The thread tying together all of my professional experience is trust.

It started in politics. Over three highly-polarized years, I worked on generating grassroots activism and raising donations for a hot button issue. Activating a new member meant earning their trust not only with their money, but also with their time and values.

The diligence and discipline required for success in political activism are the same underlying principles of all entrepreneurial endeavors. I learned how to understand a market's appetite for a solution, the value of partnering with influential third parties, methods for cultivating insights, how to develop a presence that inspires engagement, and what it really means to have market fit.

I have since been doing all of the above in Tech, building trust throughout the buyer journey.

The path that led me to consulting started at Yext, a publicly-traded AI SaaS platform. I was the GTM business partner to the $100M channel business, comprised of 5,000 resellers and a budding strategic alliances program. During my three-year tenure, I led projects to activate over $20M in ARR including internal and external training, go-to-market assets, and bespoke consultation with the likes of Accenture and IBM to enable their innovation.

A side project started to gain traction towards the end of 2019, which eventually became my first startup experience. As the founder and CEO, I led the founding team from zero to 12 angel investors, 7 world-class advisors, and 10,000 users. We solved the problem of coordinating, communicating, and collaboratively purchasing group experiences, but we abandoned the project when we realized that there was no way to establish a scalable business model.

These experiences gave me the opportunity to work directly with and learn from leaders of top-tier organizations such as Accenture, IBM, Publicis Sapient, Uber, Airbnb, Bankrate, Teamsnap, HP, Bridgewater, UBS, Rent.com, and more.

Each experience has taught me countless lessons that have left me with the knowledge, scar tissue, and perspective needed to unlock value and momentum for early-stage startups.

I now use these insights to manage Howard & Agnes, a consultancy of fractional executives serving a portfolio of early-stage startups — my clients represent the forefront of innovation and include a generative-AI B2B platform, B2C fintech, B2B2C blockchain, B2B SaaS, and even next-generation biotech labs.