Katrina Lake Biography and Net Worth

Katrina Lake is the CEO and founder of Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service. The company marries data science with the talent of human stylists to ship personalized clothing selections to customers’ homes.

Prior to founding the company, Lake gained wide-ranging experience in fashion, retail and technology. She managed the blogging platform for social commerce site, Polyvore, and worked with both e-commerce and traditional retailers while at the management consulting firm, The Parthenon Group. 

Additionally, she worked with numerous entrepreneurs and startups as an associate at private investment firm, Leader Ventures. 

In 2011, while working on her M.B.A., Lake founded Stitch Fix. She was 28 years old. Though the business quickly showed promise, she struggled to find investors or advisers who would give women’s apparel a second look. In 2012, Netflix’s then-VP of data science and engineering, Eric Colson, turned down Lake’s request that he become an advisor for her young company. Several weeks later, however, an intrigued Colson returned, eventually leaving Netflix to become Stitch Fix’s chief algorithms officer.

Upon taking the company public in 2017, Lake made history as the youngest woman to do so in the tech industry and the only woman to lead a tech IPO that year. Early on in the business, she received offers to sell the company, but Lake chose to bet on herself and see how the business could grow under her leadership. As of 2020, Stitch Fix was valued at over $2 billion. 

Lake has received numerous accolades over the years, as the business has grown rapidly and consistently. In 2017, Forbes listed her as one of America’s wealthiest self-made women. In 2018, Retail Dive named her Disruptor of the Year, and in 2019, Stitch Fix was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. She has also been recognized as a Forbes 40 under 40 recipient. 

Lake has made a conscious effort to change expectations around the way successful companies should look. She helms a workplace that is 86 percent female and a board split 50/50 between men and women. Lake also sits on the boards of Grubhub and fellow woman-owned company, Glossier. 

She holds a B.S. in economics from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Lake is married to investment professional John Clifford, and the couple has two sons.