My Story

I’m Aparna Sarma, the executive stylist behind Aureya. I have a BA in Economics from Bryn Mawr College, a Master's in Public Administration/International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, and as of 2026, a certificate in Personal Styling from the New York Institute of Art and Design. Not the career path you'd typically expect from a stylist, but absolutely what you'd expect from someone you would want to work with, and here’s why:

For over two decades, I helped some of the world's largest organizations navigate their most complex commercial challenges: analyzing brand and technology intangibles at KPMG, optimizing investment decisions at American Express, and directing pricing negotiations and revenue strategies at Omnicom. I built a career on the ability to read a room, influence high-stakes outcomes, and establish my persona as someone worth listening to.

What I came to understand, both in theory and practice, is that showing up professionally wasn't just about what I said or how I said it. It was very much about how I walked into a room, and what my sartorial style conveyed about my working style. While fashion has always been my preferred form of self-expression, I learned over time to use it strategically – to make choices that gave colleagues and clients a tiny insight about me before I said a word.  And that insight, it turns out, can be remarkably layered: clothing can be used to signal intelligence, creativity, agility, quirkiness, credibility and perhaps most importantly, relevance, crucial in a world of rapidly shrinking attention spans.  Curiously, over the years I’ve been surprised at how often this lever is left entirely untouched by both executives and their employers.

Aureya is my way of changing that: combining the analytical rigor of my education and work experience with my mastery of the syntax of style to help leaders harness the power of their wardrobe and deploy it as it should be: a precision tool for communicating their professional brand and controlling how they're perceived.