I create the conditions for
brave and effective work.

I help brands see their customer, culture, and themselves more clearly than they can from inside the category. Clarity moves them toward work that doesn't just get noticed, but earns attention, builds relevance, and drives the business. Get in touch.

I'm a brand and cultural strategist with 20+ years of experience, primarily at RPA in Santa Monica, where I rose to VP, Group Strategic Planning Director. I developed an approach to strategy that became influential across brands like Honda, Acura, and ampm, helping them find their distinctive place in culture. Today I work with agencies and brands as both a senior leader and an independent strategy consultant.

My specialty is cultural perception — identifying an unspoken feeling in the present, the codes of a community, or where things are heading next. I pair that with an instinct for what a brand can be: sometimes mining a brand's existing DNA and connecting it to what people care about now, sometimes creating new DNA that gives a brand a place in culture it didn't have before.

Done right, the brand earns attention instead of buying it. People feel it gets them; they trust it to get culture; it stands apart from everyone chasing the same moment. That's what compounds into loyalty, pricing power, and margin.

I "speak creative" (sometimes with hotdog puppets), and I have been credited with "caring about the work as much as the creatives do."

See examples of my work.

Let's talk.

Whether you're building a strategy team or facing a specific brand challenge, I'd love to hear what you're working on.

  • I’m an experienced, Riva-trained moderator. I lead projects such as online/offline focus groups, ethnographies, creative development research, and taste testing. Post-research I find the best ways to institutionalize the research—turning it into an engaging story or worksession to suit the audience.

  • I immerse myself in the research to uncover patterns and insights, identify the problem, and find the story. I iterate on strategic solutions, grounding them in human truths. I “speak creative” bringing forward cultural references and campaign examples to help spark ideas.

  • I facilitate successful client and agency work sessions, including annual planning and ideation sessions, using exercises and examples to get people engaged and excited.

  • I can dig into your topic, not just from established research sources, but also from relevant cultural primary research. I’ve authored presentations and white papers on everything from the Changing Idea of Convenience (during covid) to explaining Gen Z Humor to the trend of Embracing Laziness.

  • I lead brand positioning projects from hospitals to hotels, and from quick and scrappy to multi-phased research initiatives.

  • I develop purchase journeys across different categories and objectives, always with an eye towards application. I create comms plans that seamlessly balance multiple objectives, targets, and product messaging priorities.

Let's connect