Build the operating systems that turn strategy into execution.
Over 19+ years — across retail, sales operations, product launches, and marketing — the work has always been the same: walking into complex, matrixed organizations and building the operating model that lets strategy actually become execution.
From one to many functions, over the course of my career I designed systems — people, process, technology, and governance — that let people execute at speed, with clarity, and without burning out. Give me a fragmented org, an unclear mandate, or a transformation everyone agrees is necessary and no one knows how to start — that's where I do my best work.
01 / AT A GLANCE
Proof Points
The short version, before the long version.
900+
Employees impacted by current transformation
$30M
In direct savings delivered
$110M+
In cost avoidance delivered
40%
Faster time-to-market — same investment, better results
40+
People promoted or developed into promotion, career-wide
8 yrs
Consecutive top-tier performance rating
02 / PHILOSOPHY
My Approach
Most transformations fail because they're over-indexed on technology or process design alone. I start with the strategic outcome and a clear definition of the business problem — not just its symptoms — then design the right mix of operating clarity, capability, and early analytics to drive the behaviors that get you there. Depending on the problem and the organizational context, it's never the same mix.
I believe in tech-enabled, people-first transformation. I build trust and navigate complex stakeholder dynamics well, but adoption, for me, comes from people; productivity comes from clean design. That combination is what lets me build operating models that are AI-ready, not AI-vulnerable: clear roles, disciplined process, reliable data — the boring infrastructure that makes the exciting technology actually work.
03 / TRAJECTORY
The Pattern
2007–2014 Retail
Where adoption became the first lesson
I started my career in retail, where people, process, tools, and data aren't abstract — they show up live, in front of a customer, every single day. I was accountable for sales targets with reporting that lagged, so I built a simple self-reporting process and a real-time dashboard so store leaders could see, hour by hour, where they stood. It spread across 12 stores almost immediately and became an enterprise tool within a year.
If something makes people better today, it scales.
2013–2014 Product
Where cross-functional orchestration took shape
I moved into product, leading the market launch of Digital Life across Chicago and Milwaukee. We weren't just launching a product — we were building connective tissue between Field, Sales, and Installation teams that had never really worked together. That orchestration measurably improved the customer experience past the trial period, and the operating rhythm we built was eventually adopted at a national level.
Where complex change showed what it actually requires
The most formative chapter was leading AT&T's first flagship retail location on Michigan Avenue. On the surface, it was a store. In reality, it was a brand reset — redesigning physical space and digital storytelling while navigating union and non-union labor, legal, compliance, and real estate simultaneously, all while inventing new ways of working. Gross sales grew over 30% year-over-year and social followership grew by triple digits.
Complex change doesn't happen through perfect design — it happens through alignment, trust, and relentless clarity.
2017–2018 Chief of Staff
Where strategy turned into execution — and where it breaks
Moving into corporate as Chief of Staff to an SVP, I finally saw the full mechanics of how strategy becomes — or fails to become — execution at scale: running organizational effectiveness work, aligning job architecture post-reorganization, and rebuilding team trust to the point the organization's engagement score grew 20 points in a year. This is also where my pattern of building teams from white space first took shape.
Strategy is only as real as the org built to execute it.
2018–Present Operating Model Transformation
Where the pattern became the practice, at increasing scale
Since then, I've applied the same underlying pattern — diagnose the real business problem, design the right operating mix, build the team architecture to sustain it — to three increasingly complex mandates, each testing a different muscle.
Content Strategy & Production
I walked into a content organization with no job description waiting for me, facing rising demand and no way to tell whether the investment was working. I reframed it from a volume problem into an operating model problem — segmentation, governance, and closed-loop analytics replaced guesswork with discipline. Over three years, that drove a 40% improvement in time-to-market while holding budget flat.
Agency Engagement & Financial Governance
Next came a CMO-level mandate to reduce marketing operating costs, layered onto a fragmented, relationship-driven agency model with no real visibility into cost or value. I rebuilt the engagement model itself: standardized governance, consolidated scopes, and an enterprise platform for benchmarking. The result was $30M in savings and $110M+ in cost avoidance — without sacrificing agency output or speed.
Enterprise Operating Model Design
The current chapter is the largest in scope: redesigning how planning, prioritization, and execution work across a marketing organization that has grown from roughly 200 employees and 4 functions to 900 employees and 11 distinct functions. Stepping into that scale of growth, my job hasn't been a single fix — it's building the connective tissue that lets a much larger, more complex organization move with the clarity a small team once had.
"Technology without clear ways of working creates friction. Data changes behavior when it's visible and trusted. And transformation only sticks when people see themselves in the model."
04 / DEEP DIVES
Signature Case Studies
Content Strategy & Operations: From Volume Problem to Operating Model
CONTENT & MARTECH
Situation
Stepped into a role with no job description — just rising demand across 400+ products, rising costs, and no way to know if any of it was working.
Reframe
Not "are we producing too much?" but "do we have a system that tells us what enough actually is?"
Approach
Segmentation-led content strategy, tool-based governance, closed-loop analytics — plus a function built from scratch: strategists, a platform owner, an asset librarian, a data & analytics practice.
Recognition
ANA Genius Award Finalist, Marketing Analytics Adoption.
40%
Faster time-to-market, flat budget, 3 years
33
Industry awards — Webby, Stevie, AVA Digital
Agency Engagement Model: Rebuilding Trust in a Fragmented System
VENDOR & FINANCIAL GOVERNANCE
Situation
CMO-level mandate to cut marketing costs inside a fragmented, relationship-driven agency model with no visibility into cost or value.
Reframe
Not a pricing problem — a governance problem. Technology and pricing changes alone would have failed.
Approach
Standardized engagement governance, consolidated vendor scopes, and an enterprise benchmarking platform — aligned across SVP-level stakeholders in a highly political environment.
What made it work
The hardest part was never the model — it was incentives. Once each group saw the new system protected what they cared about, adoption followed.
$30M
In direct savings
$110M+
In cost avoidance
Enterprise Marketing Operating Model: Building the System at Scale
CURRENT — IN PROGRESS
Situation
Inherited a 1-person operations function with no upstream strategy, supporting a single platform — resulting in a backlog of 420+ open requests and disconnected, siloed workflows.
Reframe
Not a staffing or tooling problem in isolation — an absence of operating model. The technology was absorbing chaos instead of preventing it.
Approach
Grew the team from 1 to 7, plus third-party resources, in six months, organized around specialized functions — and redesigned how planning, prioritization, and execution connect end-to-end.
Where it stands
Compounding, not finished — scope spans 900 employees and an entire planning-to-execution lifecycle. Results take longer to show fully at this scale.
900
Employees across the operating model's scope
11
Marketing functions unified under one model
100%
Of planning entry points standardized
05 / ORG DESIGN
Building Teams, Not Just Outcomes
40+
People directly promoted, or developed and supported into a promotion, across a 19-year career — starting in retail. Building the outcome and building the people who sustain it have never been separate jobs.
Most of this career has been about building toward an outcome and building the team structure to sustain it — aligning people to the functions a problem actually needs, not the org chart that happened to exist. The same underlying shape shows up every time: a strategy/framework role, a technology ownership role, a data & analytics role, and specialized execution roles.
Initiative
Starting Point
Functions Built
Content Strategy
No job description — just a problem
Marketing strategists (GTM framework & optimization), platform implementation owner, digital asset librarian, data & analytics practice
Strategic process development, process designers, platform/product owners, data & analytics, taxonomy governance, change management
06 / IN PRACTICE
Leadership in Practice
One of the most consistent pieces of feedback I hear is that I get cross-functional teams and leaders to genuinely buy in — not through authority, but by understanding the real pain points and must-haves of every group my work touches before I ever propose a vision. That's not charisma. It's listening closely enough that people recognize the vision as their own. I do that vertically and horizontally.
Three things define my leadership operating model:
Paint the destination
Give people a vivid, specific picture of what success looks like — not a project plan. A goal people can see clearly and believe in.
Remove obstacles personally
Capacity and capability when the team needs it. Visible support in the hardest discussions. And when the work seems impossible, doing it firsthand to prove it's not.
Make progress visible
Consistent operating rhythms to track progress, and real recognition at milestones. Trust compounds through consistency, not grand gestures.
Hard work never becomes easy — transformation rarely does. But when people believe in where they're headed, the climb becomes something to get excited about, not overwhelmed by.
How colleagues describe working with me
That I give people real latitude to think and act — but stay close enough to the outcome to offer a better path when I see one, without taking the work away from them.
That I'm unusually present for a senior leader: invested enough in the actual work to step in when it matters, so no one on my team has had to face a hard problem alone.
That I move easily between the granular detail and the big picture — and keep a distributed, multifunctional team aware of what we're building together, not just their slice of it.
07 / RECORD
Background
Aug 2024 – Present
Director, Marketing Transformation & Operations
AT&T · Dallas, TX
Leading transformation of the enterprise marketing operating model — people, process, tools, and data — to increase revenue productivity, speed to market, and financial transparency.
Feb 2022 – Aug 2024
Director, Agency Strategy & Operations
AT&T · Dallas, TX
Led enterprise-wide transformation of agency engagement, contract governance, sourcing strategy, and technology enablement.
Led AT&T's in-house creative and content organization while building a data-driven, full-funnel content strategy for AT&T Business.
Apr 2017 – Dec 2018
Chief of Staff to SVP, AT&T Business
AT&T · Dallas, TX
Strategic and operational advisor to senior leadership; led organizational effectiveness initiatives and execution cadence across a large organization.
Jan 2016 – Mar 2017
Area Manager, Flagship Retail
AT&T · Chicago, IL
Led AT&T's first flagship retail location — 55+ union and non-union employees — partnering across National Marketing, Merchandising, and Entertainment Group on next-generation retail experience.
Apr 2014 – Dec 2015
Manager, Sales Operations
AT&T · Chicago, IL
Standardized back-office operations and reporting for the Michigan Avenue flagship store, driving a 20% improvement in audit scores.
Oct 2013 – Apr 2014
Market Execution Lead, Digital Life
AT&T Internet of Things · Chicago, IL
Supported market launch of Digital Life across Field and Sales channels; built an operational rhythm later taken to a national level.
Jun 2007 – Oct 2013
Retail Sales Representative → Area Manager
AT&T Mobility · Chicago, IL
Promoted through four roles over six years — sales representative, assistant manager, store manager, area manager — ultimately leading a high-volume location (1,000+ units/month) and a team of 14+ sales consultants.
B.S., Philology — University of Bucharest, 2004 · AT&T Management Development Program Graduate, 2016 · ANA Genius Award Finalist, Marketing Analytics Adoption
