I'm a passionate and very driven person, but I don't take life too seriously.  I don't think life's lessons are learned in books, rather by trying new things and pushing yourself into uncomfortable new places - learn by doing, and I've learned a lot over my 20+ year marketing career thus far. 

During my ten years at Gatorade, I worked across multiple functions, starting off in consumer insights and studying the inner workings of athletes to inform brand strategy, innovation, advertising and a host of other topics.  Later, I transitioned into marketing working across multiple brands with highlights including a complete turn-around of the Propel business, taking a multi-year declining brand and turning it into the fasting growing enhanced water in the country, leading the $5BN Gatorade portfolio to a 50-year high in terms of revenue, and launching award-winning creative campaigns that resonated with new consumer groups.  

At Red Bull, I led the charge to elevate the $5BN brand across multiple marketing functions: Brand, Advertising/Digital, Sports Marketing, Culture and Content, making it the leading growth brand in the $14BN energy category in 2020.  

It hasn't been all fun and games, I've failed too.  After taking over the Propel brand for example, I couldn't get a new innovation to stick leading to its discontinuation.  I once led a sprint to get a campaign together in six weeks that wasn't so great so we decided not to launch it.  Failure is a part of life, but most importantly I learned valuable lessons that I've taken with me in my future projects.  

Being a strong leader and having a happy, thriving team is very important to me.  Growing up I was an avid athlete (still trying to cling to those skills), which defines a lot of how I approach leadership.... however those skills were not enough to help me beat Serena Williams in ping pong as shown above.  Still working on that.