Angela Ahrendts

Current Company

Burberry / Apple Retail — Former CEO / SVP

The Midwesterner Who Made Burberry Cool Again

Angela Ahrendts's transformation of Burberry from a stodgy British heritage brand into one of the most digitally innovative and culturally relevant luxury houses in the world remains one of the great turnaround stories in fashion history. When she arrived as CEO in 2006, Burberry was struggling with overexposure — its iconic check pattern had been so widely licensed and counterfeited that it had become associated more with mass-market knockoffs than with luxury. Ahrendts's response was both surgical and visionary: she pulled back licenses, tightened distribution, eliminated product lines that diluted the brand's image, and then did something that no major luxury brand had attempted — she made Burberry the first fashion house to fully embrace digital media as a primary channel for storytelling, marketing, and customer engagement.

Under her leadership, Burberry became the first luxury brand to livestream its runway shows, to build a major presence on social media platforms, and to integrate digital technology into its physical retail stores — including the famous Regent Street flagship, where screens displayed personalized content based on the RFID tags embedded in the clothing customers brought into the store. These innovations, which seem obvious in retrospect, were revolutionary at the time: luxury's conventional wisdom held that digital media was fundamentally incompatible with the exclusivity and scarcity that luxury brands depended on. Ahrendts proved that digital could enhance rather than diminish the luxury experience, and her success at Burberry — the company's market value tripled during her tenure — established the playbook that virtually every luxury brand now follows.

Reimagining Apple Retail as Community

Ahrendts's move from Burberry to Apple in 2014 — to lead the company's retail operations as Senior Vice President — was one of the most watched executive transitions in corporate history. Her mandate was to transform Apple's 500+ retail stores from product showrooms into what she called 'town squares' — community gathering spaces where people came not just to buy products but to learn, create, and connect. The 'Today at Apple' programming initiative, which she launched in 2017, offered free classes in photography, music production, art, and coding in every Apple Store, turning the stores into de facto community centers and educational institutions. Her redesign of flagship stores — including the Michigan Avenue location in Chicago, set along the river with a dramatic glass staircase — emphasized transparency, natural light, and connection to the surrounding city.

Her tenure at Apple was not without criticism: some analysts questioned whether the 'town square' concept was generating sufficient sales growth, and the company's retail revenue growth slowed during her final years. But Ahrendts's deeper contribution may have been cultural rather than financial: she demonstrated that a technology company's retail spaces could be about human connection rather than just transactions, and she brought a warmth and emotional intelligence to Apple's brand that complemented the company's engineering-driven culture. After leaving Apple in 2019, Ahrendts has focused on board service, mentoring, and advocacy for women in business — continuing to embody the leadership philosophy she articulated throughout her career: that the most effective leaders create environments where people feel valued, inspired, and empowered to do their best work.