Staring down the company suggestion box at LA Gear, 19-year-old D’Wayne Edwards sketched a sneaker on a 3-by-5 notecard, signed his name and dropped it in the box. The next day, a different idea, and a different illustration, went in.Never mind that the Inglewood, Calif., native had no formal design education or training, or that his high school guidance counselor had dismissed his design dreams, telling him he’d be better off focusing on the military. Who cared that his job, as a file clerk in the accounting department of the trendy lifestyle brand, had nothing to do with design? Edwards, who had been sketching sneakers since he was 12, had ideas — lots of them.So for six months, he dropped a different design in the suggestion box, waiting to be noticed.Nearly 40 years later, Edwards’ fingerprints are all over the sneaker industry…Widely considered the most influential Black designer in the history of footwear, the former Jordan Brand executive who didn’t go to college has dedicated the second half of his career to creating a path for aspiring Black designers that didn’t exist for him. Edwards never set out to work in education, but a young future hoops Hall of Famer sparked his idea to teach, and Edwards first launched Pensole design academy in 2010 in Portland, Ore. Now 56, Edwards is president of Pensole Lewis College in Detroit, where he took over a formerly shuttered historically Black college and built a pipeline to footwear companies across the world.
