Whitney Williams ’10 discovered a love of design at age 4 when she started sewing together a shirt in her preschool craft class.

By her teens, she was creating one-of-a-kind jewelry and handbags from vintage store finds and regularly selling them to a growing base of fans, who often bought them right off her body.

But it wasn’t until a high school graduation trip to Italy’s Amalfi Coast that Whitney decided to really go for it and launch her own line of handcrafted jewelry. She was walking down the beach in Positano after sunset and noticed the number of craftsmen working in their shops to create one-of-a-kind designs they would sell the next day.

“It was so cool, everything was handmade and these craftsmen were living out their lives, living their passion, doing what they wanted to do,” she says.

Her freshman year in college, she started her own company called Tramonti, the Italian word for sunset. Borrowing money from her parents, she launched the e-commerce site tramontibywhitney.com and within a few years a handful of Texas retailers also started carrying her designs.

In 2010, when she graduated with a degree in strategic communications, she had already been named “One of America’s Coolest Start-Ups by Inc. magazine.

It wasn’t just about ringing up sales for Whitney, however. She also wanted to give back. Even as a teen, she had dedicated the profits from her creations to help the Elisa Project, a Dallas-based non-profit that provides support and education to those battling anorexia.

With Tramonti, Williams decided to donate 10 percent of her sales to a charity, selecting a different organization each year. Most recently, sales have supported The Gladney Center, a Fort Worth-based adoption agency. Williams spent her senior internship at Gladney, designing a signature bracelet for donors to the On Their Own project that benefits orphaned children who have to learn to become independent adults without a family.

Since graduation, Williams has been juggling her jewelry business while working as a publicist at J Public Relations in New York. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the New York-New Jersey coast, Williams began offering Love Bracelets, made with silk cords knotted around an 18-karat gold charm, for $50, with half the proceeds going to the Red Cross to help hurricane victims.

She also tries to regularly return to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to see family and friends and hold trunk shows.

“The Fort Worth community is such a supportive place,” she says. “There’s a real spirit of giving back and at TCU, it’s just ingrained in the culture.”
On the Web:
tramontibywhitney.com