From the Trading Floor to the Experience Cloud
Before anyone was running banner ads or debating viewability metrics, Nels Stromborg was standing on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, calling out trades. It's an unusual origin story for one of digital media's most decorated sales leaders - but it explains a lot. The floor trains you to read rooms, move fast, and hold a position. Stromborg took those instincts and applied them to every sales organization he's ever touched.
His pivot to digital came at AOL, where he spent five years as Category Retail Director and National QSR/CD Director. This was AOL in its complicated middle age - no longer dominant, but still reaching millions and still demanding sophisticated retail strategy. Stromborg managed category P&Ls, drove revenue across Retail, Financial Services, and QSR verticals, and built the account management discipline that would define his career. He consistently exceeded targets in an environment where exceeding targets was not guaranteed.
Maker of beats, sales professional, never trumper.
- Nels Stromborg, self-described on TwitterUndertone was where Stromborg became a builder. As Senior VP of Sales, he ran Midwest, Texas, and West Coast sales teams - a sprawling mandate that he attacked with the kind of disciplined aggression that trading floors reward. His Chicago office earned "Office of the Year" status two years running, in 2013 and 2014. The sales organization scaled 300% on his watch. He showed up onstage at Variety's MASSIVE advertising summit. The market noticed.
Retale came next. Named Executive VP of Sales for North America in August 2014, Stromborg helped build the case that location-based mobile advertising was a real retail strategy, not a novelty. He argued that mobile could unite location data with genuine consumer relevance - a thesis that turned out to be correct, and that the whole industry eventually caught up to.
The Year Everyone Froze, Stromborg Hit 300%
Adobe is where Stromborg operates now - and where the numbers get genuinely striking. As VP Transformational Leader for Media and Entertainment, he manages global strategic partnerships with some of the most complex accounts in the industry. Media and entertainment companies buy across the full Adobe stack: Creative Cloud, Experience Cloud, Document Cloud, and increasingly AI tools like Adobe Sensei and Firefly. These are not commodity deals. They require a salesperson who can hold a technical conversation with a CTO and a strategic conversation with a CMO on the same day.
In FY2020, while the entertainment industry was shutting down productions and freezing budgets, Stromborg hit 300% of his sales goal. That number is unusual enough in normal years. In 2020, it was remarkable. Adobe recognized it: he took home both the North American Seller of the Year award and the Media & Entertainment Seller of the Year award - a rare double.
Named Adobe's North American Seller of the Year AND Media & Entertainment Seller of the Year in the same fiscal year - while hitting 300% of annual goal during the pandemic.
Three years later, in FY2023, he closed at 160% of goal. These are not outlier spikes - they're a pattern. Stromborg's record at Adobe suggests that his approach to media and entertainment relationships - deep, consultative, built on understanding the full scope of what a studio or broadcaster actually needs - translates into consistent top performance even as the product evolves around him.
The company he represents is not small context. Adobe employs over 31,000 people, generates nearly $24 billion in annual revenue, and sits at the intersection of creative tools and enterprise marketing technology. Stromborg sits inside that at one of its most competitive verticals - pitching to studios and streamers who are simultaneously Adobe's customers and among the most sophisticated digital operators on the planet.
Beats, Birdies, and a Scholarship
Stromborg plays in a band called Carbonfour. He has a Twitter alter ego dedicated entirely to golf and bourbon, operating under the handle @Golfbaconbooze. He's vocal about politics. He describes himself, in three words: "Maker of beats, sales professional, never trumper." This is the self-portrait of someone who doesn't particularly need their LinkedIn profile to be the whole story.
His family includes wife Janice and two children, Dagny and Oliver, plus a dog named Bowie. The SCUBA diving, the wine collecting, the obsessive golf - these are the hobbies of a person with genuine curiosity, the kind that makes for good sales relationships because it produces genuine conversational range.
The most revealing detail is the scholarship. Stromborg created the EmpowHER Scholarship at American University - his alma mater in Washington, D.C. - in honor of his mother. It goes annually to graduating seniors who combine academic excellence, leadership, perseverance, and financial need. He didn't name it after himself. He named it after what it does. That choice says something.
His education ran from American University (Bachelor of Science in International Relations and Economics) to Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he completed the executive "Strategy of Leadership" program in 2009-2010. The liberal arts foundation mixed with executive leadership training is a recognizable template for a certain kind of digital media executive - broad enough to be interesting, rigorous enough to be credible.
Two Decades, One Direction
The Numbers and the Honors
- Adobe 2020 North American Seller of the Year
- Adobe 2020 Media & Entertainment Seller of the Year
- 300% of FY2020 goal at Adobe - during a year the entertainment industry largely froze
- 160% of FY2023 goal at Adobe managing global M&E strategic partnerships
- Scaled Undertone's sales organization by 300%
- Undertone Chicago Office: "Office of the Year" in 2013 and 2014 - two consecutive years
- Founded the EmpowHER Scholarship at American University in honor of his mother