Marcia Kilgore

She arrived in New York at 18 with $300 and a plan to study at Columbia. She missed the student loan deadline. So she became a personal trainer, started giving facials from her East Village apartment to fix her own acne, and accidentally built one of the most talked-about spas in the world. In 1999, just three years after opening the first Bliss Spa, she sold a majority stake to LVMH.

That is how Marcia Kilgore operates.

Since then she has founded five global companies across beauty, wellness and footwear — Bliss Spa, Soap & Glory, FitFlop, Soaper Duper and Beauty Pie — each one built on the same instinct: spot what the market is overcharging for, underserving or getting wrong, then do it better and make it fun. Soap & Glory sold to Boots. Beauty Pie has raised over £130+ million in funding and redefined what a beauty brand can be. In 2024, she was named Entrepreneur of the Year at the World Retail Congress.

She will talk about what real ambition looks like when the plan falls apart on day one, why starting over is a skill worth mastering, and what it actually takes to disrupt an industry more than once. Expect wit, candour and ideas you can take back into your business immediately.