Karen Smith is passionate about building an overall better customer experience by seeing the business from different perspectives. Her extensive resume of direct expertise consists of leadership roles in both Fortune companies and entrepreneurial organizations, structured and unstructured, as well as sophisticated and ad hoc, blending strategic vision with impressive operational execution.

Karen immerses herself in all facets of the product or service, as well as customer behaviors, objectives, and struggles. She recognizes the importance of retaining customers as much as gaining new ones to encourage loyalty, retention, and growth. Her chief goal is to help clients capitalize on the same cutting-edge strategies and techniques she employed in the corporate world coupled with her entrepreneurial agility. This approach to marketing and business has earned her recognition as an invaluable resource for small- to mid-sized companies.

Karen has a sharp eye for understanding various industries and employing the right mix of marketing strategies to achieve desirable outcomes. This treasure trove of strategic and hands-on experience enables her to establish a viable platform that involves marketing strategy, personas, product marketing, product management, branding, marketing communications, content marketing, competitive intelligence, public relations, social media, and project management. Her professional background is highly varied, encompassing technology, hospitality, travel, services, consulting, education, government, security, energy, and real estate.

Being resourceful comes naturally for Karen. Karen’s strategic thinking and operational execution led to the recent successful marketing launch of a new technology product in a company of 18 employees. Despite a limited budget, she developed targeted personas that were used to create a professional video, press release, brochure, social media, and technical documentation. Her efforts paid off as the product promotion gained worldwide recognition – based on over 1,268 unpaid submissions – and ranked among the top 11 companies, including Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics. Another time, when a company was unable to exhibit or participate at an international trade show, Karen found ways to win the company an Innovation of the Year award for free within its category at the show, without stepping foot on foreign soil.

Karen holds an MBA from Baylor University and a BBA in marketing from the University of Texas at Arlington. She is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®). In her spare time, Karen loves playing a friendly game of tennis, thoroughly enjoys travel, finds her solace while kayaking, appreciates a good Audible book, expanded her horizons by learning to fly, and won a car on The Price is Right game show.