PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Background & Expertise
TVO
May 2023 - Dec 2024
VICE PRESIDENT, IMPACT
As head of marketing, communications, partnerships, and philanthropy for TVO through the Impact Division, I was responsible for strategic planning, business operations, strategic marketing, and brand development as well as efficient revenue growth. I introduced effectiveness improvements, as well as establishing divisional, departmental, and individual goals to ensure the team was focused on activities that impacted our target audience and the economic development of Ontario through education and training. I created and executed measurable, cross-functional, strategies leaning on heavy communication of vision, diplomacy, and collaboration to ensure alignment across teams. I built on data and analytics in an extraordinarily complex regulatory environment to identify key market segments and opportunities for growth and engagement. I executed research to launch TVO’s first fully integrated marketing campaign, increasing engagement by 11% within 12 months.
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​Led strategic development planning, and launched annual brand health and quarterly customer research, applying the appropriate KPIs, and coaching the executive team on the data. Prioritized the investments required to reach target audiences, including CRM systems, tools, and dashboards for the collection and reporting of data, and the training and development required for the senior leadership to support a high-performing, high-impact, innovative team in a demanding environment.
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Launched brand-building and demand-generation tactical campaigns through both online and offline channels for the TVO Independent Learning Centre (ILC), and separately for TVO as a whole, including online learning tools and supports such as TVO Mattify. Increase engagement in the target growth audience by 11%, ILC course enrollments by 10%, and student recruitment and sign-up for Mathify live tutoring sessions on the platform by 50% in 1 year.
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Increased impact and conversions with TVO's new product offerings and ongoing product promotions by extending campaign assets throughout TVO's social media (Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, Bing), on our landing pages, as well as other multi-channel paid media, including digital ads, OOH, and broadcast advertising campaigns to drive consistent messaging across all channels and maintain “scent" through the marketing funnel.
Used analytics tools such as GA4, Big Query, Power Bi, and others to do post-launch performance analysis and institute data-driven decision-making.
Restructured teams, and workflows, introduced technology to modernize the marketing team and improve customer service delivery, as well as marketing effectiveness and efficiency.
Strengthened the customer-centric mindset and employee giving at TVO by speaking regularly on marketing & growth concepts at Town Hall events.
Diversified marketing channels and increased digital donor acquisitions, revenue resilience, and customer lifetime value (+20% in 12 months) while overcoming market-wide declines of 30% in charitable giving, by implementing targeted acquisition and retention strategies, including marketing campaigns focused on the acquisition of monthly (rather than 1-T) donations.
Presented progress on marketing goals to the Board of Directors as well as audience insights, team development, and budget performance.
Established a cadence of efficient regular research to inform product and marketing decisions.
Analyzed market dynamics and leveraged proprietary research to design and execute an acquisition-focused GTM strategy, product roadmap, and content marketing plan which leveraged the significant trust in this legacy brand while improving relevance to the growth audience.
Improved customer experience and content discoverability across platforms by pooling digital optimizers from across TVO into one Digital Channel Optimization (DCO) team with a single leader with deep knowledge of the discipline to improve oversight, drive consistency, implement best practices, and data-driven optimizations across channels. This accelerated growth in organic subscribers (+25% YOY) and our efforts in achieving our new digital donor targets.
Navigated a complex regulatory environment related to TVO's status as a registered charity and an agency of the Government of Ontario's Ministry of Education. Clarified ambiguity around marketing and partnerships to open new channels and revenue streams for TVO including YouTube ad monetization on TVO's YouTube channels and corporate partnerships.
Presented quarterly insights to the Digital Transformation Committee, enhancing strategic decisions on brand growth and marketing effectiveness through data-driven analysis.
Launched a new revenue stream in a complex regulatory environment using TVO's significant YouTube presence. Revenue generated from this source was ~$120K per annum without any additional expenses or capital investment.
TRAVELZOO
Feb 2020 - Feb 2021
GENERAL MANAGER, US
& ACTING COO NORTH AMERICA
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When I was appointed by senior leadership to take on this role and lead the US organization at the start of the COVID pandemic there was no clear road map for 2020 or 2021. After consulting with front line sales, publishing, production, customer service and finance teams to understand opportunities my priority was to develop a plan for 2020. The first step to restoring this declining organization to health was not cost-cutting or new marketing campaigns, it was rebuilding a culture where all employees were a true team, striving toward a shared success. I collaborated with department heads to set content, revenue, and headcount goals and build a structured plan that could accommodate changes as the pandemic unfolded and then connected the dots so that every person in the organization to understand how there efforts could impact our success.
I worked with my team to increase the quality and selection of content through targeted account base diversification. This multi-pronged effort generated a 5X increase in the number of new travel advertisers versus any previous quarter average and a 50% increase in engagement on optimized content.
Improving operational effectiveness and productivity was also vital, so I established formalized targets for the sales to production ratio and revenue per employee (RPE) in the rebuilding phase. The hotel category had a 10% YOY increase in total absolute quarterly revenue and an AOV increase of 115%.
Other initiatives I spearheaded included a webinar series for partners, streamlining of the product line, and the launch of a formalized diversity practice at Travelzoo. Under my leadership, there was a 6-point improvement in employee satisfaction YOY 2020 despite restructuring precipitated by the pandemic, a 50% increase in Member engagement on the optimized content, and significant growth in the millennial member base and product usage for the first time ever.
TRAVELZOO
Jun 2009 - Jan 2020
GENERAL MANAGER, CANADA
In this role, I was given the reigns to lead the Travelzoo Canadian operations with full P&L accountability and responsibility for overall performance and operational efficiency (e.g., product and content development, budgets, production, sales, and marketing). The most significant challenge was to prepare the team for sustained hyper growth with limited resources. The business was pushing superior products in the market but needed to align on goals in order to sustain the current pace of growth.
I improved the capabilities of sales, production, publishing and marketing teams by working with heads of all our departments to identify performance requirements, and build a formalized training and development program focused on bolstering related soft skills that was launched at our annual offsite. I spearheaded ongoing initiatives that helped departments develop their priorities in achieving our shared goals, collaborate better with other functions, and be accountable for their outputs. I also defined our marketing partnership and PR strategy more clearly to ensure Travelzoo was profiled in the trade and consumer press frequently given limited marketing budgets. This significantly resulted in marquis partnerships with brands such as ROOTS and boosted aided awareness of the brand by 50% with limited resources as well as boosting employee morale and productivity.
THE TORONTO STAR
2006 - 2009
GROUP ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
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This was a promotion from a role leading marketing for Private Party classifieds to one that was tasked with leading sales teams including Consumer Packaged Goods, Custom Content, Special Sections, Entertainment, and Travel categories with a budget of ~$40M. Accountable for B2B revenue growth for various sales teams including travel, automotive, banking and financial, retail, CPG, entertainment, and new products within a unionized environment.
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Established a custom-content department and launched several magazines/ sections and microsites, building new audiences and $2M in the first year.
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Provided business development guidance to sales and account managers in a unionized environment.
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Managed sales and operational budget, and trained sales teams.
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Acted as an internal strategy consultant, monitoring emerging trends and consumer behavior and identifying opportunities for improvement or opportunities to launch new products that would achieve business goals (both audience and revenue growth). Participated in pitches and negotiations for strategic accounts both locally and out of town.