Nell Diamond is the founder and CEO of Hill House Home, the New York lifestyle brand she launched in 2016 from her dorm at Yale School of Management. She built it on luxury bedding and turned it into a cultural phenomenon with the Nap Dress, a smocked, sleep-soft dress that went viral during the pandemic and once sold $1 million of inventory in 12 minutes. A Princeton English major and daughter of former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond, she traded a finance career for a brand built on community, drops, and her own waist-length-haired, ruffle-forward aesthetic. Hill House raised $20 million in 2022 at a reported $150 million valuation.
Bobby Farahi is the co-founder and CEO of Dolls Kill, the San Francisco alternative-fashion brand he built with his wife and co-founder Shaudi 'Shoddy' Lynn after the two met at a Los Angeles rave. A serial operator who earlier founded and sold the broadcast-monitoring company Multivision, Farahi turned a stack of foxtail keychains in an apartment into a Sequoia- and Maveron-backed e-commerce label for self-described 'misfits and miss legits.' He also invests as an angel in e-commerce and lifestyle companies.
M.M.LaFleur is a New York-based direct-to-consumer womenswear brand that coined the term 'Power Casual' and built its business around solving a single problem: getting ambitious women dressed for work without wasting their time. Founded in 2013 by Sarah LaFleur, designer Miyako Nakamura, and Narie Foster, the company pairs thoughtfully engineered professional clothing with a free personal-styling service called Bento that curates a box of pieces around each customer. After a near-collapse during the pandemic, the company was rescued by a syndicate of women investors and refocused on the wardrobe needs of a hybrid working world.
Shauna Drumright runs Savage X Fenty, the inclusive lingerie brand Rihanna built. A subscription-commerce operator who cut her teeth at Procter & Gamble before spending years scaling TechStyle's JustFab and FabKids, she stepped into the CEO seat to turn a celebrity launch into a durable, data-driven retail machine. Her brief: keep the body-positive swagger that made the brand famous while making the math work across membership, stores, and a sprawling product range.
a.k.a. Brands is a portfolio operator of next-generation, digitally native fashion brands, including Princess Polly, Culture Kings, Petal & Pup and mnml. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, it reaches Gen Z and millennial shoppers who discover fashion on social media and primarily buy online. A data-driven 'test and repeat' merchandising model lets its brands launch fresh, exclusive styles weekly. The company trades on the NYSE under the ticker AKA and reported net sales of $600.2 million in fiscal 2025.
Levi Strauss & Co. is the San Francisco apparel company that invented the blue jean in 1873 and has spent 170-plus years turning a piece of workwear into a global wardrobe staple. Today it owns the Levi's, Dockers, Beyond Yoga and Denizen brands, sells in more than 110 countries, and is reinventing itself under CEO Michelle Gass as a direct-to-consumer denim lifestyle brand while pushing water-saving manufacturing across its supply chain.
Ciaran Long is the CEO of a.k.a. Brands Holding Corp. (NYSE: AKA), a portfolio of next-generation fashion brands targeting Gen Z and millennial consumers. A qualified Irish Chartered Accountant with 25-plus years of financial and strategic leadership, Long joined a.k.a. Brands as CFO in 2021, stepped into an interim CEO role in 2023, and was named permanent CEO in January 2025. Under his leadership the company returned to net sales growth with three consecutive quarters of double-digit U.S. sales expansion, repositioning the portfolio around a demand-driven 'test-and-learn' merchandising model and a major bet on physical retail expansion. He previously served as CFO of Samsclub.com and held senior roles across Walmart's e-commerce division, and earlier in his career he co-founded CleanGrow, a water quality sensor technology startup.
Michelle Gass is the president and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., the first woman to lead the 172-year-old denim company. A chemical engineer by training, she built Starbucks' Frappuccino into a $2 billion brand, ran Kohl's for five years, and is now reshaping Levi's into a direct-to-consumer denim lifestyle retailer.
Dolls Kill is a San Francisco-based online retailer for self-proclaimed misfits - selling rave, goth, y2k, kawaii and festival-ready apparel to a global Gen Z audience. Founded in 2011 by ex-DJ Shoddy Lynn and entrepreneur Bobby Farahi, the brand grew from selling fox tails out of a backpack into a Sequoia-backed, ~$50M-revenue digital boutique that runs its own house labels (Current Mood, Sugar Thrillz, Widow) alongside outside brands.
Karla Gallardo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cuyana, a San Francisco-based sustainable fashion brand built on the philosophy of 'fewer, better things.' Born in Ecuador and educated at Brown University and Stanford GSB, she co-founded Cuyana in 2011 with Shilpa Shah to create timeless, high-quality women's essentials through ethical, transparent supply chains. Under her leadership, Cuyana has grown to 160+ employees, raised $44.8M in funding (including a $30M Series C), and built a loyal customer base that includes Meghan Markle and Jessica Alba. The company achieves a remarkable 90% full-price sell-through rate — rare in fashion — and has been recognized for pioneering sustainable luxury retail in the U.S.
Emma Frances Chamberlain is an American YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur who reshaped vlogging at 16 with jump cuts, sarcasm, and bad lighting, then turned a one-girl bedroom show into a coffee company with a Century City flagship, a Spotify-exclusive podcast (Anything Goes), and a recurring perch on the Met Gala carpet for Vogue. She is a brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Lancôme.
Kenneth Chan is a serial internet entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Tobi, a women's fast-fashion e-commerce brand based in South San Francisco. Chan built Tobi from the ground up as a vertically integrated fashion-tech company capable of taking a garment from sketch to delivery in under eight weeks. With roots in the dot-com era — having co-founded Everyone.net (a top-50 website with 25M+ users) and scaled Connexus/Netblue to a $100M internet marketing firm — Chan brought Silicon Valley engineering discipline to the traditionally analog fashion industry. Tobi serves customers across 100+ countries with trendy women's apparel, leveraging proprietary e-commerce infrastructure and data-driven trend forecasting. Chan was named an Apparel Magazine 2019 Top Innovator for his work reimagining mobile commerce at Tobi.
Lori Coulter is the co-founder, CEO, and President of Summersalt, the St. Louis-based direct-to-consumer swimwear and apparel brand built on data from 1.5 million body measurements. She turned a pre-teen concession stand hustle into a generation-defining brand that has sold over 4 million garments, raised $30M+, and landed in Vogue, Elle, and Forbes. She now serves as an Operator Advisor at Redbud VC and adjunct faculty at Washington University's Olin Business School, championing equitable venture funding for female founders.
Sumeet Singh is the founder and managing partner of Worldbuild, a thesis-driven venture capital firm investing in creative technologists building the post-software era. Previously a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he led investments in companies like Sardine, Carry1st, and Adaptive. His portfolio includes Brigit (acquired for $500M) and Revolut (valued at $45B). A Georgetown graduate, Singh co-founded The Hilltoss, a student-run restaurant, and Creature/Of, a sustainable streetwear brand. Based in New York, he's known for his disciplined research ritual - spending Friday and Saturday mornings at a Brooklyn cafe, diving deep into AI research papers on his iPad. His investment thesis centers on two winning paths: building infrastructure that enables AI to scale (compute, data, energy, security), or creating entirely new workflows that only AI makes possible.
Daymond John is the founder of FUBU, the streetwear brand he built from a $40 budget in his mother's Queens house into a $6 billion global empire. Known as 'The People's Shark,' he's been a main cast investor on ABC's Shark Tank since its debut in 2009, championing underdogs and minority entrepreneurs. A five-time bestselling author, cancer survivor, Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, and creator of Black Entrepreneurs Day, John proves repeatedly that being broke is not a limitation - it's a competitive advantage.
Amanda Mull is a senior reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek and one of the sharpest observers of American consumer culture. Writing the 'Buying Power' column, she dissects how everyday purchases shape identity, politics, and society - bringing a decade of retail experience and almost six years at The Atlantic to one of journalism's most under-examined beats.
Megan Thee Stallion is a Grammy Award-winning rapper, entertainer, and entrepreneur from Houston, Texas, who turned a childhood in recording studios into one of hip-hop's most commanding careers. Known for anthems of self-confidence and female empowerment, she graduated college while topping charts, built her own label (Hot Girl Productions), made her Broadway debut in Moulin Rouge!, and runs a foundation in honor of her late parents. Off stage she is an anime devotee, horror movie enthusiast, and tireless mental health advocate whose 'Hot Girl' philosophy has become a genuine cultural movement.
Leandra Medine Cohen is the New York-based fashion writer, cultural commentator, and founder of Man Repeller - the blog that coined a phrase and built a media empire around the radical idea that women dress for themselves. After shutting down Man Repeller in 2020, she re-emerged with The Cereal Aisle, a Substack newsletter now boasting 166,000+ subscribers and a top-5 ranking in Fashion & Beauty. Part sharp wit, part earnest diarist, she writes about getting dressed, motherhood, and everything in between with a voice that is unmistakably her own.