your partner in perspective.

I bring experience across research, brand, and business into conversations where leaders and teams are working through important questions. I help them examine the deeper context, consider other perspectives, and translate that understanding into choices they can act on.

A Strategist

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By trade and trait

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A Strategist | By trade and trait |

I notice what the room steps over.

Most of my career - and life - has been spent noticing the thing underneath the thing: the assumption everyone stepped over, the tension people could feel but hadn't found words for, the person a decision would land on who was never part of the conversation.

As a kid, I was as precocious as they come. It certainly kept my parents and teachers on their toes, but it also kept my eyes open to the nuanced ways people, places, and ideas actually connect. So it was only natural that I’d find myself in a field where I could learn to put that discernment to work.

I came up through marketing and brand strategy, where the job is to understand people: what drives them and what drives them away. What I found is that the same discipline matters upstream. A decision holds when the people who carry it out and the people it's meant for were part of the thinking. When they weren't, it usually breaks quietly, in the gap between what an organization says and what it does; what it strives for vs. what it actually builds for.

So that's where I work now: with leaders in moments of consequential decisions. I listen for what the room has been working around, and I ask the questions that get it said aloud.

The quality of a leader's decisions is constrained by

the quality of the questions they are willing to ask.

Two decades of research, insights, strategy, and Decisions.

Across consumer and B2B brands, public institutions and private companies, small teams and global organizations, I’ve helped leaders untangle complex challenges, reconsider what’s possible, and shape strategies grounded in the realities of their business and the people they serve.

That range has become one of my greatest assets - it’s how I’m able to recognize patterns without assuming the same answer belongs everywhere; to understand what carries across contexts, what changes between them, and what deserves to be considered on its own terms.

[ Selected Work ]

Bragg

SC Johnson

Americares

Richey May

Ulta Beauty

AAA

[ Why I Do This Work ]

I've lived this from both ends. I've moved through systems that weren't built with me in mind, in workplaces, institutions, and bureaucracies where the people with the least power absorbed the cost of decisions they never got a say in. And I've since earned a seat and a say in the rooms where those decisions get made.

I carry both views in with me: what a decision costs at the bottom, and the pressure and trade-offs at the top. The people deciding are carrying their own pressure to perform and to prove out. The people living with the decision are carrying theirs. I keep all of them in view.

Two questions I keep in the room

Who Will this decision land on?
Who do you want to be as you decide?

[ What people say ]

  • "Vanessa is a trusted advisor who gives her honest opinion and feedback while also being a positive influence to everyone around her. Working with her is an absolute joy and a wonderful learning experience due to her ability to think strategically yet creatively."

    Stephanie G. | CEO

  • "She's a wildly creative thinker who's grounded in strategy, analysis, and results. She's the first one to drive opportunities to try something new, and the last one to give up on a challenge."

    Jo F. | Brand Strategist

  • "When she goes quiet, you can tell the wheels are turning in her mind. So when she speaks, it's time to listen, because her POV is always spot on. What she says and how she says it makes you stop and really think, and next thing you know, the conversation has shifted in a truly meaningful way."

    Mandy P. | CMO