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Sara Hartmann Assistant Professor, Design Innovation Assistant Professor, Fashion Design
A person with long black hair and bangs is wearing a black top, looking directly at the camera against a gray background.
  • email sjhartman@massart.edu
  • phone 617-879-7305
  • education
    • 2010 - MBA, Entrepreneurship, Simmons University
    • 2004 - BFA, SIM and Fashion Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
  • pronouns she/her/hers

Sara Hartmann is an educator and arts entrepreneurship change agent.  As faculty at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, she founded the Creative Economy Business Incubator, a scale-agnostic program designed to support the unique needs of art, design, and cultural ventures.  Sara also produces MassArt’s Creative Economy Workshop Series in partnership with the City of Boston. This popular series offers free business skills training and professional development workshops for artists and designers. Since 2019, these two programs have served more than 2000 artists and creative entrepreneurs.

Sara has taught business and design at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Simmons University, and Lasell College. Prior to academia, she worked both as a costume designer for theater and opera, and as a digital marketer for apparel and consumer product start-ups.  Her experience moving between the cultural and innovation economies has inspired her work addressing the resource gaps faced by would-be founders in creative industries.

Industry Experience

As an active participant in the regional creative business ecosystem, Sara has served as Director of Marketing at Osmium Menswear and co-founded the fair trade retailer Secret Ships. Her work in creative entrepreneurship has been featured at Mass Innovation Nights and covered in The Improper Bostonian and Racked Boston. Sara has designed costumes for The History Channel, The Boston Conservatory, The Stoneham Theater, and Company One and has constructed costume pieces that appeared on Broadway stages and in major motion pictures.

Publications

Hartmann, Sara (2021), To Build a More Just Economy We Must Tell Honest Stories About Entrepreneurship. Design Museum Magazine. 2021

Moore, Lynda & Silva, Indrani & Hartmann, Sara. (2012). An Investigation into the Financial Return on Corporate Social Responsibility in the Apparel Industry. Journal of Corporate Citizenship. 2012. 10.9774/GLEAF.4700.2012.sp.00008.

Presentations and Panels

2025 Keynote Speaker, Ohio Artpreneurship Summit

2025 “Beyond the Hero: Equitable Narratives in Entrepreneurial Storytelling”  Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education, Kansas City, MO

2024 “Financial Anxiety in the Creative Economy”, Creative Advocacy Institute Conference. Invited by MassCreative, Lowell MA

2024 “Generative AI and Equity in Arts Career Pipelines”, St. Botolph House DEI Series, Boston MA

2024 “Fear and Money: Addressing Financial Anxiety in the Classroom” Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education Conference, Raleigh NC

2024 “Pricing Your Work” Creative Economy Series, Massachusetts College of Art and Design Boston, MA

2023 “Marketing Basics for Creative Entrepreneurs”, Arts and Business Council, Boston MA

2023 Panelist: The State of Gig Work in the Creative Economy” Massachusetts Cultural Council, Pao Center for the Arts, Boston, MA

2020 “Strategic Planning in a Crisis”, Creative Economy Series, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston MA

2019 Panelist “Part-time Entrepreneurship”, All Together Now: Women’s Entrepreneurship Conference

2019 “Finance Basics for Creatives” Self-Employment in the Arts Conference

Connect

Professional Affiliations

Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education 2019 – present

Student Run Business Association 2021- present

Design Museum Foundation Council 2020 – present

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