Growing up witnessing the impact that her family had on communities through medicine, Nina Means knew she wanted to lead a life with purpose and sought to find where she could find her footing and make her mark on the world.
Means, a doctoral student in the Executive Ed.D. program, was recently selected among Austin Woman Magazine’s Trend Disrupters for 2025 and currently serves as Austin Community College’s first director of the ACC Fashion Incubator, which prepares aspiring designers and entrepreneurs for a career in the fashion industry. Her path to her current role has been anything but seamless, jumping from health care to fashion designing and teaching. Yet as she continues to design her career path, she has a leading thread—a desire to use her talents to make an impact.
I think I always just wanted to make a difference in communities that I could see needed support and help,
Means said.
What began for her as a career in public health, working with a variety of programs and services including cardiovascular health and an international health agency, led Means to obtaining her master’s degree in public health from George Washington University. But after reflecting on her lifelong dream to pursue fashion, she decided she would regret not chasing this dream too.
I did my plan B first,
Means said. But I got to the point in my career where I was like if I don’t try this, I am going to be very upset that I never gave myself the chance to do what I wanted to do with my life.
With a calculated risk, Means applied to a top fashion school to obtain an associate’s degree in the field, since she already has a master’s degree. She packed up her life in Washington D.C. and moved to Florence, Italy to complete the first year of the program. Then, she returned to the U.S. and completed her second year in New York City, where she worked with high-end designers and saw the designs she worked on presented at the Lincoln Center.
It was very exciting to get to work in New York City as a designer, in the space that I wanted to be in, doing what I wanted to do,
Means said.
Upon graduation, she began her own collection in a few stores in Texas. One day, she said a buyer told her there was an opening for a fashion incubator director at ACC and invited her to put her hat in the ring for consideration.
I have enjoyed the chance to share what I have learned in working in the full-time industry and getting the chance to coach and encourage students and create space for more brands to exist in Austin,
Means said.
The single mother of one said seeking her doctorate through COE’s Executive Ed.D. program in Higher Education Leadership felt like a natural step after realizing that she has held education related roles for more than half of her career.
From patient education to health promotion, Means said she sees a lot of parallels between the lessons in education and communication that she is receiving at the College of Education and her past experiences, which has resonated with her.
Each step of my career has prepared me to do excellent work at each space,
Means said, adding that she brings the same mindset of service and meeting the consumers’ needs to education as she would have done conducting breast cancer intervention in southeast Washington D.C. or building out a new collection.
I bring that same product mindset when I think about building out education that serves students where they are, how they are and where they think they are going,
Means said.
Means said she is a strong believer in higher education as a vehicle for changing people’s lives because it puts students in rooms and places they would not ordinarily be in and opens up the world in a very unique way. That’s why she said she hopes to use her education to open the higher education pathway to underserved communities and stay at the forefront of students’ needs to ensure their success.
I truly believe higher education shapes the future of humanity and the way that we process how we think,
Means said. It is a very powerful and important seat that higher education plays in the world.
According to Means, she is most excited to be a part of the solution in helping communities continue to thrive through both her doctoral program at UT Austin and the program she leads at ACC.
She said ACC’s structure as one of the largest community colleges and widely innovative ways have given her the opportunity to build out systems and processes to support student success. Currently, the program consists of designer cohorts who over the course of a year go through multi-format courses in marketing, sales, business operations to production so designers can understand how to get a product to market and make a business out of their creativity.
Meanwhile, she said she is using her COE education to feel more competent in learning the language of higher education and observing the program’s cohort model to duplicate its successes and learn from the user experience perspective.
Through the mentorship of the program’s faculty, she said she has felt very supported, and they have become friends as much as they are her leaders.
I feel like my voice in this space has grown because of what I have learned as a function of the program.
Additionally, Means said the Executive Ed.D. program was the perfect fit as she sought to grow her career while also being able to take care of her son.
I needed to stay employed, I needed to stay in my job, but to also be able to pursue the next step,
Means said. Working in education, you can only go so far with your master’s degree, you need a doctorate to be considered for these advanced roles. I am a woman of ambition, so I was like well, let’s go get our doctorate.
As she works her way through the program, she said her research is focused on digital badges and the future of education. She said she seeks to understand how students can utilize these symbols of microlearning to be recognized for their employable skills and leverage these as credentials as they move through their educational and professional journeys.
Thinking about her next steps and the opportunities that may lay ahead for her to apply her research and skills upon completing her doctorate, she said her first driving force is her son and the second is a desire to continue making impact.
I have a faith driven background for how I go about my work and my life,
Means said. I think it is important to use your talent to the best of your ability. Just to use them and don’t leave anything on the table, there is a life that cannot be redone later.
Means said though she does not consider herself a disrupter with an er,
which she said has a connotation of disrupting with chaos and the intention to overtake, she identifies with the definition of disruptor ending in or.
This, she said, relates to leading with innovation and purpose and not just being busy but being busy doing the right things.
I am a big believer in having no regrets,
Means said. As I am living life forward, yesterday is over, let’s make the best of what we have today and expand as far as we can to do the best work that we can.
