Founder and CEO of Stitch Fix

Katrina Lake is the Founder and CEO of Stitch Fix - the personal styling service she launched from her apartment in 2011.  She foresaw a shift in the business of fashion that would take more-established businesses a while to warm up to - and she did it while earning her M.B.A. from Harvard.

Stitch Fix wasn’t the easy rocket-fueled rise to success it might appear to be. It took time, effort, and a deep belief in the value of the service — personal stylists available to every person, not just the rich and famous. In the beginning, Katrina was turned down by numerous, mostly male, investors who simply weren’t interested in a women’s apparel company. The world of fashion is fickle, after all. It was Katrina’s determination and grit, the strength of the business model, and the strategic use of data and algorithms that turned the tide. That and millions of happy clients. In 2017, after raising only $40 million in capital from outside investors, Katrina became the youngest female founder to take a company public, trading as SFIX on NASDAQ. Katrina happily handed that title to Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble in February 2021.