consumer-goods
(28)
Edward Pilkington
Across three decades, five regions and a cabinet of familiar labels, Edward Pilkington learned that durable brands need both a fixed identity and the nerve to move with culture.
Frank Fleischman
A philosophy major who ended up selling sleep, Frank Fleischman runs sales and marketing for one of America's oldest mattress names - and does it from the same New Jersey mill town where Sealy has been making beds since 1907.
Alberto Cajiga
Across P&G, SCA and Essity, Alberto Cajiga built a career by treating brand strategy as an operating discipline - one that links customers, products, markets and the people asked to make change real.
Dave Schneider
Dave Schneider is Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Red Wing Shoe Company, the family-owned, Minnesota-based maker of iconic American work boots founded in 1905. He leads the company's global marketing practice, spanning brand management, digital and traditional communications, ecommerce, retail experience, brand protection, and corporate communications, reporting directly to the CEO. After years in senior roles at leading agencies including Digitas, Tribal DDB, and BBDO, he brought an agency creative sensibility to an operator's job, championing a marketing model that balances long-term brand equity with performance-driven revenue while putting the skilled-trades workers who wear the boots at the center of the brand's story.
Kerry Konrady
Kerry Konrady is the Chief Marketing Officer of OluKai, the Hawaiian-inspired premium footwear brand. A former civil-engineering student and college pitcher who fell for baseball statistics before marketing, he has helped build OluKai from a niche label into a B-Corp certified, direct-to-consumer growth story rooted in the Aloha spirit. Over more than 20 years marketing premium consumer goods, he rose through OluKai from Director of Marketing to VP to CMO, oversees ecommerce and owned retail, and serves as a board director of the Ama OluKai Foundation supporting Hawaiian culture and communities.
Nicks Ericsson
Nicks Ericsson is the Chief Marketing Officer of KEEN Footwear, the Portland-based outdoor shoe company, a role he took on in 2024. A Swedish-trained brand marketer with more than 20 years across fashion, sport, and footwear, he spent over a decade at UGG, where he built the brand's first circular-economy program and pushed its regenerative-agriculture pledge across a million acres of farmland. Earlier he helped scale premium labels including J.Lindeberg and Justin Timberlake's William Rast, and he co-founded The AND Agency to advise companies on responsible brand and sustainability strategy. His stated aim at KEEN is to make it 'the most trusted brand in the world' through consistency and transparency rather than moonshot promises.
Shelly Wilson
Shelly Wilson is a C-level digital, eCommerce and marketing executive based in San Diego who now works as a fractional and interim leader for consumer brands. She is Fractional Chief Marketing Officer at the Australian bohemian-fashion label SPELL, Interim CEO and Chief Marketing Officer at fragrance brand Vitruvi, and a senior advisor to lifestyle brands including Nixon and tentree. Earlier she was SVP Digital at Saje Natural Wellness, where she is known for leading platform migrations and building high-growth direct-to-consumer operations. She pairs deep operational eCommerce experience with brand-building instincts across fashion, wellness and consumer goods.
Tricia Mahoney
Tricia Mahoney is the Chief Marketing Officer of Twisted X Global Brands, the Decatur, Texas footwear maker behind Twisted X, Twisted X Work, Black Star, CellSole and Wrangler Footwear. With more than three decades in marketing spanning agency and client roles, high-tech and western lifestyle, she is the only female member of the company's C-suite. Since joining in 2019 she has led the launches of collections such as Black Star, Zero-X, Tech X and Wrangler, earned more than 100 industry awards, and built a retailer-first brand strategy. She is also a two-time published author whose third manuscript, Trust the Path, is in development as a book and screenplay.
Matt Beaton
Matt Beaton is CEO of Mike's Hot Honey, the Brooklyn-based chili-infused honey brand he built with college friend Mike Kurtz. He joined in 2015 when the company was pulling in $100,000 a year, and grew a one-SKU business into a roughly $40 million operation stocked in more than 30,000 retail stores and 3,000 restaurants. He came out of brand-management jobs at Wrigley and PUR Water and an MBA from Kellogg, and now runs the classic case study for what happens when you refuse to launch a second product.
Russ Wallace
Russ Wallace is the co-founder and CEO of Freestyle, a Santa Monica baby-care brand rebuilding the diaper aisle for modern parents. A recovering NYU-trained lawyer who traded courtrooms for supply chains, he cut his operating teeth scaling Hello Bello past a $100M run rate before teaming up with Cameo co-founder Mike Constantiner. Freestyle's tree-free, bamboo-core diapers launched online in 2022 and now sit on shelves at Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods, riding roughly 400% year-over-year growth and a fresh $10M Series A.
Jarrod Jordan
Jarrod Jordan is a consumer-goods and technology marketing executive now serving as Chief Executive Officer of Rarebird, Inc., the specialty coffee company built around Px (paraxanthine). A Columbia University graduate based in New York, he built his reputation running data-driven, omnichannel marketing at scale: as Chief Marketing Officer of the smart-earbud pioneer Bragi, as Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at consumer brands company Iovate Health Sciences, and as a founding member and Executive Vice President of Thuzio, the marketing SaaS startup he helped grow from four people to nearly eighty across five cities. A frequent conference keynoter and on-camera business analyst, Jordan has become known for turning quantitative rigor into brand momentum.
Alex Abelin
Alex Abelin is the co-founder and CEO of PlantBaby, the Hawaii-based company behind Kiki Milk, a whole-food, organic plant-based milk built for kids. A three-time founder who spent seven years at Google and sold his smart-city startup LQD WiFi to Verizon in 2016, he traded payphone kiosks for pumpkin seeds after he and his wife Lauren couldn't find a clean plant milk for their son. PlantBaby has raised roughly $7M and hit $4.8M in revenue in 2024, selling through its own site plus Sprouts, Wegmans, Erewhon, Amazon and Thrive Market.
Michael Polk
Michael Polk is the President and CEO of Implus, the Durham, North Carolina maker of footcare, fitness and sporting goods brands like Sof Sole, Spenco, Yaktrax and TriggerPoint. A first-generation American and career consumer-goods operator, he spent decades climbing through Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods and Unilever before running Newell Brands for eight years, where he led a transformation that roughly tripled enterprise value. Since 2020 he has paired the Implus job with an advisory role at private equity firm Berkshire Partners, trading the glare of a public-company quarter for the hands-on work of building brands shoulder-to-shoulder with a smaller team.
Will Smelko
Will Smelko is the co-founder and CEO of Ora, an Austin-based maker of organic, plant-based supplements built from real food rather than synthetic chemicals. A UC Berkeley political science grad and former healthcare strategy consultant, he traded the pharma world for the supplement aisle after realizing he had no idea where any of it came from. He launched Ora in 2014 with college friend and chef Ron Chang and partner Erica Bryers, pitched it on Shark Tank in 2017, walked away from Kevin O'Leary's offer, and watched sales jump 400% anyway. Today Ora sells nationwide through Vitamin Shoppe, Amazon and its own site, and even fuels professional pickleball players.
David Renteln
David Renteln is the co-founder and CEO of Lucy, a Los Angeles consumer brand making tobacco-free nicotine gum and pouches built around a stated mission of reducing tobacco-related harm to zero. A Harvard human evolutionary biology graduate and former Harvard Rugby president, he deferred a Caltech bioengineering PhD to help build Soylent, where he served as co-founder and chief marketing officer. In 2016 he started Lucy with Soylent alumni John Coogan and Samy Hamdouche, raised a $10M Series A in 2020 from RRE Ventures, Vice Ventures, Greycroft and Y Combinator, and has since pushed nicotine into the productivity-and-wellness conversation.
Joel Beal
Joel Beal is the CEO and co-founder of Alloy.ai, a demand and inventory control tower that helps consumer goods brands like Bic, Bosch, Crayola and Ferrero turn messy retailer data into daily, SKU-store-level decisions. A would-be economics academic who walked away from a Stanford PhD because it felt too theoretical, Beal built a career in applied data science at Applied Predictive Technologies and helped scale fintech Addepar from pre-revenue to $300B in assets before founding Alloy in 2016. The idea came from his sister, who spent her weeks manually stitching together retailer spreadsheets for a luxury shoe brand.
Sara Polon
Sara Polon is the co-founder and CEO of Soupergirl, the Washington, DC plant-based soup company she launched in 2008 with her mother Marilyn (a.k.a. Soupermom). A former stand-up comedian who once led tours through the Middle East, she turned a reading of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma into a mission to fix a broken food system one bowl at a time. Soupergirl survived a no-deal turn on Shark Tank, raised a $2M Series A from sustainability investors, became the first brand to earn Fair Food Program certification, went plastic-neutral, and now sells in hundreds of retailers including Whole Foods, Costco and Kroger.
Monica Belsito
Monica Belsito is the CEO of Function of Beauty, the made-to-order personal care company that turns an online quiz into a custom bottle of shampoo. She took the top job in July 2025 after a career spent building consumer brands that get acquired: founding CMO at feminine-care brand LOLA, CMO at hummus maker Sabra (bought by PepsiCo in 2024), and senior brand manager at Dollar Shave Club before its $1 billion sale to Unilever. A Georgetown grad and Harvard MBA who started in crisis PR and Colgate's management program, she now steers Function of Beauty's push from DTC into shelves at Target, Sephora, Walmart, and Amazon.
Matt Eanes
Matt Eanes is the VP and General Manager of Consumer Goods at Adobe, based in the Greater Philadelphia area. A seasoned enterprise software sales leader with over 20 years of experience, he has spent the past decade at Adobe climbing from account executive to leading the consumer goods vertical. Before Adobe, he held senior account roles at Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, and HP, building deep expertise in complex enterprise software deals across multiple industries.
Eric Hunter
Eric Hunter is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of World Market (Cost Plus World Market), the specialty retail chain known for globally sourced furniture, home decor, artisanal foods, and international gifts. Based in Alameda, California, Hunter joined World Market in May 2021 as Chief Commercial Officer, was elevated to President in June 2022, and became CEO in July 2023. He brings deep retail marketing expertise from executive roles at Pier 1 Imports, JCPenney, Kellwood Company, and Ascena Retail Group's plus-size division (Lane Bryant, Cacique, Catherines). Under his leadership, World Market has pursued digital transformation, flexible payment solutions, and continued its mission of delivering unique, globally inspired products across nearly 250 stores and online.
Jennifer Nevins
Jennifer McAllister-Nevins is the CEO and Co-Founder of Savor, a New York-based brand that turns keepsakes and important documents into beautifully designed, display-worthy storage. A former ACLU attorney and Legal Aid Society lawyer who pivoted from legal advocacy to product entrepreneurship, she co-founded Savor in 2014 with Karla the Losen after meeting at their children's school. Under her leadership, Savor grew revenue tenfold in five years, landed on the Inc 5000 at #3206, went viral on TikTok Shop landing in the top 10%, and earned placements at Anthropologie, Pottery Barn Kids, and Nordstrom. Her flagship products - including The Library, The Folio, and the 'In Case I Go Missing' binder - have been featured on Good Morning America, the Today Show, CNN, HGTV, Oprah Daily, Vogue, and The New York Times.
Jake Miller
Jake Miller is the founder of Fellow, a San Francisco-based premium coffee gear company known for design-forward products like the Stagg EKG electric kettle, Ode Brew Grinder, and Carter Move Mug. He launched Fellow as a Stanford MBA class project in 2013, weathered 73 investor rejections and a failed first product, before building a nine-figure consumer brand sold in 45+ countries and backed by $42M in funding. Miller's mission is to transform everyday coffee routines into meaningful rituals by bridging the gap between specialty roasters and home baristas.
Michael Pengue
Michael J. Pengue is the Chief Executive Officer of Hint Inc., the San Francisco-based maker of unsweetened fruit-infused water that pioneered the better-for-you flavored water category. With more than 30 years in the beverage industry, Pengue has led multibillion-dollar businesses at Nestlé Waters North America, helped orchestrate the $1.65 billion sale of Bai Brands to Dr Pepper Snapple, and built ZOA Energy into the fastest-growing energy drink in the US before its acquisition by Molson Coors. Appointed CEO of Hint in November 2024, he is leading a comprehensive 2026 brand relaunch designed to reframe hydration as desire rather than discipline.
Nico Enea
Nico S. Enea is a co-founder, board member, and distribution lead at NUG, Inc., a state-licensed, vertically-integrated California cannabis company he helped build from the ground up starting in 2014. Operating out of Alameda and Oakland, NUG has grown into one of California's most recognized cannabis brands, represented in over 80% of the state's dispensaries, with $28M+ in annual revenue, 150 employees, and a $15M Series A round under its belt. Enea also serves as Founder and CFO of Bloom Innovations Holdings LLC, a cannabis holding company managing diverse assets including property, IP, patents, and securities.
Shilpa Shah
Shilpa Shah is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of Cuyana, the San Francisco-based sustainable luxury fashion brand built around two words: fewer, better. A UC Berkeley-trained UX designer who spent a decade building interfaces for Disney, AT&T, and Sun Microsystems before pivoting to business school at 32 — pregnant during her first semester — Shah co-founded Cuyana in 2011 with Karla Gallardo. The company has grown into a cult-favorite direct-to-consumer brand with 7 retail locations, 150+ employees, celebrity fans including Jessica Alba and Ayesha Curry, and $30 million in Series C funding from H.I.G. Capital. At Cuyana, Shah is the architect of the customer experience, championing quality over quantity in an industry obsessed with the opposite.
Michael Boese
Michael Boese is the CEO of Specright, the first cloud-based Specification Data Management platform, appointed in April 2025. A seasoned enterprise software executive with 25+ years across Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Taleo, and multiple startup CEO roles, Boese brings a track record of scaling B2B SaaS companies through operational discipline and product innovation. Under his leadership, Specright is accelerating its mission to digitize product specifications across global supply chains, with $42M in total funding, $22.4M ARR, and ambitions to infuse AI across its platform to help manufacturers, retailers, and brands make better, more sustainable products.
Dan Hoskins
Dan Hoskins is the President & CEO of Sundia Corporation and its parent entity GT Brands, a plant-based snacking company headquartered in Orinda, California. A veteran of the food and beverage industry with 25+ years of experience, Hoskins helped turn Sundia from a fresh watermelon branding startup into one of the fastest-growing plant-based snacking brands in the US, distributing preservative-free True Fruit refrigerated cups and True Chia products to more than 6,000 grocery and convenience stores across the US and Canada. Before Sundia, he built his chops scaling Odwalla's national distribution and managing e-commerce at Hello Direct. An English Lit grad and former varsity swimmer and rower at UC Berkeley, Hoskins brings a rare blend of operational discipline and consumer intuition to a category he has helped define.
Nathaniel Chu
Nathaniel Chu is the co-CEO and co-founder of Tezza Foods (now Plonts), an Oakland-based food company using ancient fermentation techniques and microbial science to make genuinely complex, stinky plant-based cheese from soy milk. Holding a PhD in microbiology from MIT and a BS from Brown University, Chu spent years studying gut microbiomes before pivoting to harness those same microbial principles in food. With $12M in seed funding led by Lowercarbon Capital, Plonts launched in August 2024 in New York City and San Francisco restaurants, offering a plant-based cheddar that actually ages, melts, and smells like the real thing.