Keemia Ferasat, Founder & Editor in Chief, Style Salute
Authenticity, empowerment, and inspiration: Keemia Ferasat founded the media & commerce company Style Salute with these ideals in mind. Creating a brand aimed at millennials (as well as gen Z!), Keemia is curating a space for digitally savvy young women to explore and celebrate their personal style. Keep reading to learn more about what inspires her, and how this stellar entrepreneur got her start.
What are your dreams for Style Salute?
Looking forward, I’d like to see Style Salute reinvent the way women shop and consume media. The mission is to build a media company for this generation that is dedicated to inspiring the modern woman to live a stylish, smarter, and well-rounded life.
What separates Millennial and Gen Z woman when it comes to personal beauty, style and empowerment?
Millennials and Gen Zers also expect contextualization of products when they are shopping (i.e. how to wear something, why it’s great), and they expect to be able to act instantly and purchase something if they are looking at content. When you’re reading Style Salute, you’ll notice there’s a lot of utility to each product and each article drives an immediate action: whether that’s to try something, to buy something or to share something.
Millennial and Gen Zers also want to be their most authentic selves. Emily Weiss, Founder of Into The Gloss, says that technology is actually “enabling self-expression, but most importantly self-acceptance, in a tremendous, unprecedented way.” So at Style Salute, we’re operating under the belief that celebrating authenticity and empowerment speaks to this generation.
What books are on your night table?
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmul
Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
What’s the best piece of career advice you ever received?
My favorite piece of career advice would have to be from Richard Branson: “To be successful, you have to be out there.” It reminds me that if you are running a business, you have to hit the ground running and if you have a good team around you, amazing things can happen.
What’s an empowering story you’ve covered that’s empowered you and stayed with you the longest?
I really loved our story on Founder Nasty Gal and NYT Bestselling Author of #GirlBoss, Sophia Amoruso. The story, titled: ‘Traditional Career Paths Aren’t for Everyone’ is an inspirational op-ed on Amoruso’s career path. Despite her modest beginnings, she was able to overcome challenges and become a huge success.
I’m incredibly proud of the role Style Salute plays in bringing more textured, inspiring stories to life and I’m prouder still that a community of passionate users is identifying with our message and constantly engaging with one another.
If you could ask anyone in the world to make a kit, who would it be and what do you hope would be in it?
I would ask Elon Musk to make a kit of his favorite efficiency tools. With all that Musk is doing with two moonshot tech companies (Tesla Motors and SpaceX), he must be crazy — so how does he keep it all together?!
Awesome, Keemia. Thank you!
