TOMS shoes founder to speak at Birmingham Southern Thursday | Arts & Culture

TOMS shoes founder Blake Mycoskie will be delivering the Alex P. Stirling Lecture at Birmingham-Southern College Thursday night.

Mycoskie created his shoe company after a 2006 visit to Argentina where he noticed that many of the children there were living barefoot.  For every pair of TOMS shoes sold, a second pair is given to a child in need. As of September, TOMS has given more than 1 million pairs of shoes to children throughout the world.

Known as TOMS Chief Shoe Giver, Mycoskie has been speaking to students at college campuses around the country for the last year, according to Allison Dominguez, a press representative with the company. His message has largely encouraged students to approach business from a different perspective.

“[His goal is] to inspire the next generation,” Dominguez said. “To rethink what business is about, and how it is important that if you want to create a business, it doesn’t have to just be about profit.”

Mycoskie’s commitment to service is something that resonates well with BSC students, 70 percent of which participate in some sort of service projects each year, according to Billl Wagnon, the college’s vice president of communications.  

The free lecture is open to the public and will begin at 7 p.m. in the Bruno Great Hall of the Norton Campus Center. The lecture series was created in memory of a BSC student who died of cancer in 1995.