STRATEGIES

It all started with bees. When my backyard honey didn't sell, I redesigned the label, rewrote the story, and unknowingly ran my first brand refresh. That spark led me to an MBA and a career in marketing.

I started my post-MBA career at Clorox, where I learned how real brands scale and succeed in retail. I managed P&Ls, led cross-functional teams, and ran national campaigns—Clorox Wipes during COVID, Clorox's first compostable wipe, Kingsford's challenger strategy on Reddit. I saw what disciplined brand-building looks like when decisions are expensive to reverse.

Then I moved to The Washington Post during an election cycle and overhauled the subscription go-to-market strategy where acquisition, engagement, retention, and messaging all had to work together.

Today, I run Darling Strategies. I work with brands like Brita, Burt's Bees, Fresh Step, and emerging brands like Lata Shop and Luji's Chocolate—helping them navigate the stage where momentum is real but the playbook that got them here stops working.

MY JOURNEY

You've never been here before. Your team hasn't either. I have.

I've sat where brand strategy, channel decisions, P&L pressure, and growth plans all converge—managing national brands at Clorox, rebuilding subscription strategy at The Washington Post, and inside scaling emerging brands navigating retail expansion with DTC cannibalization.

What makes me different: I bring big-brand discipline with P&L rigor. I understand both brand-building and performance marketing (rare to find both), and I've operated inside the constraints—not as an outside consultant telling you what to do, but as someone who's had to make it work with real budgets, real timelines, and real trade-offs.

Founders bring me in when:

• A big decision is on the table and they want to make sure they're backing the right thing

• Growth is real but inconsistent, and no one can explain what's actually working

• Their team is executing well but no one is connecting how the pieces affect each other

• They need someone who can tell them what to stop

I help you figure out which bet to make and what to stop doing—before you realize six months later you were solving the wrong problem.