Perretti to discuss career changes today

In recognition of Women’s History Month, the Sussex County Community College Foundation will hold its annual 100 Women Project event.

It will be at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 21 and will feature marketing consultant Ruth Perretti as the keynote speaker.

The event will be in the Performing Arts Center at the college, One College Hill Road, Newton. To register, go online to sussex.edu/100womenproject, send email to foundation@sussex.edu or call 973-300-2332 by March 14.

Perretti will discuss “Changing Careers: The Risks, the Challenges and the Joys.”

She has been a fashion designer, creative director, marketing consultant, restaurateur, farmer and founding miller of Marksboro Mills.

After graduating from American University in Washington, D.C., she started her fashion, design and marketing career in the early 1980s. For more than 23 years, she worked for Ralph Lauren, first as creative director of men’s design, then as senior vice president of women’s design. She also had her own branding and creative consultancy with such clients as Newman’s Own, Timberland and Spike Lee.

Her involvement in agriculture began when she and her future husband, Eric Kaplan, opened a restaurant in Montclair, Ruthie’s BBQ and Pizza. It became the “go-to” place for family gatherings and weekend music. Her family had owned a farm in Marksboro that had been a summer and holiday retreat.

In 2016, Perretti devoted all her time to running the restaurant. What started with organic produce for the restaurant evolved into organic grain growing.

Ruthie’s served pizza made from her organic flour, which led to the creation of Marksboro Mills to provide an infrastructure for milling her grain and for other grain growers in the region.

In August 2023, the couple sold their restaurant after 17 years in business and became full-time residents of Marlboro.

The mission of the 100 Women Project is to raise funds for scholarships for non-traditional women students attending SCCC. Many of them had an interruption in their studies for various reasons, such as raising a family, serving in the military, having a career change or hardship.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article referred to March 21 as Wednesday. It is Thursday.