I guide individuals and groups through Owl & Key's Strategic Planning for Life program. Together, we embark on a dynamic exploration, blending coaching techniques, diverse modalities, and my seasoned expertise. I cultivate an environment of trust and exploration, empowering individuals and teams to unearth profound insights and ignite actionable change in both their professional and personal lives.I foster a culture of accountability and camaraderie. Our journey extends beyond the confines of our meetings, as participants find enduring support and encouragement within our growing community of those crafting a life and career defined by purpose and impact.

I drive business strategies for both brand and product. I partner with cross-functional leaders to remove barriers and inspire team innovation. I am able to distill qualitative and quantitative consumer, market, and trend data into multi-year strategies and tactics. I problem solve and effectively navigate complex development projects and stage gates with diverse stakeholders. Leveraging my background in finance to manage a P&L, I can hit margin targets while delivering playful products. I am a seasoned new product storyteller to senior leader, regional subsidiary, creative agencies, and global retailer audiences. Some of the things I'm most proud of are our team accomplishments like meeting or exceeding topline goals for 2019-2021. My team launched the #1 new infant/toddler brand in ’19, resulting in +3% US market share growth and was awarded the 2022 NY Toy Fair Infant-Toddler Toy of the Year. We were awarded the 2022 JPMA Innovation in Play Award too. I'm proud of my time spent helping launch our brand's 1st toy made from plant-based resin, with the goal of replacing 1MM+ traditional resin toys annually. More recently, I had the chance to champion the launch of the brand’s first fabric toy line made from post-consumer recycled plastic (+~10% margin).Mostly, I find energy each day in the moments spent developing my team, helping them solve challenges and grow!

While pursuing my MBA, I provided strategic career advice to more than 200 graduate finance students. Through 1:1 coaching and group training sessions, I helped students develop their networking skills, refine their resumes, hone their interview techniques, and tighten their job search tactics. My team helped our graduate business school population of students achieve ~90% employment rate three months post-graduation. I developed a love for coaching professionals and a knack for creating engaging learning content in this role.

As a finance and strategy partner to a Global Brand Team contributing ~$1 billion gross sales annually, I learned how to balance detailed analysis with high-level SVP/EVP recommendations. Performing financial analysis to drive brand investments, product feature decisions, and pricing helped me see the levers of the P&L in action. I had an opportunity to collaborate with the Pricing COE, performing a competitive analysis to uncover global market pricing opportunities. I helped renegotiate inventor royalty deal terms. For my efforts, I was awarded the Fisher-Price “Go Eddy Go” Award for superior performance after only one year on the team.It was in this role that I decided I wanted a seat at the table as a brand leader. I decided to pursue my MBA in the evenings while working full time in the graduate school of business career office.

This was my first professional dream job. Beloved brand (by others but also me!). Dynamic industry. Actual product I could see on shelves and online. Leveraging my forecasting skills from banking, I worked collaboratively with our Sales Team and Toys R Us retailer to analyze promotional lifts, project inventory needs, anticipate in-stock challenges, and ultimately, garner orders resulting in topline shipments. I started to discover my desire to become a people leader as I led a team of four analysts for five months during my manager's parental leave. I earned the North American Division's Sales Team Award for performance and the Sales Team's TRUST award for my work. My performance earned me a promotion and a spot on a Mattel-wide Global Metrics Team focused on sales-to-ship conformance and forecast variability metrics.Unfortunately, with organizational changes, the commercial teams were moved to our El Segundo campus. I knew I wanted to get closer to the brand team, so I joined the global finance and strategy group to start building that bridge.

In this role, I was tasked with forecasting monthly, quarterly, and yearly P&Ls for the bank’s major subsidiaries. My monthly forecast work and EPS guidance formed the basis for quarter close variance analyses for the entire bank. I humbly hand-delivered bi-weekly paper balance sheet reports for ~$69 billion in assets to the desk of the CFO and CEO. Month-ends were characterized by high pressure and early mornings in-office to distribute work in progress financial statements as the team closed the books. And while I finally realized financial services was not the industry for me, there were some bright spots. First, my work found its way into the quarterly earnings call binder for the Investor Relations team. That felt pretty rewarding. And, perhaps more importantly, I developed an interest in forecasting techniques which built a foundation for my next adventure at Fisher-Price.

Getting back on the road. An opportunity arose in the Citi risk organization, an area I had been interested in since my time with GE. I supported our risk analysts with data management and was recognized by the CRMS Global Head with the Citi Star Award for efficiency and expediency in major portfolio migration. I autonomously created a performance measurement tool for our team to track analyst exception resolution status. I hungered for more ownership and strategic thinking though, and that's how I made my way to M&T Bank next.

A minor detour into publishing and project management, I managed a cross-functional team (design, sales, print partners) to deliver profitable chamber of commerce membership directories in the Buffalo-Niagara area. As a jack of all trades and generalist, I assisted the head accountant with invoicing and general ledger entries, and even partnered with the managing director to create 2009-2010 operating budget.

During my undergraduate studies, I was fortunate to earn a spot in GE's Financial Management Program (FMP) Internship. This experience gave me the chance to join the company full time in 2007. As a first-year FMP, I was selected as the Business Project Challenge runner-up from 20+ candidates by a panel of GE Capital business CFOs. My multi-generational project was to create a enable accuracy in joint ventures volume reporting. I was tangentially exposed to LEAN principles too.This was a great learning opportunity for me and I decided after a year to move closer to home to be near a family member who was ailing in health.

During college, I was able to advise and provide resources to over 100 students over seven, three-day orientation sessions. I facilitated group discussions on diversity, homesickness, roommate conflicts, stress management, etc. and remained a point of contact for students throughout their first year.