The Obama Foundation announces Emma Grede's appointment to the Girls Opportunity Alliance Advisory Board, honoring her advocacy for women and girls.
On April 27, 2023, the Obama Foundation announced Emma Grede's appointment to the Girls Opportunity Alliance (GOA) Advisory Board, an initiative launched by former First Lady Michelle Obama to support grassroots leaders and organizations working to educate and empower adolescent girls around the world.
The appointment recognized Grede's dual identity as both a globally successful business leader — through her roles at Good American, SKIMS, and Safely — and a public advocate for expanding opportunity for women and girls, particularly around economic empowerment and access to entrepreneurship. As an advisory board member, Grede joined a cohort of influential figures tasked with lending strategic counsel, visibility, and resources to the Alliance's global network of girls' education programs.
For Grede, whose own rise from a working-class upbringing in East London to leading multiple nine-figure fashion and beauty brands embodied the kind of social mobility the Alliance sought to enable for others, the role represented a formalization of philanthropic commitments she had voiced in interviews for years. It also situated her within an elite tier of business leaders recognized by the Obama Foundation, reinforcing her stature beyond the fashion and retail sectors into broader social impact and global advocacy circles focused on gender equity in education and opportunity.