Kinvara Balfour – Keynote Speaker

Biography

Lady Kinvara Balfour advises companies big and small (Jimmy Choo, Richemont, Smythson, UBS, Evian, Coutts to name a few) on what is cool out there in the zeitgeist. She understands the worlds of tech, fashion and popular culture and the psychology that drives them.

Having won the Lloyd’s Fashion Challenge, a national competition in fashion design as judged by Vivienne Westwood, at the age of 16, Balfour started her career working for Westwood, and Tomasz Starzewski. Roles at Condé Nast and Telegraph Magazine, where she was Style Editor, followed. In 2004, Kinvara was appointed London Editor at DailyCandy.com; she launched the brand to mass acclaim (the US web phenomenon was acquired by Comcast in 2008).

In 2012 Kinvara Balfour launched a digital blog platform for Time Out; its first foray into digital form. In 2014, she was appointed founding partner of tech startup StyleCard. In 2016 Balfour was Digital Consultant for Vanity Fair UK, directing the publication’s digital content. In 2016, she acted as Senior Advisor to Silicon Valley start-up SWNG, joining a team headed up by co-founders Tommy Stadlen and Fred Blackford, and chairman, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. SWNG was acquired by Microsoft in 2017.

As of 2014, Kinvara Balfour hosts Fashion in Conversation for Apple Inc., a series of interviews with global icons at the Apple store which is available to an audience of over 900 million on iTunes. In 2014, she was one of the few women invited to speak at President Obama’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Balfour is the creator of THE VISIONARIES, a series of mini-films shot on iPhone, filmed and directed by herself, which feature the thought leaders of the world. In addition, she was recently Executive Producer on the twice BAFTAnominated ‘McQueen’, the feature documentary about the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen. She resides and works between California and London.