About Pretty & Smart Co.
Where Ambition Meets Femininity
Pretty & Smart Co. is a women’s publication about ambition, style and the many ways we build a life. We share stories about business, fashion, beauty, home, wellness, culture and everything in between.
Ambition is personal. It can mean building a business, raising a family, making something of your own or finding the courage to begin again. Our pages make room for those different experiences.
Our story
Anaida Poilievre launched the original Pretty and Smart Blog in 2015. In 2020, Brooklyn Mattinson and Kate Bartz joined Anaida to relaunch and rebrand the blog as Pretty & Smart Co., helping shape its editorial direction through 2022. Anaida continued building Pretty & Smart Co. and launched the quarterly print magazine in 2025.
What you’ll find here
- The Magazine: quarterly print and digital issues, with interviews, features and perspectives to spend time with.
- The Blog: stories about style, home, food, travel, relationships, work and everyday life, alongside our archives.
- The Daily Pretty Brief: a concise edit of news, ideas and information affecting women’s lives and worth their attention.
- The Weekly Pretty Brief: our weekly email.
A note from our founder
Anaida (Ana) Poilievre is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Pretty & Smart Co. She shapes the publication’s editorial direction and brings her experience in communications, business and motherhood to its pages.
Why Pretty & Smart
The name Pretty & Smart was born from a moment that shaped how I speak to the women and girls in my life.
I was 25 years old when my youngest sister was just four. She was sweet, playful, and full of charm. Like any big sister, I found myself always telling her how pretty she was. One day, I noticed she had started mimicking the things I said and did. It made me pause. I realized that even casual compliments carry weight, especially for a child still untouched by society’s ideas of beauty.
I wanted her to feel beautiful and confident, but I also wanted her to know there is so much more to her than what she looks like. So I made a promise to myself: I would always follow the word “pretty” with “and smart.”
That fall, she went trick-or-treating with my stepmother. When a woman at the door smiled and said, “You’re so pretty,” my sister looked up proudly and added, “And smart,” while pointing at her forehead. That moment stayed with me. It confirmed just how powerful our words can be, and how deeply they shape the self-image of the next generation.
To me, being pretty and smart is about confidence and curiosity. It is about showing up with self-respect, loving how you carry yourself, and valuing knowledge, growth, and purpose. Beauty without depth fades. But when you nurture both how you carry yourself on the outside and how you expand your mind from the inside, you become truly powerful.
This is what Pretty & Smart stands for. This is where ambition meets femininity. And this is the kind of content we are here to create.
