Story
My career began in finance, where I learned to ground every decision in business impact, a mindset that carried me into digital marketing, where performance must be provable. At Compete, later acquired by TNS, I advised companies like Wells Fargo, LendingTree, and State Farm, translating consumer insight into strategy recommendations and measurable growth.
Over the past 20+ years, I’ve scaled startups beyond $100M in revenue, brought performance marketing rigor to Fortune 10 companies, and helped established brands reinvent themselves for what’s next. From Virgin Money and Gazelle to CVS and O’Reilly, I’ve blended brand and performance marketing, partnering deeply with finance, product, and engineering, and demonstrating marketing’s ability to be a true growth engine. I bring not just strategy, but operational leadership, owning outcomes, building teams and systems, and mentoring marketers as they grow into confident leaders.
Expertise
Growth & Demand Generation
Much of my career has focused on helping brands grow by acquiring and retaining customers more effectively. I break down the marketing funnel to understand where growth is truly constrained - whether that's reach, conversion, retention, or emotional connection to the brand.
From there, the work becomes about choosing the right levers. Sometimes that means expanding into new channels. Other times it's improving conversion rates, increasing customer lifetime value, or using deeper customer insight to build stronger relationships. The goal is always the same: sustainable, measurable growth.
Building & Transforming
I've worked across startups and large organizations, building marketing functions from the ground up and helping established teams evolve as the business changes. In early-stage environments, that often means defining marketing's role, hiring and mentoring the right people, and putting structure around experimentation and execution.
In larger organizations, the work shifts towards transformation - modernizing process, aligning teams, and helping organizations adapt to new strategies, technologies, and growth models. Across both, progress ultimately comes down to people and how well they're supported to do their best work.
Technology & Modern Marketing
I've always been drawn to the intersection of marketing and technology. Over the course of my career, I've helped teams adopt tools that improve how they understand performance, make decisions, and drive growth - from early multi-channel attribution systems to more recent work with AI-powered prospect outreach and automation.
Technology itself is never the point. The value comes from applying thoughtfully, in ways that make teams more effective and help businesses move faster with confidence. Lately, that curiosity has me exploring how AI can meaningfully support modern marketing teams.
Expertise
Growth & Demand Generation
I help companies grow by focusing on where demand is truly constrained, whether that’s awareness, conversion, retention, or trust. The work starts by understanding the full customer journey and identifying the levers that will have the biggest impact on sustainable growth.
-
Diagnose funnel constraints across acquisition, conversion, and retention
-
Expand or optimize channels based on real performance, not assumptions
-
Use customer insight to drive measurable, repeatable growth
Building & Transforming
I’ve built and evolved marketing organizations across startups and large enterprises, helping teams adapt as strategy, scale, and complexity change. The work often sits at the intersection of people, process, and clarity of role.
-
Build marketing functions from the ground up in early-stage environments
-
Modernize teams, processes, and structure in established organization
-
Hire, mentor, and align teams around clear priorities and execution
Technology & Modern Marketing
I’m drawn to the intersection of marketing and technology, with a focus on using tools to improve decision-making, performance, and speed. Technology is never the goal — it’s how teams work smarter and scale effectively.
-
Implement modern measurement, attribution, and performance frameworks
-
Help teams adopt tools that improve insight, efficiency, and confidence
-
Explore practical applications of AI to support modern marketing teams
Sample Work
Repositioning O’Reilly from legacy publisher to enterprise learning platform
O’Reilly faced a major transformation: evolving from a beloved but aging publisher of books and conferences into a subscription-based digital learning platform for enterprise customers. The challenge included a new buyer, a new business model, a marketing organization built for direct-to-consumer commerce, and a fragmented brand that no longer reflected where the company was headed.
We rebuilt the marketing organization and modernized the brand while preserving its iconic heritage, unifying sub-brands and rolling the new identity across the full customer journey. Targeted Connected TV campaigns helped reintroduce O’Reilly to enterprise decision-makers, driving renewed evangelism. Within 24 months, aided awareness of O’Reilly as a learning platform doubled on a limited budget, successfully repositioning the company for its next phase of growth.
Turning Consumer Insight into Measurable Pharmacy Growth
As consolidation limited CVS’s traditional growth through acquisitions, the company needed a new way to drive pharmacy growth using modern advertising channels. The challenge was to prove, through small, ROI-positive tests, that advertising could directly influence prescription volume, despite a marketing organization historically focused on in-store signage and print newspaper tactics.
Through path-to-purchase research, we uncovered a critical insight: during doctor visits, patients are often asked to provide pharmacy details on intake forms before a prescription is even written. To complete those forms, patients pulled out their phones to look up pharmacy locations. We shifted investment into mobile search and location-targeted ads at the moment of decision. This approach delivered $12 in annual prescription margin for every $1 in marketing spend, validated a mobile-first performance strategy, and enabled CVS to scale a national, performance-driven media model.
Scaling Gazelle through branded performance marketing
Gazelle faced the challenge of creating demand for an entirely new category: consumer electronics trade-ins. Most consumers were unaware their old devices had value, and even those who were interested lacked trust that a company would actually pay them after mailing in a phone. As a venture-backed startup, the business needed to build awareness and credibility while ensuring every dollar of media spend delivered immediate, first-transaction ROI.
We built a category-defining brand by blending performance discipline with high-trust channels like TV, radio, and early podcast advertising—helping establish credibility while driving scale. Insight-driven creative spoke to multiple audience segments, and early investment in podcasts proved especially effective with tech-savvy early adopters. This approach nearly doubled revenue in the first year, repeated the following year, scaled the business to ~$120M in annual revenue, launched a $30M direct-to-consumer marketplace for pre-owned devices, and established Gazelle as the trusted leader in smartphone trade-in.
Datalign Advisory - Chief Marketing Officer
At Datalign Advisory, I helped stabilize and scale growth for a consumer acquisition–driven financial services. I focused on testing and refining performance media, strengthening affiliate partnerships, and improving revenue predictability. Alongside that work, I mentored and developed the marketing team, helping bring greater structure, discipline, and confidence to how growth decisions were made in a regulated marketplace.
O'Reilly Media - Chief Marketing Officer
At O’Reilly, I guided the transformation from a legacy publisher into a global SaaS-based learning platform. I rebuilt the marketing organization, doubled aided brand awareness, and increased inbound leads by 130% through innovative demand generation channels like Connected TV and ABM. I also modernized the brand while preserving its heritage, proving how brand stewardship and performance marketing together fuel growth.
CVS Health - Director, Pharmacy Marketing
At CVS, I brought a performance mindset into a Fortune 10 environment, demonstrating how marketing could drive measurable growth for the pharmacy business. By uncovering new path-to-purchase insights, I built campaigns that returned $12 in annual prescription margin for every $1 spent. This success helped secure a tenfold increase in marketing investment and cemented marketing as a growth driver.
Gazelle - Vice President, Marketing
At Gazelle, I helped define and scale the smartphone trade-in category, driving more than 100% revenue growth for two consecutive years. I launched the first direct-to-consumer storefront, growing it to $30M in just 15 months, while managing the P&L to balance growth and profitability. This role honed my ability to blend brand-building with rigorous performance marketing in a new category of service for consumers.
Virgin Money - Director, Customer Acquisition
At Virgin Money, I led customer acquisition strategy across social lending and mortgage products in the U.S. and Canada. I cut cost-of-acquisition by up to 80%, redesigned the digital experience to boost conversion by 50%, and helped shape business planning for future products. The experience demonstrated the power of a globally recognized, customer-centric brand when paired with disciplined acquisition strategy.
Compete - Director, Financial Services
At Compete, I advised leading financial services brands including Wells Fargo, LendingTree, State Farm, Esurance, and E-Loan. By applying financial rigor to consumer insights, I helped these companies optimize marketing programs, improve ROI, and refine go-to-market strategies. This consulting foundation shaped my approach of grounding marketing in measurable business outcomes.
Advisor Roles
As an advisor to Cinch Financial and CabFare, I worked in roles similar to a fractional CMO—helping leadership teams define positioning, refine customer acquisition strategies, and scale efficiently. At Babson Executive Education, I served on the advisory board, which led to consulting engagements with Dassault Systèmes, where I supported marketing strategy for enterprise software offerings. These roles reinforced my passion for mentoring leadership teams and applying my experience flexibly across industries.