about, in full.
created by a thoughtful, strategic, pizza-loving marketer with years of experience in skincare, food & beverage, and life sciences loyalty.
in 2011, i was smacked in the face with the question that all upcoming high school graduates are faced with. and my answer was simple: pizza. pizza is what i would choose if i had to eat the same thing for all three meals of the day.
but there was another question creeping in.. what do i want to do next in my life? i started college at Penn State the following fall as an "undecided" major, thinking i'd apply for the graphic design program. but during my freshman year, i realized i am nowhere near talented enough for that. so my dad suggested that i explore the business school, and i decided on marketing because it seemed like a really nice intersection of creativity and strategic thinking.
i got involved with the student marketing organization, and an opportunity arose to do an online training program for consumer goods marketing and brand management. i scored in the top 1% of undergraduate participants on the final Marketing Aptitude Test in my respective cycle. i had a networking conversation with one of the program creators, and he eventually plugged me into an internship opportunity for the spring semester of 2015.
the internship was with Neutrogena(R), at the time part of Johnson & Johnson, in the marketing department on the Suncare business. i got a really good feel for brand management in my six months there. i supported a key new product launch with targeted print, digital, and mobile marketing. i led creative and content concepting for a weather- and geo-triggered mobile advertising program, improving performance versus prior year. i managed our $1.7M consumer promotions budget. i co-developed over 40+ enhanced content ecommerce product pages for Amazon. and i created and compiled store visit reports summarizing at-shelf competitor activity. it was a wonderful experience, and i realized i really enjoyed brand management work.
that fall, i returned to school for my final year. coming off my internship, i wanted to either be in CPG marketing and brand management or in the advertising agency world. i was so fortunate to land a marketing role with Bimbo Bakeries USA on the Thomas' English Muffins brand, holding the responsibility of an assistant brand manager. there, i launched the brand's first-ever National English Muffin Day campaign, and as part of that, oversaw the development of a Limited Edition SKU, during which i served as a cross-functional lead of the product launch working across R&D, Production, advertising agency, packaging design agency, Sales, and Marketing. i developed a consumer preference testing plan in anticipation of reformulating our #1 product. i built a sales forecasting excel book for our team. and i led the creative development of an online homepage and the development of a paid search/SEM campaign for our Limited Edition product platform.
while i had a great time in this role, i eventually decided to pursue a move to the west coast, so i moved from Philadelphia back home to Pittsburgh, and while working on that pursuit, i took a contract marketing role with American Eagle Outfitters in their corporate headquarters. i coordinated the production of in-store consumer-facing marketing and advertising signage, and ended up doing this work for the company's most complex floorset to date.
a little while later, my west coast pursuit came to fruition, and i became an Associate Product Marketing Manager with Sambazon, an organic food + beverage company in Southern California. i led in-market consumer testing for a high-profile new product, supporting commercial sell-in efforts, coordinating product inventory, developing point-of-purchase signage, and facilitating survey execution. i contributed to Food and Natural customer sell-in stories with data analysis and presentation preparation. i managed our team's new relationship with an outside sales data analytics company, overseeing monthly data refreshes and liaising between our team's needs and the company's capabilities. and i prepared quarterly business reviews, summarizing in-store performance and insights for management.
i then had some personal health issues and had to move back to Pittsburgh to tend to those. but once i was back up and running, i slowly transitioned into freelance marketing, eventually working on over 60+ projects. among them, i collaborated on a market research project for DTC brands and built a brand profile presentation slide template for team use in the final client-facing deck, i contributed to an assessment of an incoming brand competitor with a focus on the claims comparison, and i developed shopper marketing campaign recommendations oriented around a purpose-goals-objectives-strategies-tactics framework. it was in this time that Thinkdo was created.
after about a year and a half, i decided i wanted to get back into a full-time position working for a company, so i took a marketing operations role with Thermo Fisher Scientific. i led the collection of product information so that products could be set up in our distributor's systems for purchase. i triaged new product introduction programs for launch in the distributor channel, liaising between the Global Market Development and Channel teams. and i shared SKU-level competitor conversion information for use in our distributor's product conversion database. this role was a great way to learn our business and products, and also an industry that was brand new to me.
it prepared me well for my next role, which was less operational and more oriented around digital marketing. i worked on our customer loyalty program team and focused on enrollment marketing. i designed imagery and wrote copy for paid Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit advertising. i collaborated on a Google display advertising geotargeting test, in partnership with our digital marketing agency. and i led product-level discount programs for which i developed website landing pages, set up discounts in our loyalty program backend, and reported on performance. it was in this role that i had my first foray into AI while serving as an AI champion within the divisional marketing department and working on key marketing and sales enablement AI projects.
my medical issues eventually resurfaced, and i went out on an 8-month leave. after being back in role for a few weeks, our organization did a large restructure. it laid off hundreds of workers, and i was impacted. however, it gave me the opportunity to reevaluate what i wanted to do with my career, and i decided to resurrect Thinkdo and really make a go at developing it as a viable business.
and i'm really excited to be doing so!