Emma Grede is a British entrepreneur who built her fortune not through inheritance or a prestigious degree, but through two decades of disciplined relationship-building, sharp product instincts, and a willingness to bet on herself at every turn. Today she is the CEO and co-founder of Good American, a founding partner of SKIMS, and arguably the most influential business figure operating within the Kardashian-Jenner brand ecosystem.

Born Emma Findlay on September 23, 1982, in Plaistow, East London, Grede grew up in circumstances that gave her little obvious runway into the fashion and business world she would eventually reshape. She is today a mother of four, a recurring investor on Shark Tank, a guest Dragon on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, chairwoman of the Fifteen Percent Pledge, and the author of her debut book Start With Yourself, published in April 2026. Her story is one of calculated moves and an unusually clear sense of what she wanted — even when the resources to get there were limited.

Early Life & Background

Grede grew up in Plaistow, a working-class neighborhood in the London Borough of Newham. She was raised by her mother, Jenny-Lee Findlay, a white English woman who worked at Morgan Stanley, as a single parent alongside Emma’s three younger sisters — Charlotte, Rachelle, and Katie-Beth. Her father is of Trinidadian heritage, and she was raised in part by her Jamaican stepfather. It was not a home of financial comfort, but it was, by Grede’s own account, one that shaped her relationship with ambition and self-reliance in ways she has been willing to discuss publicly.

At around 13, she took a newspaper delivery route — an early job she has since described as formative, crediting it with teaching her something about consistency and follow-through. She saved her earnings to buy fashion magazines, particularly Elle and Vogue, which she has described as a form of escape from the environment she grew up in. “I really loved fashion as the means of escapism from where I come from,” she said in an interview with Foundr. “I grew up in East London, which is not that nice — or it wasn’t when I was little.”

Despite average grades at secondary school, she secured a place at the London College of Fashion, which accepts a relatively small percentage of applicants. She left before completing the program, citing financial pressures and a preference for hands-on experience over further study. This is a detail she mentions often and without apology — it is central to the professional identity she has built, one explicitly positioned against the idea that credentials are a prerequisite for leadership.

Career Breakthrough & Business Ventures

After leaving the London College of Fashion, Grede moved into the fashion event production world, taking a role at Inca Productions, a company that produced fashion shows and high-profile events. It was practical, fast-paced work that put her inside rooms where the industry operated, and she absorbed how branding, talent, and commerce connected. This early phase, producing shows and managing client relationships, gave her the tools she would eventually use to build something larger.

In 2008, at the age of 26, she founded ITB Worldwide, a London-based talent management and entertainment marketing agency. Over the following decade, ITB grew into a significant operation, representing major fashion clients and connecting brands with cultural figures. In 2018, the company was acquired by Rogers & Cowan, the Los Angeles-based entertainment communications firm — a meaningful validation of what she had built, and the financial foundation that helped fund what came next.

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“I grew up watching my mom work incredibly hard, and I had this burning desire to create a different existence. I wanted to be in charge of my own happiness.”

— Emma Grede, WSJ. Magazine interview

The pivot to consumer brands began with a conversation at Paris Fashion Week, where Grede pitched an idea for a size-inclusive denim label to Kris Jenner, suggesting a partnership with Khloé Kardashian. In October 2016, Good American launched. On its first day, the brand generated $1 million in sales, making it the largest denim launch in apparel history at the time. Good American’s central proposition — offering sizes 00 to 32 from day one, not as an afterthought — was both a commercial bet and a statement about who the fashion industry had historically excluded.

In 2019, Grede became a founding partner and Chief Product Officer of SKIMS, Kim Kardashian’s shapewear and underwear brand. While Kim Kardashian is the public face of SKIMS, Grede — alongside her husband Jens Grede, who serves as CEO — has been instrumental in the product strategy and operational structure that took the company to a reported $5 billion valuation following a $225 million funding round in late 2025. SKIMS surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue, a milestone that cements it as far more than a celebrity side project.

In 2021, she expanded further with Safely, a plant-based cleaning products brand co-founded with Kris Jenner and Chrissy Teigen. That same year, she made history as the first Black woman to serve as an investor on ABC’s Shark Tank, appearing from Season 13 onward as a recurring “shark.” In 2024, she joined the BBC’s Dragons’ Den as a guest Dragon for its 21st series — appearing on the same show that inspired the American format she had already broken barriers on. In January 2025, she launched Off Season, a sports apparel venture developed in partnership with the NFL and Fanatics.

Outside of her commercial work, Grede serves as Chairwoman of the Fifteen Percent Pledge, a nonprofit initiative founded by designer Aurora James that pushes major retailers to dedicate at least 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses. She has described the role as one that uses the access she has accumulated — “I can get pretty much any retail CEO on the phone,” she told Fortune — to drive structural change rather than just symbolic support. She also sits on the boards of Women for Women International and Baby2Baby, and in April 2026, she published her debut book, Start With Yourself, through Simon & Schuster, offering her framework on ambition, money, and professional identity.

Net Worth & Financial Overview

Emma Grede’s net worth is estimated at approximately $400 million as of 2025–2026, based on figures reported by Forbes. It is worth noting that the majority of this wealth is tied to private company equity — primarily her stake in SKIMS — rather than liquid assets, and private company valuations fluctuate with funding conditions and market sentiment. These are estimates, not verified balance sheet figures.

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Personal Life, Marriage & Children

Emma met Jens Grede, a Swedish entrepreneur and marketing professional, through shared professional circles in the fashion world. The two married in 2008 and have built both a family and a significant business portfolio together. Jens serves as CEO of SKIMS and co-founded the denim label Frame with Erik Torstensson; the couple also co-own a stake in Kylie Jenner’s fashion line Khy through their holding company, Popular Culture. Their professional lives are deeply intertwined, and by most accounts they treat their business decisions as a shared endeavor.

Together, Emma and Jens have four children: Grey, their eldest; Lola; and twins Lake and Rafferty. The path to four children was not straightforward. In a publicly disclosed interview with fertility care company Kindbody, Grede described experiencing multiple miscarriages after the births of her first two children, followed by failed IVF rounds before turning to surrogacy — which led to the birth of her twins. She has spoken about this history with deliberate openness, connecting it to a decision to offer family-building benefits through Good American: “From going through infertility myself, I understand firsthand the need for education, resources and accessibility when it comes to family planning,” she said.

The family lives primarily in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, though they also own property in Malibu. Grede has been open about how she manages the demands of parenting alongside running several major companies simultaneously. In a widely reported WSJ. Magazine interview, she described herself as a “max three-hour mom” on weekends — a statement she framed not as indifference to her children but as an argument for honesty about the limits of parental energy and the importance of not performing a version of motherhood that exhausts everyone. She noted that the family employs nannies, a chef, and household staff, and argued that pretending otherwise would be misleading. The comments drew both support and criticism, as most frank parenting discussions tend to do.

“Women are drained and exhausted,” she told the interviewer. “To put upon yourself that every waking minute is oriented around your kids is not a way to live.” It is the kind of statement that reflects Grede’s general communication style — direct, occasionally blunt, and notably uninterested in curating an aspirational image that doesn’t match her actual choices.