about, in full.
created by a thoughtful, strategic, pizza-loving marketer with years of experience in skincare, food & beverage, and life sciences loyalty.
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​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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!