Anne McKevitt Biography

Anne McKevitt sees herself as a curious adventurer and evolver who never likes life to remain the same for too long. Over the course of two decades she has educated, enlightened and entertained millions of people. Her accomplishments include that of globally recognized business leader, best selling author, TV personality, multiple award winner and much respected philanthropist.

Anne’s reputation and achievement highlights include:

Member of President Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative
Awarded Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World™
Member of the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard
Recognized by The International Herald Tribune as a World Class Entrepreneur
Named by Time Magazine as “one of Four International Business Leaders to Watch”
Placed at #30 in The Sunday Times “500 Most Powerful Britons”
Forbes Magazine stated, “at the head of the pack … Anne McKevitt”
Chaired Ernst & Young’s 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year awards
Executive-in-Residence, Brisbane Graduate School of Business, QUT

As one of the world's most renowned business entrepreneurs she was awarded Leading Women Entrepreneur of the World 2002-2003. Anne founded and headed up over twenty separate businesses during the last two decades. One such business was sold that in three years delivered the design of 1600 products with a retail value of $975 million.

Additionally Anne has mentored, guided and worked with exceptional individuals and companies to assist them in growing their organizations including: Mercedes, Ikea, Royal Doulton, Peugeot, Ernst & Young, Wal*Mart, Deloitte, Waterford Crystal, Jeep, Bloomingdales, Saks, Pottery Barn, Moet e Chandon, Freeman’s, Sainsbury’s, Debenhams, Wedgwood, Marks & Spencer, Commonwealth Bank, Optus, Toyota and Hewlett Packard. She is also a much sought after speaker having performed live at events to audiences of 25,000 people. Serial entrepreneurial in spirit and global in impact, Anne McKevitt has consistently been an industry leader.

Anne McKevitt grew up in a poor part of the north of Scotland, where she left school aged 15 and without any qualifications to her name. With only enough money to survive for one month in London she headed off to the capital with her sights set on making her mark. Since then she has had a remarkable journey from being completely penniless to truly wealthy and from government council house to The White House.

By the time she was 23 Anne had already become renowned through her work in the world of fashion, before starting her first business by chance. She had no big game plan—in fact, she had no plan at all. No goals. She didn’t know she was meant to have any, just, as she puts it, “lots of courage, a big dream, and a massive dose of naïveté.” That first business was a property development company. She started it with just £5,000 “borrowed” from her MasterCard® because she didn’t have any savings. In less than one year she had turned it into a multi-million pound business. Soon she was refurbishing and developing hundreds of London homes and made record prices per square foot for every property she sold. She could have retired for life before her 24th birthday, but instead, over the past twenty years has turned everything into gold.

Next came business #2 running simultaneously and working alongside business #1. The second business she started—doing interior design for clients who already had a property but wanted a “McKevitt refurbishment”—was just as successful. Anne knew she wanted to make the maximum money with the least amount of work, so she shot for the top. Within just a few years of arriving in London she had attracted an A-list clientele that reads like a who’s who, including: the Sultan of Brunei, Michael Caine, Naomi Campbell, Dyan Cannon, Catherine Deneuve, Faye Dunaway, Linda Evangelista, Sir Bob Geldof, the Queen Of Greece, the Duchess of Gloucester, Jerry Hall, Sir Elton John, Queen Noor of Jordan, Annie Lennox, Sophia Loren, Paul McCartney, Kate Moss, Joan Rivers, the Queen of Spain, Ringo Starr, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Raquel Welch, and Bill Wyman, as well as the late Anita Roddick, Paula Yates, George Harrison, and Linda McCartney.

Creating a multi-million pound property development, construction, and interior design business from scratch at such a young age is an impressive achievement in and of itself, but Anne’s accomplishment is even more impressive in light of a very serious car accident she survived in 1986. Told that she might never walk again, she was totally bedridden for almost a year. Thanks to former clients Paul and Linda McCartney, who found and funded alternative treatments for her, Anne was back on her feet after 18 months, literally rebuilding her life one step at a time through recuperation, rehabilitation, and iron will determination.

Al_Gore_and_Anne

In early 1994, Anne, as Britain’s most sought after property developer and interior designer, caught the attention of TV producers looking for a host for a new lifestyle show. Because of her learn-on-the-job skills in property and her reputation for turning any property into a goldmine, Anne was asked by BBC TV producers to show her skills to the British public.

For the next decade, Anne became a prime time TV star and celebrity in the UK, where she was viewed by millions on her lifestyle home and garden television shows and through her books—the media labeled her “Britain’s Martha Stewart.” She instigated a colour and contemporary style revolution that transformed the British nation’s homes and gardens. She appeared in 18 series of lifestyle TV programs, which she presented and designed for on the BBC and ITV networks and in syndicated series in another 20 countries worldwide. In the U.S. she was featured on CBS, Discovery, Fox, HGTV, and HSN networks. Anne has written five bestselling and critically acclaimed interior design books which are sold in 16 countries. Her first book sold a staggering one million copies and broke new ground in the category of illustrated books, making it the 20th bestselling book of the ’90s in the UK.

Anne’s property development, design work, and projects received numerous awards, including:

Best Home in Scotland—UK National Home Builder design award sponsored by The Guardian newspaper
Best Home for the Future in the UK—UK National Home Builder design award sponsored by The Guardian newspaper
Best Interior Layout—What House award sponsored by The Sunday Times newspaper
Civic Trust Award 2001—Saltire Society
Housing Design Award 2000—Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland
Regeneration Achievement Award 2000—Supreme Award, Chartered Institute of Building, Scotland
Good Building Award 2000—Royal Town Planning Institute award for Planning Achievement 2000
Commendation for Planning Urban Renaissance
WH Smith Literary Award, nominated Designer Know How for book of the year

Her work and interviews have appeared in hundreds of magazine publications in the UK and internationally, and she has been featured in thousands of newspaper articles around the world, including: The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Times, Sun Herald, Vive, Cape Argus, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Post, New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, USA Today, Wealth Creator, Executive Magazine, Vogue, Harpers & Queen, ELLE, Hello!, OK!, Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful, Home & Garden, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Living etc, Forbes, Time, She, Latte Magazine, Ideal Home, Radio Times, TV Times, Your Garden, Company, Executive Magazine, Wealth Creator and Chief Executive.

anneentepreneuraward At the height of her fame and success, Anne decided it was time to map out and move on to the next chapter of her life, even though she was due to enter into a lucrative new global TV deal. Having accomplished everything she set out to do within the medium of design, she felt that it was time to move away and concentrate fully on her other, less public interests. These include multiple businesses, humanitarian work, and education. Some have said it was a brave move, leaving behind her TV celebrity status. Instead, Anne found it totally liberating to focus on her life as a serial and social entrepreneur. Granted a “Distinguished Talent” visa by the Australian Government, Anne moved permanently to Sydney, Australia, which she now calls home.

In addition to her own charity projects, Anne worked with micro-finance charity Opportunity International–Australia. She is a moral vegetarian of some 37 years and a lifelong environmentalist and social entrepreneur. She is a member of the British Humanist Association, PETA, and the Australian and British Vegetarian Societies.

Anne McKevitt’s business and philanthropic reputation has taken her into global political circles. 2006 saw Anne being invited to join Harvard’s Women Leadership Board at the John.F.Kennedy School of Government. In 2007 she was invited to join the Clinton Global Initiative where she worked alongside past and present presidential and prime ministerial heads of state, addressing the issues and making a personal commitment to implement changes in poverty alleviation, global health, climate change, and education.

Anne has worked on humanitarian and climate issues alongside:

The Honorable Al Gore
Sergey Brin—Co-founder of Google
Chad Hurley—Co-founder of YouTube
Steve Chen—Co-founder of YouTube
King Albert of Monaco
Carlos Slim Helú—Forbes recognised richest man in the world
Ted Turner—CNN founder
Rupert Murdoch—Founder of News Corp
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Brad Pitt—Climate campaigner and actor
Shakira—Poverty alleviation campaigner and singer
Bianca Jagger—Libertarian
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber—Abu Dhabi
The Honorable Hank Paulson—former Treasury Secretary
Fareed Zakaria—Editor of Newsweek International
Angelina Jolie—Goodwill ambassador, UN refugee agency, and actor
H. Lee Scott—CEO, Walmart
Jane Goodall—Animal rights activist
Donna Karan—Clothing designer
Robert Zoellick—President of the World Bank
Michael Eisner—Former CEO, Disney
Theodore Roosevelt IV—Climate campaigner
Rev. Jesse Jackson
Morgan Freeman—Actor
Andre Agassi—Tennis champion and philanthropist
Judy McGrath—CEO, MTV
Indra Nooyi—CEO, PepsiCo
Tony Bennett—Singer and philanthropist
Barbara Streisand—Singer, actor, and philanthropist
J. Craig Venter—Genome sequencer

She has also worked with 52 past and present presidential and prime ministerial heads of state, including:

President Bill Clinton
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson
President of Columbia
President of Iceland

President of Ethiopia
President of Afghanistan
President of the Philippines
President of Argentina
Prime Minister of Turkey
President of the Dominican Republic

Anne_BOTTOM_IMAGE Anne McKevitt was invited to The White House and Capitol Hill by the Bush Administration in 2007 to take part in discussions and attend briefings on foreign policy, labor, legislative affairs, and climate change, and subsequently fulfilled a long held ambition to visit the Oval Office. In 2009 she met with President Barack Obama.

2010 was a pivotal year of change for Anne in which she mapped out the next chapter. The year became one of new pursuits and relinquishing, redefining and reviewing what was most important to her both personally and in business. With this in mind, Anne resized and refined her business portfolio and organizational involvement to a core select few existing and new ventures that enthused her and that could bring about the most positive change across the globe. It was also the year that saw her take her first 14,000 feet skydive.

2011 saw her native Scotland recognise her as one of 50 Highland Heroes from the last 500 years—an honour of which she is extremely proud. Her personal pastimes include: photography, abstract painting, pottery, yoga, tennis, kayaking, year round sea swimming, surfing, body boarding, movies and chilling out at the beach when she should be in the office. She is a self-confessed brain neuroscience groupie and space science geek.

Earlier this year she was one of only 150 people from around the globe who were invited by NASA to witness the final launches of Space Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral. The behind the scenes experience at NASA, which included private time with astronauts, technicians, scientists and NASA chiefs was definitely one of Anne’s favourite lifetime experiences. To cap it off it even included a photo opportunity with Anne leaning against the NASA countdown clock—a childhood dream come true. Anne since re-confirmed that she still wants to be a stowaway on the first manned mission to Mars!

To find out more about Anne McKevitt, view her press cuttings or book her for a speaking engagement click this link This link will take you to AnneMcKevitt.com