Celine Ruben-Salama (’02) Gets Cozy with Sustainable Products

Celine Ruben-Salama’s upbringing obviously had a huge influence on her current business. The daughter of environmentalists, she was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and later lived in Stockholm, Sweden. Her multicultural experience and appreciation for the environment inform Pro’tech’d, LLC, the company she founded in 2004. Its first product is Cozy, an organic cotton iPod cover, hand-knit by Peruvian artisans. It’s the perfect embodiment of Ruben-Salama’s business model: a sustainable, fair trade creation that merges high- and low-tech sensibilities.

Ruben-Salama first moved to the United States in 1984 and stayed until 1989. She then spent 10 years in Sweden before returning to the U.S. to attend Baruch. “The idea of living in New York and having a ‘real life’ while being a student was really appealing to me,” she explains. “I wanted to get a BBA, so the choice [to attend Baruch] was pretty obvious.” While at school, she interned with Razorfish and Deutsche Bank and worked on an IT start-up, in addition to writing for The Ticker and co-founding JBL (Jewish Business Leaders) Business Networking Association. She was also accepted into the Baruch Honors Program, “which was a great experience. Many of my friends are people I met at Baruch.”

With her degree in entrepreneurial management, Ruben-Salama worked on launching Pro’tech’d for a year and a half. “I had a lot to learn about the retail and manufacturing business . . . and I’m still learning,” she says. As with the staffs of many young companies, her employees—graphic and product designers, IT and marketing people—work on a freelance basis. Regarding future plans, “We’re currently working on a Cozy for laptops and plan to develop other accessories for personal electronics,” she says, adding, “I’d like to consult for other companies on strategies for operating in a more environmentally friendly and socially conscious manner.”

—Marina Zogbi