As executive vice president of designer merchandising for Nordstrom, Jeffrey Kalinsky spearheads designer strategy for the Seattle department store chain.

He also serves as president for his own luxury boutiques, Jeffrey Atlanta and Jeffrey New York, which are majority-owned by Nordstrom.

Kalinsky helped pioneer an upscale fashion center in New York’s Meatpacking District when he opened a Jeffrey New York luxury boutique there in 1999. Upscale shops, galleries and chic-chic restaurants soon followed, and the lower Manhattan neighborhood began to draw lucrative uptown shoppers.

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Born in Charleston, S.C., Kalinsky earned a degree in communications from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. He worked in his family’s Atlanta Bob Ellis shoe store where legend has it he sold his first shoes when he was five years old. Kalinsky was next employed at Bergdorf Goodman and Barney’s before opening a Bob Ellis shoe store with his father. In 1994, he opened Jeffrey Atlanta, a  boutique with designer labels and highly personalized service. He was known to fly shoppers to his boutique — “gift with purchase,” he called it — and bring select clients to designer showrooms for custom fittings.

Kalinsky became Nordstrom evp in 2008,  a position in which he has leveraged his formidable designer connections and eye for talent to transform the chain’s reputation from mainstream to fashion-forward.

Kalinsky is also founder of Jeffrey Fashion Cares (formerly Shoe Cares), whose annual benefit raises funds for AIDS and breast cancer research.