Selected to create high-growth geographical business unit for Colgate based in Istanbul. Led creation of new marketing organization including professional oral care team, central media buying group, creative agency partner, and analytics organization. Leading consumer and professional marketing team in region including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Developed onboarding and training program for entirely new regional marketing team.

In this role, I have helmed the business through a period of major economic turbulence in the region, with a focus on margin improvement, market pricing strategies and employee retention to secure sustainable organic growth. I manage the entire Turkish business, covering three categories (Oral Care, Personal Care and Home Care).Key successes include securing organic growth against major currency devaluation to attain our pricing goals with no disruption, and captaining the business/team through the highly destabilizing Southern Turkey earthquake crisis. I have also managed major expansion in our discounter retailer portfolio to harness the fastest growing retail environment in the country, led a successful new brand entry into previously untapped pharma channel, and aligned the business behind a digital transformation strategy, with significant digital media push linked to e-commerce sales.

I was the first ever marketing leader of this newly established geographical business unit (Hub) for Colgate, based in Dubai. I directed product innovation, launch planning, advertising strategy and insight / analytics planning to consistently achieve high growth in each year of tenure, leading teams in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Morocco and Lebanon across consumer and professional marketing. Major projects and achievements during this time include achieving strong toothpaste and toothbrush growth to achieve Hub market share leadership over our competition, spearheading the digital transformation of the Hub to improve marketing effectiveness, and establishing our first ever CRM databases while delivering a programmatic marketing strategy. I was also a key player in achieving significant incremental sales and growing our share of market, and launching our NAMET precision marketing structures and campaigns to significantly increase CTR and engagement.

I managed all marketing for this $250MM hub to drive significant CEE regional and product growth, leading consumer and professional marketing teams across three categories. During my tenure, I turned around CP Romania sales decline and returned it to organic sales growth, doubled YoY whitening product sales and retained staff in an ultra-competitive market to achieve zero unplanned turnover in 2016. I also achieved 60%+ expansion of Palmolive Men’s Shower Gel business, grew SOM by 350 bps in the men’s segment via digital media programs and key sponsorships. Drove 20%+ sales / SOM growth for two key toothpaste brands focusing on therapeutic and cosmetic segments.

In my short time working in this region, I helped the business attain 7.5%+ organic sales growth, expanded / sustained sales in all strategic categories and led an organisational restructure to reduce headcount and redeploy staff globally during the Russian economic crisis.

Prominent successes in this role include growing Colgate’s share in the region and strengthening net sales by 32% in 2013.

Drove first ever SOM leadership for Colgate toothbrushes in the US Market, the largest in the Colgate world.