About me
I am an entrepreneurial sales, marketing, and communications leader that helps build innovative, ethical, & successful brands while managing field sales and merchandising teams, brokers, distributors, and retailers.
I have over 20 years of diverse experience with consumer products, food and beverage, written & multimedia content creation, music promotion, startup activity, and event & PR planning. This has primarily included working in a variety of sales (and some marketing) roles for CPG brands - GT's Kombucha (Synergy), Poppi soda, KRAVE Jerky & Chef's Cut Jerky, Fifth Season salads, Pirate's Booty, Vitaminwater, SoBe, Rockstar Energy Drinks, and other emerging CPG brands.
I am currently the Director of Sales - East for Krave Jerky & Chef's Cut Real Jerky, whose jerky and meat snacks products are sold in Whole Foods, Meijer, The Fresh Market, Market Basket, Kroger, Sprouts, and more independents and chain retailers. Additionally, I do consulting with craft and emerging food and beverage brands for sales, branding, sustainability, and go to market strategy and am a co-founder of the CPG in the DMV Connect networking group that started in 2023.
I live in South Arlington (VA) and have two girls, ages 6 and 8, that study in a public Spanish immersion school and are passionate about art and sports. I thoroughly enjoy live music, going to cool events in DC with my family, traveling, volunteering, snowboarding, hiking, hockey in all forms, basketball, ultimate frisbee, and every yard game or bar sport known to humankind - cornhole, spikeball, darts, ping pong, etc.
I love connecting with people and discussing ideas of all types, while learning about what makes them tick! DCSTW is the perfect storm of passionate people that truly value community, impact, innovation, creativity, and hard work coming together (in person!) to learn and grow. It's incredibly inspiring to spend a week with such a variety of unique individuals, in a wide range of industries, that are trying to accomplish impactful things and solve problems, while reaching out to the DC community to engage and learn. I can't wait!
In the past, I lived in the Middle East for three years (2014-2017) and launched a social business apparel brand called Herfa Heritage in Jordan. Herfa means "craft" in Arabic. We partnered with women cooperatives and blended beautiful, handmade embroidery, made by Jordanian and Syrian refugee women in their homes, with modern apparel and streetwear - hats, belts, t-shirts, hoodies, ties, and more. We even created custom pieces where customers could pick their embroidery patch design and their type and color of apparel. We launched on Kickstarter and ran it for a few years, but scaling the brand and importing into the USA was very difficult and expensive, so we paused the company. https://www.instagram.com/herfaheritage/