unnecessary ornamentation, where the quality of the materials, the craftsmanship, and the design were on display, rather than hidden beneath branding that shouted instead of whispered. The quintessentially American attributes of an Eames chair or a Midcentury Modern house.

Lifelong learner becomes serious about her education

The idea of a graduate degree had been floating in Liz’s head for years. Practically impossible to act on while she was on the road ten months a year, often traveling internationally for sourcing and manufacturing, but there it was. 

Years earlier, she had moved back to San Jose to be with her ailing grandfather. Much later, after the loss of a childhood friend, the idea of going back to school took on new urgency. Just before she died, her friend made Liz promise. “Go back. Do the school thing. You said you would.”

"I promised," Liz says. "And I just decided, work less. Do what you want."

COVID, inadvertently, was a blessing. Online programs became serious. Universities that had been lukewarm about remote learning quickly got good at it. She looked around, didn't want to commute to Berkeley, and knew the Santa Clara name from growing up in its shadow without really knowing much about the school itself. So she signed up for the online MS in Marketing at the Leavey School of Business.

She was nervous. Her classmates were half her age. She hadn't been in school in a long time. She was intimidated, and one of her most intimidating classes was taught by Professor Desmond Lo, the chair of the marketing department.

Students were so stressed out before the final exam that no one knew quite what to expect. Liz remembers typing as fast as she could, submitting her work, and then just going on vacation.

Sitting in a kayak on the Sacramento River, an email came in from Dr. Lo asking to speak. She couldn’t respond for several stressful hours until she returned to her hotel room. Convinced she hadn’t done as well as she’d hoped, she returned his call.

Instead, he was calling for her advice on how to improve the final exam. He valued her perspective and was hoping her insights would help refine it for future students. It was a moment that reinforced how her experience in fashion had given her a practical understanding of distribution channels and why they succeed or fail.

She also shared that she was thinking about extending her MS with an MBA, and he floored her with a suggestion: why not earn a PhD and become an educator?

"For the first time in my life, somebody really believed in me," she says. She gets quiet for a second. "I never thought about that."

After she earned her MS in 2022, Liz enrolled in Santa Clara’s School of Education Doctor of Education program, where she focused on social impact. Having built strong relationships during her time at SCU, she chose to continue her academic journey within the same community. She wrote her dissertation on women of color entrepreneurs navigating structural and cultural barriers and defended in 2025.

Starting a company while earning a degree.

On top of all of her graduate work, Liz decided it was time to truly follow another lifelong dream and start her own fashion line.

Liz named her company Muoi, the Vietnamese word for “ten” in honor of her grandmother, who was the tenth child in her family. Her grandmother was refined, subtle, unhurried, the qualities Liz wanted in her designs. "If I mess up this line," she says, "she's going to come out of her grave and kick my butt."

Although a clothing designer at heart, she decided to launch Muoi with handbags because they had the smallest minimum order of any fashion item, allowing her to launch with the lowest investment possible.

Made in Italy by a tannery that works with Ferrari, Pagani, and Chanel. Liz found them by driving through the Italian countryside in a small car, walking into offices, and coming back again and again until they finally took her seriously.

The process is ancient. Each piece of leather is cut over a steel mold, not a laser, because lasers don't account for the memory in the hide. The curve of the animal, they told her, returns to the leather over time. Her bags hold their shape because the craftsmen cut with that in mind. Every handle is one continuous piece, no seam, because she told them early on: don't you dare put a seam there.

Unsurprisingly, her line is not cheap. Messenger bags start at $3,800, and she puts on gloves before showing how beautifully they’re constructed. $500 from every sale is donated to The Make-A-Wish Foundation, which also receives a limited-edition brown version, one of only 35 in existence, for their annual Evening of Wishes spring gala auction. In doing so, she supports chapters in both San Francisco and Italy.

The Muoi line may be glamorous, but running the company is decidedly not. Liz does the accounting, she built the metal shelves, and she operates the forklift. 

And Dr. Lo would be proud because she manages the distribution channels: moving components between the U.S. and Italy, navigating duties and tariffs on Italian goods, working closely with freight forwarders and external partners, and working through a delayed shipment in German customs so it arrived just in time for the holidays. “There are days,” she laughs, “where I think it’s a good thing I’m not drinking at the moment.”

But she keeps showing up. From hotel rooms in Florence at 3 a.m. for her Zoom classes. To the Italian factory, where she pushed for a full exterior pocket, knowing Americans want their phones within reach, even as she was told her bags were larger than traditional European designs, and wasn’t going to settle for less. And, yes, at the forklift certification course.

She already has two spring events planned with the Graduate Women in Business Club at MUOI’s warehouse facility. She wants to teach at Santa Clara one day. Eventually, when Muoi has the funds, she hopes to establish an SCU scholarship to support women leaders.

"I'm counting backwards now," she says. She'll be 54 soon. "Make good with what you have and be true to it."