Marketing Your Way— Succeeding in Fractional, Contract and Freelance Roles

Interim CMO, Aeris Communications

Karen is an accomplished marketing executive with experience across multiple industries, from building the *sexiest* brands at Kimberly Clark (KOTEX and DEPEND) to helping tech startups and small businesses position themselves for growth. With most of her career spent leading marketing organizations on the client side, Karen also ran her own marketing consulting business, Pythia LLC, for over a decade with clients including Allstate and American Family Insurance. She currently serves as the Interim Chief Marketing Officer for Aeris’ IoT business and leads the programming committee for the American Marketing Association’s Chicago chapter.

Founder/CEO, BrandNext Partners

Shari Matras is a C-Level consumer products commercial leader and the founder and CEO of BrandNext Partners. With 20+ years of experience as a General Manager, Marketing, Sales, and Strategic Planning leader,she has led businesses from $3B to $1MM, global and domestic, across 43 consumer products categories and aisles. Shari’s deep marketing, sales, strategy and innovation expertise includes developing new product and marketing ideas founded on data for Millennials, Adults, and Kids and she has deep knowledge of consumers’ nutrition needs from her work in PepsiCo’s Global Nutrition Group leading the Global Quaker Oats Brand, Tropicana and Naked Juice. She is an accomplished CPG executive with a brand-building “superpower” and demonstrated ability to drive growth, with experience working at Jelmar, PepsiCo, Quaker Oats, and many other reputable brands. Shari is currently Founder/Principal for BrandNextPartners, a consulting business where she holds Fractional C-suite roles, consults clients as a strategic advisor and leads strategy, branding, and innovation projects across a wide range of categories and functional areas. Shari holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Northwestern University and lives in Chicago, IL with her husband.

CEO, Bandwidth Strategy

Aimee Schuster is an expert at marketing the invisible, having spent the last twenty-five years helping B2B organizations like Miller Heiman Group, DLA Piper and Homefinder.com build, advance and energize their lead generation programs. Aimee founded Bandwidth Strategy, a fractional CMO and COO consultancy, to help growth-stage organizations drive the right leads into the funnel that result in closed-won business. Aimee uses her experience and a bit of humor/improv (honed as a student at Second City) to create a common language among the all-too-often warring factions of sales and marketing. A go-to voice on sales-marketing alignment and workplace equity, her work has been featured in Fast Company and Business Insider.

CMO, Chief Outsiders

Carol is a CMO at Chief Outsiders, the largest management consulting firm focused on providing fractional sales and marketing executives in the U.S. As a proven operational leader, she advises CEOs and their executive teams on building strategies and programs that can drive significant growth. She has worked in a variety of sectors including healthcare, consumers, industrial and professional services. Prior to Chief Outsiders, Carol’s career spanned executive roles at The Clorox Company, Kraft Foods, Information Resources, Endeavor Health, and across a number of tech startup companies as well as her own innovation firm. Carol holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester, an MBA from Columbia University and an MPH from Columbia University School of Public Health