Vanessa Kingori: Conformity is the “enemy of progress, creativity and business.” | BoF VOICES 2021

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

In 2018, Vanessa Kingori joined British Vogue as its first female publisher. Since then, she has become a mother, received an MBE, and stepped into the role of Chief Business Officer of Condé Nast Britain. At BoF VOICES 2021, Kingori shared her experience and lessons in leadership with purpose coach and founder of 822 Group Mory Fontanez, underscoring the importance of leveraging gut instinct to support data-driven decisions and challenging conformity as the “enemy of progress, creativity and business.”

“Everywhere I've been, I have had to get comfortable with being a bit of an outsider, which often means the decisions I come to — are different to the normal consensus,” said Kingori. “It's OK to be intuitive. It's actually great to lean into your differences rather than try to push to assimilate too much.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion.
0:08.8	Welcome to the Bof podcast. It's Friday, March 18th. This week, we take you back to Voices
0:14.4	2021, where Condi Nast Britain's Vanessa Kingori set down Purpose Coach and founder of 822 group,
0:22.4	Mori Fontenez, to discuss the benefits of leaning into intuition, leveraging gut instinct
0:28.7	to support data-driven decision-making in the workplace.
0:32.4	As Vanessa reveals in this interview, she had to become comfortable with being an outsider
0:36.9	in fashion media and bringing
0:38.8	a point of view that differed from the general consensus. Here's Vanessa Kingori and Mori Fontanez
0:44.9	at Bof Voices 2021. So I wanted to start by asking you how in your brilliant career you were just
0:52.6	promoted two months ago to chief business officer of Condonass Britain's brands,
0:57.0	you still oversee Vogue UK and Vogue in Europe.
1:02.0	So a lot of responsibility, a lot of different balls in the air, what is your relationship with intuition, and how do you lean into it?
1:10.0	Yeah, I mean, we've had the most amazing conversations, actually. relationship with intuition and how do you lean into it?
1:14.7	Yeah, I mean, we've had the most amazing conversations, actually.
1:21.0	Intuition for me is vital and it's something I've grappled with actually for a long time because if you think about what the definition of intuition is, right,
1:25.6	it's about using your instinct to make decisions
1:28.9	without any conscious reasoning.
1:32.1	So it's kind of unreasonable, right?
1:34.2	So I've spent a long time wondering
1:37.9	why when I'm in certain rooms of decision makers
1:41.5	and everyone is aligned and has consensus, I'm usually the
1:47.1	person going, really?
	...

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