I was brought in to Chalkbeat — a digital news organization focused on local education coverage in multiple states — to help grow its offerings to more geographies. But after working closely with the founder and CEO on the strategic plan, we determined that the outsize revenue potential lay in fundraising for new topics (not just education). In 2020, Chalkbeat raised $5M+ to launch Votebeat — a new local newsroom focused on elections and voting, and then debuted a new parent company in early 2023 with a broader mandate, ready to expand to other critical news topics.

When I first joined Howl, it was a high-growth pre-seed startup that was primarily serving the needs of the legacy publishers who were big players in product reviews — Wirecutter, Conde Nast, Hearst, etc. I worked with the founder and the leadership team to reimagine the business and product strategy to focus on a new user segment — creators on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. We were now making a product for individual creators and no longer just big enterprise clients. This dramatically opened the total addressable market of the company, and became the start of a new phase for Howl's growth.