Since launching Knix in 2013, Joanna Griffiths has built it into one of the fastest growing intimate apparel brands worldwide. In 2022, she successfully negotiated a $410-million acquisition of her company to global health and hygiene brand Essity — the largest publicly disclosed private sale of a direct-to-consumer company helmed by a female founder in Canada. Griffiths walks audiences through lessons learned from building one of the most successful and prolific mission-driven brands of the digital era.
Knix is celebrated for its commitment to product innovation and their mission to empower people to live unapologetically free. They are leaders in the body inclusivity movement and were the first brand to showcase their products in all available sizes, use only customers in their advertising, and create an entire ad campaign featuring only women over the age of 50. In 2020, Strategy magazine named Knix their “Brand of the Year.”
Griffiths is recognized nationally and internationally as a marketing disrupter. She was the only Canadian to be named one of AdWeek’s 2021 Women Trailblazers, with her long list of accolades also including being named Waterstone’s Most Admired CEO and Women of Influence’s Entrepreneur of the Year. Griffiths has been cited in hundreds of media publications, including Forbes, Fast Company, and The New York Times, among many others.
A champion of female founders and entrepreneurs, Griffiths made headlines in 2021 when she closed Knix’s Series B financing just three days before giving birth to twins. During the process, she eliminated any investors who questioned her ability to run a business and be a mother. The brand went on to achieve 97% Y-O-Y growth that year.
Griffiths holds an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD and currently sits on the board of Futurpreneur Canada. In 2021, she released her first book Life After Birth, which celebrates the early stages of life and the start of motherhood.
