EARLIER WORK

Where the foundation was built.

Before clean tech, before product marketing, before go-to-market strategy had a name in my vocabulary — I was doing brand work. Building identities from scratch, designing packaging that had to work on a shelf next to established competitors, writing copy that needed to earn attention in three seconds or less. That early work shaped how I think about brands today: that great marketing starts with a clear point of view, and that the best creative decisions are strategic ones.

PASTRY SMART

Brand identity, packaging & marketing — San Mateo, CA | 2011–2014

Pastry Smart made better-for-you baked goods at a time when "better for you" wasn't yet a default expectation in the grocery aisle. They were the first Certified Humane and Organic pastry brand. The brand needed to feel approachable and credible at the same time — indulgent enough to want, clean enough to trust.

The work

I partnered directly with the founder on brand strategy, helping define the visual and verbal identity of each line of product that would carry the brand from early production into retail. That meant making real tradeoffs — what to say on the front of pack versus the back, how to signal "better for you" without feeling clinical, how to stand out in a category full of earth tones and serif fonts.

From there I developed the full packaging system for the product lines from concept to shelf: structural hierarchy, copy, color, typography, and final production files. I also developed the broader brand voice — the language that carried across packaging, marketing collateral, and any customer-facing material.

What this work taught me

CPG brand work is unforgiving in a way that digital marketing isn't. You get two seconds and three inches of shelf space. There's no A/B test, no optimization cycle — the decision you make in the design file is the decision a shopper makes in the store. That constraint made me a sharper, more intentional marketer.

FREELANCE

Brand identity & web design | San Jose, CA | 2010–2018

Alongside my full-time roles, I spent eight years taking on freelance branding and web projects for small businesses and non-profits. These engagements almost always meant I was rarely just executing a brief — I was helping someone figure out what their business stood for and how to say it visually.

Let's talk

Clean tech, CPG, B2B2C software, consumer apps — the category changes, but the work is the same: understand who you're talking to, build a brand they can trust, and give them a reason to choose you. That's what I've been doing for the last decade, and it's what I'm still doing now.

If you're building something that needs a marketer who can set the strategy and then actually execute it, I'd love to connect! Message me on LinkedIn.