Some people build relationships. Khursheed makes them count.
There are people who understand business development as a numbers game. And then there is Khursheed Mistry, who appears to regard it as something considerably more human part instinct, part persistence and a very good understanding of what makes people say yes.
With more than three decades in luxury and lifestyle media, Khursheed has spent her career in an industry where relationships are currency and attention is notoriously difficult to hold. She has built businesses, sold ideas, managed demanding clients, navigated celebrities and CXOs, and somehow managed to make the whole thing look rather more effortless than it probably was.
One former colleague called her a “dynamite” who could “blast the competition” with her performance. The language may be exuberant, but the sentiment is telling. Khursheed is a go-getter in the old-fashioned sense: she sees an opportunity, gets after it and is not especially interested in hearing why it cannot be done.
Her professional world has stretched across business planning, advertising sales, subscriptions, strategic alliances, content marketing, events and customer engagement. But the thread running through all of it is people. She understands clients, particularly the rarefied world of CXOs and HNIs, and has an instinct for what they want before they necessarily articulate it themselves.
There is polish, certainly. There is also panache.
Khursheed knows the business of luxury, but she also knows that luxury is rarely just about the product. It is about experience, access, relationships and the little details that make someone feel they have been understood.
That combination has made her particularly formidable in a business where the best opportunities often arrive disguised as conversations.
At Clause, that experience brings something we value enormously: a perspective shaped by decades of watching brands, businesses and personalities evolve. She knows how reputations are built, how audiences respond to people and ideas, and perhaps most importantly, how much happens behind the polished public version of success.
For someone who has spent a career around fascinating people, Khursheed brings an instinct we recognise immediately at Clause:look closer, ask better questions and never mistake the surface for the whole story.
And yes, she is still very good at what she does.
She probably knows it too.
Khursheed Mistry is a contributing author to Clause.