Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, a personalized styling service founded ten years ago. When Lake took her company public in 2017, she was the youngest female founder to ever do so. And, she's one of the few women founders to IPO a tech company. The IPO itself was notable for another reason too: many pictures from the event show Lake holding her young son. "It was a really meaningful moment that I didn't anticipate," she tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt. Lake reports that she's moved from "bristling" at regularly being called a female founder (instead of simply "founder") to embracing her position as a role model for other women in business.
In this episode of Leadership Next, Lake describes the moment she knew she wanted to be in business, the dangerous lack of diversity amongst investors, leading through the pandemic, her plans to transition to executive chairperson, and more.