by Rachel Ogbu//

Vanessa Kingori of Kenyan-Caribbean heritage showed that hard work really pays when she became the youngest and first female publisher of British GQ in 2015.

Her milestone also saw her go down in history as the first and only black Publisher in Conde Nast UK’s 100-year history, as well as the entire company’s youngest serving Publisher. Her new position has seen a major improvement to British GQ website which was redesigned then the launch of “GQ Video” and a “mobile-first” strategy was adopted. It was the first in Conde Nast International to do so.

Vanessa Kingori has used her connection to help other people to the top. She does this through youth development working also as a Visiting Fellow at the University of the Arts London. She studied Management and Sociology at Royal Holloway University of London which was ranked by The Times as one of the best universities in the world and though she worked briefly as a model, she found her place in media after her friend, Kirsty Cocker, introduced her to the line of work. She worked at BBC magazines in their advertising department then at Associated Newspaper working for the London Evening Standard. She was also fashion manager of Esquire in Britain. “I also became very involved with the launch of the Evening Standard’s first glossy magazine – ES Fashion. The now defunct title gave me my first taste of working on a luxury magazine and was a seamless move into what I do now,” she told Un-ruly.

In 2013, she was honoured as one of the UK’s 20 Most Influential Black Britons under 40 by the Powerlist magazine and then became one of Briton’s overall Most Influential Black Briton’s on the 2016 list.

Vanessa Kingori became one of the Panel of Judges of the Black British Business Awards in 2015 and last year, she was honoured with an MBE in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours List.

Rachel Ogbu

UK Based Strategic, multidisciplinary Writer with an eye for innovation and pixel perfection. MA in New Media and Internet Technologies. “Although my skill set is vast, my greatest expertise revolve in the worlds of social media, content creation and print collateral. My wish is to combine my knowledge and experience in these areas, to deliver the best creative to my employer’s clients and their audiences.”