Danielle Chiel is founder and CEO of KOCO, a knitwear company specialising in commercial hand knitting. KOCO (Knit One, Change One) engages women in rural villages in the south of Tamil Nadu, India, to produce artisan knitwear for global fashion brands.

Combined, her lifelong passions for innovation, education, and giving women a voice, have enabled her to make significant social contributions in both Australia and India.

She’s a published author, her book KOCO – How Handknitting is Changing Lives and the Fashion Industry describes the story of KOCO’s sisterhood, has touched the hearts of brands and consumers around the world. In this interview, Danielle shares...

How knitting became a passion for her from a young age, but because of family expectations, she initially took an academic path before finding her way back to fashion.
The story of how new Australian government legislation in the fashion industry forced her to find knitters outside of the country, taking her to Southern India.
How KOCO was established in Australia by Danielle in partnership with women who live in rural villages of Tamil Nadu southern India.
Danielle talks about what began as a solution to producing hand-knitted garments offshore is now a sisterhood of artisans and a business with the United Nations’ Global Goals for Sustainable Development entwined in their DNA. They have scaled the art of hand knitting to produce commercial quantities of garments, all entirely hand knitted.
Along the way she is helping to give those women a voice, inadvertently also helping to break the economic cycle and the cycle of DV that many of them have lived with. As she says it’s about supporting them to be strong, independently-minded women.
We also talk about how for people who have connected to their higher purpose, it is often connected to something that they experienced in their childhood. I reference a book called The Desire Map Experience by Danielle le Porte

I hope you enjoy this episode and the fascinating stories and insights that Danielle shares.

Connect with Danielle:

KOCO website

Danielle's Linkedin Profile