The women who inspire me to embrace ambition most is…
All the teenage girls I meet at SCAD Day, and when I visit high schools, because I see what a difference they’re going to make in the world. I see the intellect. They may be 15, and they haven’t experienced enough of the world to build out and apply their intelligence yet — but they’re brilliant. When you’re around young people, you quickly understand that.

The best piece of advice I ever received was…
My mother, who had a strong moral core and code, told me, “Rise above it. Just rise above it! I don’t want to hear about it.”

SCAD teaches its students to think differently by…
Linking thinking with doing and making. Of course, you have to conceive of ideas, you have to conceptualize. You have to study history to know what’s gone before, and you have to study current life to know what is needed now. But there’s a big leap between thinking or reading about something and actually doing and making. SCAD gives students the resources to follow their thinking all the way through to actual implementation. So, the next time you have an idea, you think about how you’re going to make your idea real. You’ll think about it in much greater detail and much more precisely.

The biggest challenge I have faced in my career is…
The misapprehension of art as unnecessary. Diminishing SCAD by calling it “just art school” and not really thinking of it as impacting the world. When you see these Fortune 100 companies coming to SCAD to partner with us —NASA, Google — to glean the best ideas from our students, you understand. I think people shouldn’t diminish or underestimate the power of art. Art and design are all around us, from the clothing we wear, to the windows of the building that we’re in, to the streets in the cityscape. It’s all designed. The landscape is designed by someone, the wallpaper in your powder room is designed, the interior of your car is designed by someone. For better or worse, all that design and art impacts our lives, in both minute and grand scale.

I overcame this challenge by…
Devoting my life to educating people so that they can have gainful employment and lead lives that are meaningful. I create partnerships and collaborations so people can see the real value of their creative ideas. That’s my style of management, too — not so much hierarchical as circular. Holding hands in a circle has so much value. That’s how we build community, and it’s how we understand not only our creativity but ourselves as having value.

If I were a superhero, my powers would be…
Time travel! I like the idea of traversing time, whether to the past or the future. SCAD is aiming toward the future, but we’re basing everything in the past, too. You want to save what works and retain collective knowledge, and then to build something brand new.

Advice I would give my younger self…
Things are going to be much more complex than you think but there’s also hope and joy. For me, music is the staff of life and inherently hopeful. When I first learned piano and became more serious about playing, I didn’t think it would be something that continued throughout my life. When you read the directions in Italian about how to play a piece, those directions can tell you about life, too. The organization of a sonata, for instance — the introduction, the improvisation, and then the recapitulation. That’s life, isn’t it? You introduce, improvise, and then you have a recapitulation! To me, all of life is really like music. Whatever your ambition might be, be sure to lay hold of joy, too.

In 2009, Tory launched the Tory Burch Foundation which provides access to capital, education and digital resources to empower women entrepreneurs. Learn more about the Foundation and #EmbraceAmbition here.