Consultancy, Enterprise Product & Service Planning, Serial Entrepreneur, Agency Founder, and Educator.
Consultancy, Enterprise Product & Service Planning, Serial Entrepreneur, Agency Founder, and Educator.
Among my strengths is an ability to communicate at the highest level, across cultural, demographic, and linguistic lines. I am an effective communicator, in person as well as through traditional and social/interest-based medias. I am an empathetic consumer marketer with an extraordinary ability to segment and develop individual product, service, experience, branding, and conceptual solutions commensurate with social media marketing and narrative messaging. As co-founder of the fashion tech company StyleSeek & TasteBud Technologies (Acquired in 2016), my ability to target and develop unique and inspiring communications, and marketing strategies, resulted in my co-development of what Nordstrom and Macy’s among other retailers, and Hyundai and Ralph Lauren among other brands, called one of the most accurate product recommendation algorithms on the market.
Though much of my background in entrepreneurial in nature, through the agency I founded after Thunderbird (1993 to 2009) I developed marketing strategies, branding, media, special events, direct marketing, and media campaigns for clients, including American Express, American Red Cross, Bank of America / US Trust Private Wealth Management, BMW North America, California State Parks, City of San Diego, Exxon-Mobil, General Motors, Kimberly Clark, Monsanto, The American Red Cross, and Wells Fargo, among others.
Parallel to my professional working career which spans, agency, consumer product, branding, marketing strategies, apparel & fashion tech, food & beverage, and hospitality markets, I have also served as a member of the teaching faculty at institutions including UCSD, The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM), as well as serving as Dean of Academic and Student Affairs, and faculty member at California International Business University.
Over the past 3 years, I have built one of the most recognized and followed Instagram accounts for men's boots, denim, and leather goods.
My Blog features interviews and news about boots, leather goods, and denim brands, makers and trends.
The BootHunter website offers news and reviews in the wider context of the menswear industry.
In 2013, I co-founded StyleSeek, the first highly intuitive recommendation engine based on a style and taste driven algorithm. Three partners from MIT and I developed a 30 second, visually based game, that enabled users to connect with products, brands, and retailers at a variety of price points.
Through its style, aesthetic and contextually based algorithm, StyleSeek enabled users, with an accuracy level of greater than 93%, to discover apparel and other lifestyle products from hundreds of retailers and brands. By narrowing their choices down to the most likely to match their personal taste, our style-based algorithm provided retailers such as Nordstrom and Macy’s, and brands from Ralph Lauren to Cole Haan, the ability to more quickly, accurately, and inspirationally connect customers with products they would most likely love, and purchase with satisfaction.
Our team raised nearly $1.8 million, developed a successful product for men followed by a woman’s version of the experience. The Tastebud Retail platform helps drive sales at brick-and-mortar shopping centers via personalized offers, games, loyalty programs, and beacon technology. We successfully sold the company in 2016 to Raise Inc.
Inspired by my experience in co-founding StyleSeek through a tech incubator in Chicago, and using my contacts developed, and awareness of the needs among start up apparel designers and makers, I developed and launched through Kickstarter a co-working space dedicated to start up entrepreneurs in the apparel home goods and general lifestyle marketplace. The value conveyed through co-working to more traditional technology trades was amplified when transferred to makers and the lifestyle sectors.
Ultimately, PreFAB Space achieved what I have hoped and strived for, a unique and inspiration ecosystem connected makers, customers, and the broader community to connect through product development, production, marketing, promotions, and sales.
My challenge was to develop a citywide environmental information and public education program. The issue, storm drain pollution threatened San Diego's environment, economy, and lifestyle. My client, the City Of San Diego's goal, was to raise awareness among 80% plus of the population, including business and individuals, as to the sources and impacts of various effluents on regional waterways including rivers lakes and ocean.
Once I had developed a name and strategy creating a new environmental color, beyond green, a public/private partnership was developed to leverage the limited budget of the City of San Diego. Relationships and partner collaboration was developed with a variety of community stakeholders including, individuals, businesses, media, education, non-profits, and government.
The Think Blue Campaign successfully leveraged each dollar the City had to invest by a factor of nearly 20. Beyond creating a traditional public service broadcast and print announcement based campaign, Think Blue became a household word thanks to widespread and sustained partner collaboration and highly leveraged media, points of sale, service, and destinations, including neighborhoods, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, beaches, and many other venues.
I developed and managed a five-year marketing media and sponsorship program coinciding with the major renovation and expansion of the museum it’s educational programs and destination programs including films and exhibits. A corner stone program of my work was TechnoVation, a public interactive exhibits of San Diego-based technology bio science communications and other innovations.
I worked with Balboa Park to develop a community outreach vehicle based upon the successful model that I had developed with the Orange County Register & Bowers Museum in Orange County.
In 1993 in conjunction with the Americas cup yacht races in San Diego I developed a sports journalism educational conference for AT&T. The conference was designed to promote and recruit from high schools across the United States one student representing each state in a sports journalism training program using state of the art technologies of the time provided by AT&T. The 50 students came together for two weeks in San Diego and worked with regional national and international media.
Top partner exhibitors included; QUALCOMM, Sony, San Diego County water Authority, SAIC, MERICOS EYE INSTITUTE, among others. I secured and worked with major regional and national sponsors including Home Depot and the Olympic training center. I also developed sponsorship in programming for the museums suitcase science program school out reach.
The Balboa Park Mobile was developed as a partnership between media, corporate sponsors, and Balboa Park museums.
We developed a newsroom and outlets for high school participating youth to report on the Americas cup. Later iterations of the program focused on baseball spring training, The Republican National Convention, and the X ames. This project which I developed became the quarter stone for my agency Catalyst. Other partners included Nike, McDonald’s, Times Mirror magazines, and ESPN.
In the mid-1990s the American Red Cross was faced with a dilemma. With a long-term downturn in the frequency and occurrence of natural disasters a commensurate decline in donations of time and funds was experienced. My agency developed a nationwide campaign including television programming, media partnerships, corporate and retail support, and community-based organization partnerships. We secured true value hardware stores as a anchor partner and through in-store promotion and product development we raised awareness, developed preventative education including home safety, and raise more than $40 million For the American red Cross. The campaign also included a relief and procurement system developed just after the Oklahoma City bombing which remains in place to this day.
In the early 2000's I developed the media partnerships for BMW Ultimate Drive benefiting the Susan G. Koman Breast Cancer Foundation. My agency developed the marketing, media, and mail and email marketing strategies for the series of events in San Diego County.
I directed the development of marketing, media, and corporate partner programing including themed volunteer service projects and community events.
I have developed community marketing campaigns for companies that include AT&T, Boeing, Starbuck, Sempra Energy, SDG&E, Ernst & Young, and others.