Gallatin alum Elliot Greenfield always had a passion for fashion retail, but didn’t realize that he wanted to academically pursue the field until he started going to NYU. After taking on numerous jobs and industries during college and beyond, Greenfield managed to rise to a top marketing position at Swarovski — a world-renowned crystal jewelry company — six short years after graduation.
A household name, Swarovski amasses about $2 billion in revenue annually. The company’s high-quality jewelry and gemstones, both natural and self-made, can be found in about 2,800 stores across 170 countries worldwide.
In an interview with WSN, Greenfield discussed navigating NYU schools, experimenting across industries and working with celebrities at Swarovski.
This article has been edited for length and clarity.
WSN: What were the highlights of your time as a Gallatin student?
Greenfield: I loved the fashion business practicum — that was the highlight of mine in terms of coursework. I also loved the media and fashion courses that Moya Luckett taught. There were a number of different courses, both offered to the general student population as well as courses that I constructed in partnership with trusted advisers and professors, that really helped cater my own personal curriculum to the interest that I had in retail. I was also very particular to have the most wide-ranging experiences during my internship. So, in each internship, I took on a different subject matter within the industry of either retail or entertainment. Whether it be sales or communication or finance or digital, it was really important for me to diversify the experiences that I had before selecting what my focus area of a full-time role would look like. I worked every semester during my time at NYU — with the exception of the semester I studied abroad in Florence — and it was very critical to the success that I have now in my full-time adult professional life.
Greenfield’s academic journey at NYU was not linear — he initially majored in Media, Culture, and Communication at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, but found himself seeking more flexibility in his education. So, with a deep-rooted passion for fashion retail, Greenfield decided to transfer to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and pursue a concentration in “fashion and entertainment as social and cultural derivatives.”
From working in marketing and communications roles for companies like Burberry and NBCUniversal to freelancing for a fashion news publication, Greenfield graduated from NYU in 2016 with a wide range of experience under his belt. However, he said that his first job after graduation was in a position drastically different from any role he had ever had — a mailroom attendant for Paradigm Talent Agency in New York.
WSN: How did you find yourself working as a mailroom attendant after graduation?
Greenfield: Within talent agencies, an institutional way of growing within the organization is to start in the mail room. Every one of the big Hollywood agencies has the same kind of workflow and promotion process. I started there, and I was assisting in shadowing agents, and I just didn’t see the trajectory for myself in the same way that I knew some of my peers saw it for themselves. I thought really long and hard about, ‘What should I do next?’ I really missed the fashion and retail and apparel area — that wasn’t something that was as integrated into the agency work as perhaps I would have hoped. So, I then left the agency and went to work at Calvin Klein, where I started as the global marketing coordinator for Calvin Klein underwear.
Greenfield worked at Calvin Klein, a fashion brand known for its designer jeans and underwear, for about five years. By late 2020, he managed to rise to a senior director of global marketing role and in 2018, he won a Clio Award — which recognizes creative marketing strategies internationally — for his work on the “MY FAMILY #MYCALVINS” campaign.
He left Calvin Klein after Tory Burch, a women’s fashion label, asked him if he wanted to join the brand to build an integrated marketing team in a senior director role. However, Greenfield was only with that company for a year before Swarovski reached out and connected him with his current role.
As the vice president and head of marketing and communications for Swarovski, Greenfield leads the retail and trade marketing strategy, visual merchandising, public relations and more. Additionally, he oversees Swarovski’s influencer and celebrity teams, allowing the brand to establish notable collaborations with SKIMS — a shapewear line founded by Kim Kardashian — to create a line of accessories, and Ariana Grande to create a collection of silver jewelry, among others.
WSN: What inspired you to initiate Swarovski’s partnerships with celebrities?
Greenfield: I am part of a 130-year-old company. With any company that has been around for that long, you have to find ways to continue to engage with a younger customer and continue to find ways to bring in a younger customer to your brand. These different partnerships and celebrity endorsements and campaigns and projects that we have done over the last few years are a reflection of exactly that. How do we continue to modernize the business and the brand? How do we introduce the brand to a young consumer, who may be aware of it for generational purposes because their mother or their grandmother or their great grandmother had collected pieces from the brand, but they didn’t feel it necessarily was a brand for them? It’s our job to continue to protect our core customers and fight for more.
Greenfield also described that the company launched its synthetically grown diamond in 2023 and worked with numerous celebrities — including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lawrence at the 2024 Academy Awards and models at the Met Gala — to endorse the product.
Looking ahead, Greenfield said that Swarovski is planning a special product release to celebrate the company’s 130th birthday this year. He is also set to speak at the Digital Marketing World Forum, which highlights senior leaders in the marketing industry, in October.
WSN: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
Greenfield: Something that I really believe in is being yourself. I know it sounds cliche, but everyone doesn’t need to be good at everything. That’s what teamwork is for — to be really good at what you’re meant to be good at, and trust the people you work with to be good at what they’re meant to be good at, and that’s when you’ll find the greatest amount of success. Be confident in yourself, and you will exude that confidence to those that you work with. But, you’ve got to find that confidence from within. I don’t have the connections or the resources that are any different from the average person. I was just a regular student at NYU like everyone else. I made this all happen for myself. People can do it — they just have to find their inner confidence, find the thing that makes them stand out at the workplace.
Contact Amelia Hernandez Gioia at [email protected].
