Katrina Lake Starts Her Days with Mentorship and Ends Them With Mochi

The Stitch Fix CEO talks getting it done, the power of rejection, and how she is elevating the new faces of fashion.

Katrina Lake Starts Her Days with Mentorship and Ends Them With Mochi

When Katrina Lake brought her toddler to the NASDAQ bell ringing in 2017, she reinvented the stereotypical CEO image, and has been during her entire career. Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, one of the leading online personal styling services that curates stylish clothing for clients in the United States and United Kingdom — over 4.1 million of them.

The idea was born in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment in 2011, and six years later, she was the the youngest woman to take a company public at age 34 (a title she gracefully handed to Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble this year.)

Financial success is, obviously, key for any company but for Lake, running a lucrative business also means being a change-making leader. Two of Lake’s biggest leadership goals are diversity within her team and meaningful mentorship. In August, she'll transition from CEO to Executive Chairperson of the Board, a seat change that will keep her close to Stitch Fix while allowing her to focus on a new passion project: Elevate. The Stitch Fix grant and mentorship program uplifts Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs with a $25,000 cash grant and advisory support from the Stitch Fix team. The eight-month program kicked off in January, and already has six designers whose collections will launch this fall.

In her mission to create a more diverse retail landscape, Lake is accelerating change in the apparel industry. For Glamour’s Doing The Work column, she shares how she creates her impact, deals with rejection, and takes a hard pass on investors making deals over beers in a hot tub.

Glamour: What’s your typical morning routine?

Katrina Lake: My kids are up by 7 a.m., so my days start early! The first hour or so of the day is totally devoted to getting them up and ready and fed. One of the pandemic silver linings has been how we’ve been able to share meals together so consistently — having breakfast all together every morning is something I love and helps me to start out the day grounded and present.

If it’s a Monday, I often kick off the morning posting a question box on Instagram stories for my Mentorship Monday program. I love being able to connect with entrepreneurs and people all over the world through it. I get such amazing questions, and sneaking in time to answer them is something I really look forward to. I wish I could spend many more hours in the day on mentorship and advising. Spending time connecting with people in a more lightweight way over DM and Instagram stories is a rewarding and fun way to be able to share and have an impact.

Are you a breakfast person? If so, what do you eat?

Every day. Breakfast for me always consists of coffee and fruit. Sometimes eggs and, if I’m very lucky, a croissant from [San Francisco bakery] Arsicault. My favorite is actually Japanese breakfast—rice, natto, often fish—but realistically, I only get that when I’m traveling in Japan.

If you weren’t in your current career, what would you be?

Data scientist—I wish!

How do you typically deal with rejection in the workplace?

Like anything, practice helps, even with rejection. During the early days of Stitch Fix when I was fundraising, over 50 venture investors said no to me. Even today, as a public company, we’re meeting with investors all the time — some of whom are supportive, some of whom are skeptical, or worse. I’ve been able to build some thicker skin so the sting of rejection doesn’t hurt so much. Even better, I do think there are silver linings. If you’re not getting rejected, you’re probably not reaching or stretching far enough. There’s much to learn from all of the flavors of rejection. I have grown to really appreciate feedback, especially from skeptics, or people who don’t believe — it’s really helped us over the years to refine the narrative, to understand risks in the business, and to grow my own self-awareness.

What’s the best piece of money or career advice you’ve ever gotten?

To chase learning and growth. To constantly try to be on the steep part of the learning curve, to try to surround yourself with people you can learn from and people who challenge you. This means being comfortable being mildly uncomfortable — learning and growing means making mistakes, not knowing everything, doing new things, taking risks. I feel so lucky I’ve had this in spades at Stitch Fix. There’s not been a dull day, I learn every day from the people I have the privilege to work with, and the job has been so different and challenging in new and different ways every year.

Do you feel your gender and/or ethnicity has ever memorably hindered you from a job, an opportunity or a promotion? How?

I’m sure there have been many encounters with bias I have had along the way. The experience that pops to mind immediately was about five years ago. I was at a conference listening to a renowned investor speak at a fireside chat. He was asked about his investment approach and he started talking about how he meets entrepreneurs by inviting them up to his house in Tahoe and sharing beers with them in [his] hot tub. I remember feeling like my stomach sank. It was such a flagrant form of discrimination and felt crazy that I would be expected to meet an investor in a hot tub wearing a swimsuit and drink beers. It was also wildly discouraging that it was totally normal and acceptable for him to be saying something like that in a public setting, with hundreds of people in the room. Things have changed since then— I hope! — but we still have more work to do. We as a business community need more diversity in leadership and decision-making roles and we have a lot more work to do.

Explain the moment you realized, “Okay, I might actually be successful.”

I don’t think ‘success’ has been a big personal driver for me as much as impact. When we took the company public, the photo of the NASDAQ opening with my team and with my then one-year-old son was widely shared. I was really struck by how a moment that was, of course, meaningful to me was meaningful to so many others. It gave me a lot of motivation to represent underrepresented stories of possibility and a sense of responsibility to make sure that what was possible for me was possible for so many others who might not feel that they fit in the “typical CEO” mold.

What is your biggest workplace challenge?

Not having enough time in the day — especially for casual time with the team to build on and invest in personal connections, which really are the foundation of building trust.

What is your favorite low-stakes treat after a productive day?

Cooking, eating, or both. Butter mochi is easy to make and delicious to eat.