B I O G R A P H Y Ambika Conroy is the 22 year-old founder of Ambika, LLC. She was born in Melbourne, Australia and grew up in various parts of the world, mostly in India and New York. Ambika's multicultural background is reflected in her designs. To create a special elegance in her swimwear, she incorporates jewelry in many of the designs, which are inspired by her childhood in India and a recent worldwide research trip to seek out beautiful jewelry and insights for future creations. Ambika's parents were undoubtedly an influence on her career choice. Her mother, who passed away in 1991 from cancer, was a designer as well as a gifted and creative craftswoman specializing in clothes and jewelry design, hair styling and floral arranging. Her father, now a successful painter, has a background as a book designer, advertising art director, and illustrator. After completing high school at a top boarding school in Connecticut with state awards in photography, Ambika began studies at school of Visual Arts in NYC. However, soon after beginning, she was attracted to a full time opportunity learning directly while assisting a NYC fashion photographer. It was during this exposure to the fashion industry that she began to have her own inspirations, and her first forays into fashion design. This led to the creation of a line of crochet swimwear. Although, having no previous crochet experience, Ambika found models and other fashion professionals clamoring for her designs. In the last two years, Ambika's designs have appeared in many top magazines, along with interviews about her. She has had designs in the Sports Illustrated swimwear issue two years in a row with the 2002 issue featuring five of her bikinis. She has been featured in "W" magazine (July 2001), a full page article was written on her in Women's Wear Daily (April 19th, 2001), Clear magazine published her designs, as did Maxim (November 2000), Cafe (June 2001), and Italian VOGUE (June 2002). American VOGUE included a paragraph on Ambika's bikinis in their "VOGUE view" section of the June 2002 issue, "The Best 101 Swimwear Designs". Ambika's bikinis have been recognized on MTV's Fashionably Loud (Feb/March 2002), Mezumashi TV, the Japanese version of "Good morning America" broadcast to 80 million viewers in NYC and Japan, the Sports Illustrated one hour documentary on the making of the 2002 swimsuit issue. Also Jay Leno, on the Tonight Show, held up one of Ambika's bikinis from the Sports Illustrated 2002 Swimsuit Issue, claiming that this was his favorite bikini in the issue (Feb. 2002) Ambika was also featured on EcityofStyle.com for contributing to the Prasad Project (Philanthropic Relief Altruistic Service and Development) charity benefit, "Beyond Fashion". The huge response has been truly exciting and has led to the formation of the company, Ambika, LLC, and an Ambikabikini starting collection of 21 styles of swimwear and sarongs. Keeping the styles unique and high end to ensure quality, the company plans to continue the crochet swimwear line and is creating crochet hats, bags, and necklaces soon to be on the market.