Societal changes are born in the startup ecosystem.

If you have faith that the future of humanity can be greater than our present, join the next generation of startups bringing about those changes.

If someone tells you that you cannot achieve a goal, walk away.

Surround yourself with people who believe in you.

You only need to find one great mentor, one customer, one investor, one advisor, one key person to help you reach your next goal.

What did you want to be when you were a child? When I was 8 my life was fully planned out for me. Like my father, grandfather, uncle & cousin I would study architecture and join the family business as a third generation commercial architect. At the age of 19 my father had been requested, by name, by GAP to design their new building on a main highway just outside of NYC so I had very big footsteps to follow. I began attending board meetings and visiting job sites with my father before my tenth birthday.

Then the housing crisis hit. When I entered my junior year of high school and it was time for me to begin applying to colleges the housing crisis had already hit the commercial real estate development industry and my father, told me that I could study anything but architecture. So I joined the journey that so many my age follow, and began visiting different types of schools, completely unsure of what I would study where I would end up.

To give me a little bit of motivation, my grandfather changed the conditions of the trust fund that was to be used to pay for my college. I had to I study medicine, law or business at a school that my mother chose. My mother loved Palm Beach and that is how I ended up so far from NYC, the epicenter of my young life.

As I met the students who had chosen each of the three majors I was to choose from, it became clear to me that those studying biochemistry were my tribe. They could’ve had the “work hard, play harder” mantra tattooed on their arms. They were intelligent, fit, focused and loved to have fun while also prioritizing their health, which was rare for a group of teens who had never seen alcohol before.

When the recession hit, the money that was supposed to be paying for my tuition room and board was all in bank stocks, which became worthless overnight.

I had to make a decision. I had to either drop out, or work four different jobs to fund my final years of school. I worked in a biochem lab, tutored, babysat and waitressed. Then my mentor handed me a flyer that would change my life forever.

As she slid the flyer across her desk she said, “You need to get over your irrational fear of building friendships with women.” The flyer was requesting volunteers for a fashion show. As a third generation model, raised in the suburbs of NYC I had a bit of experience on my side.

So I responded to the call for volunteers. By the day of the fashion show, I had built a relationship with the founder and I was her default model. As a retired professional ballerina, I had the exact figure that she was looking for and she would make her dresses on me instead of a mannequin. This way, if a model dropped out, she knew I could jump in and walk the runway as many times as was needed.

Remember when I told you that I started attending meetings with my father before the age of 10? Well, I would use this time she spent making dresses on me, to talk about the business side of things and pitch my ideas. She loved it and started taking business meetings while she made dresses, so we could hit two birds with one stone. Over time, I got to learn more about her strategic partners and prospective investors.

What the members of these meetings didn’t know is that I came from the suburbs of NYC where children, have “street smarts” (aka hyper vigilance) baked into them from an early age. While they were focused on speaking with the designer, I had the freedom to analyze their body language and tone. After each meeting, we would discuss what I noticed.

After one such meeting I pointed out that the prospective partner was lining her up to be a victim of intellectual property theft. Less than two weeks later she called to let me know that my prediction was right. When the designer stopped her attempt to steal the intellectual property, the woman went manic and went so far as to trash the front lawn of her private residence.

As she trashed her front lawn she screamed that the designer had: no vision, no business sense and no idea on how to properly grow this into a successful company.

After this, I was invited to every meeting, not as a silent mannequin but as a professionally dressed strategic advisor.

With this promotion, my first move was to put into place systems, so that behind the scenes, the fashion shows ran like clockwork. With timesheets & schedules for everyone from the makeup artists to the body guards. While I streamlined processes and focused on protecting Kirsten from more bad actors, she was able to focus on providing incredible work for larger and larger strategic partners, until we landed projects with Disney and Target.

Little did I know that one flyer, one modeling gig, one intervention, would turn my life in a completely different direction.

After this, Kirsten made sure that news of my early successes, spread across our college campus like wildfire. Before long all of Kirsten‘s friends had circulated the story of how I helped her to not only save her business from intellectual property theft, but to streamline the processes, and grow it into the vision, she had dreamed of.

To this day, I love opportunities to work with health, fitness, fashion & luxury brands.

This startup experience led me to be hired to run an Apple SIS in northern Italy. After I successfully doubled sales within one year using 100% free marketing tactics, the Regional Head (of Western Europe) flew to Italy to see what I was doing so that he could direct his other Apple SIS managers to replicate my strategies throughout all of our European locations. This added software, luxury goods, retail, electronic goods & consumer goods startups to the list of founders calling me to help grow their businesses.

This experience also led IE Business School to accept my application to pursue my MBA at their gorgeous campus in Madrid, Spain. Here I secured one of four coveted positions as a Venture Network Fellow and that whirlwind experience turned my natural knack for marketing into a super power you can read about below.

HERE are before & after shots of some of the companies that I have worked with.

If you’d like to see all of my career highlights, you can click here to read them now .

Scroll down to read testimonials from those who have worked with me.