Fresh out of design school and several years into his first job in retail design, Dan Mazzarini was offered a career-changing opportunity to work in store design at Ralph Lauren. Before he made the switch, however, he received the blessing of his first boss and mentor—who made a prediction that Mazzarini’s design journey wouldn’t end there.

“She said, ‘Here’s the thing, kiddo. If you’re going to go anywhere, you have to go there, because it is a university and you will learn everything,’” Mazzarini tells host Kaitlin Petersen on the latest episode of Trade Tales . “And she said, ‘But I will tell you: You are meant to do your own thing. At some point, if you’re still there and it’s been too long, I will come and tell you [that] you need to go.’”

Luckily, she didn’t have to. After soak

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