Karen Harvey

Karen Harvey is the CEO and Founder of The Karen Harvey Companies - KHC, Fashion Tech Forum and INDX. Karen has spent her career working with global brands across luxury, retail, fashion, hospitality, technology and innovation-driven companies. Her ability to work in both traditional and non-traditional ways has earned her firm international recognition for bringing some of the industry’s most successful CEOs and creative leaders to the most powerful global brands in Fashion and Retail. In 2013, Karen was one of the first to identify a global and seismic shift, where she could see that technology companies would be revolutionizing fashion and retail, and she felt that a forum was needed, where leaders from both technology and fashion could work through their differences and find common ground to form the companies and partnerships of the future. She felt that the void created by the disparity between these two sectors created the need for a new conversation, so that these leaders could find new ways to work together, in order to create partnerships and new companies that would serve the consumers of the future. In that spirit, Karen founded Fashion Tech Forum for these leaders to both share their vision and the challenges created by this new reality. From a talent perspective, as Karen considered these dynamics, she realized that the traditional skill sets required for leaders to compete would change radically, creating an identity crisis for fashion and retail. Inspired by these major shifts and the broad need to discover new talent and emerging technologies, Karen has pivoted her companies and devoted her executive search practice and advisory services to identifying the next generation of leaders, while supporting the most powerful brands in bridging the gap between luxury, retail and emerging technologies.

Today, Karen runs the Karen Harvey Companies, an ecosystem of brands, where through the lens of talent and thought leadership, we are able to serve our clients in building their brands in the most relevant ways, so that they can continue to inspire and engage consumers across all platforms. Some of the company’s clients include: Tapestry, lululemon, Tory Burch, Techstyle, Versace, FarFetch, Everlane, Tommy Hilfiger, Olivela, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. The firm’s other division, Advisory Services, engages with global brands and entrepreneurial ventures equally, as founders of new technologies seek to engage with retail and fashion companies, and global brands looking to amplify their ability to transform their to direct-to-consumer models. Karen is a graduate of the OPM program of Harvard Business School. She is also the Founder of The Blue Project, a mentorship program for disadvantaged women.