Communications · Marketing · Brand Strategy
Senior leader.
Sharp writer.
Former journalist.
A decade-plus at the table inside Canada's most consequential financial institutions and government — building the communications programs, marketing infrastructure, and brand strategies that moved millions of people. This is the work.
About
Where the
instinct comes from.
Before the bank towers, there were newsrooms. I spent my early career as a finance editor and digital producer — at Yahoo! Finance, TVO, HuffPost, the National Post — doing the work that teaches you how to cut a story to its spine, find the line that actually matters, and write for an audience that owes you nothing.
That foundation followed me into every institution I've walked into since. Whether it was standing up enterprise communications programs at RBC, Scotiabank, and Citi, advising through Ontario's COVID-19 response, or relaunching a retention newsletter to three million banking customers — the journalism instinct never left. It just got a bigger budget.
My work sits at the meeting point of communications strategy, brand, and lifecycle marketing. I'm fluent across all three because, at a certain level, they're the same discipline: knowing what an organization needs to say, to whom, and how to make it land.
I've led teams of up to 17, managed enterprise CRM and email stacks, written speeches and op-eds for executives who needed to sound both human and credible, and designed the retention architecture that keeps customers engaged long after acquisition budgets run dry.
Expertise
Three disciplines,
one point of view.
Corporate Communications & Public Affairs
- Executive messaging & CEO advisory
- Speechwriting & thought leadership
- Crisis & issues management
- Media relations & reputation strategy
- Stakeholder & government engagement
- Corporate narrative architecture
- Internal communications
Retention Marketing & Lifecycle
- Lifecycle strategy & journey design
- CRM platform management
- Email program design & execution
- Audience segmentation & personalization
- Triggered & transactional communications
- Retention calendar planning
- Performance analytics & KPI frameworks
Brand Strategy & Content Leadership
- Brand voice & editorial standards
- Content strategy & planning
- Social media strategy & governance
- Owned channel development
- Editorial direction & production
- Agency & vendor management
- Team leadership (up to 17)
Selected Work
Six programs.
The results speak.
Each of these represents a mandate I owned end-to-end — the strategy, the build, the measurement. Click any to see what the work actually involved.
Governing enterprise social media for one of Canada's largest consumer brands
Led social media strategy and governance for Scotiabank's owned channels — a high-stakes, high-visibility function at a Big Five bank where every post is scrutinized by Legal, Compliance, and Communications simultaneously. Built the frameworks that made that possible at scale.
The Challenge
Enterprise social at a major bank is not a content calendar problem — it's a governance problem. Every post intersects financial regulations, brand standards, legal review, and an audience of millions across multiple product lines. The channel was underperforming not because of lack of creativity but because the infrastructure holding it together was fractured. The mandate was to professionalize the function: build the strategy, the workflow, and the editorial standards that could sustain output at volume without sacrificing quality or compliance.
What I Did
- Rebuilt the editorial calendar architecture, aligning content cadence with trading moments, product milestones, and brand campaigns
- Developed brand voice standards and tone guidelines adapted for regulated financial services content
- Led cross-functional alignment across Legal, Compliance, Marketing, and Corporate Communications to streamline approval workflows
- Managed agency relationships and a team of direct reports responsible for content production and community management
- Built performance measurement framework tracking engagement, reach, and brand sentiment across platforms
Results
- Professionalized the social function with governance infrastructure built to scale
- Reduced approval cycle friction significantly through cross-functional workflow redesign
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Relaunching Think Richer — a retention newsletter rebuilt from scratch to 3MM+ clients
Think Richer was Scotiabank's flagship retention newsletter — and it wasn't working. I rebuilt it: new lifecycle content strategy, new segmentation framework, new triggered communication architecture. Click-through rates doubled within two publishing cycles.
The Challenge
A newsletter reaching over three million clients had become stale — content wasn't segmented, the cadence wasn't aligned to customer lifecycle stages, and there was no coherent strategy connecting the newsletter to broader retention goals. Engagement was declining. The relaunch required rethinking the program from the subject line up: what does a Scotiabank client actually need to receive at different points in their financial journey, and how do we build an editorial framework that delivers that at scale?
What I Did
- Rebuilt the lifecycle content strategy from scratch, mapping content themes to customer segments and financial milestones
- Redesigned audience segmentation architecture to enable personalized content delivery at scale via Oracle Responsys
- Rebuilt the triggered communication framework to align newsletter touchpoints with customer behaviour signals
- Developed A/B testing protocols for subject lines, send times, and content format
Results
- Click-through rates doubled within two publishing cycles post-relaunch
- Engagement metrics improved materially across all measured segments
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Advice+ — 780% ROI on a financial literacy retention platform
Led Scotiabank's Advice+ platform — the bank's financial literacy and retention hub — developing personalized content journeys and triggered communications that deepened customer relationships and delivered measurable retention outcomes. The program returned 780% ROI.
The Challenge
Advice+ existed as a content destination but hadn't been operated with retention discipline — the content was there but the engagement architecture wasn't. Customers who visited weren't coming back; the platform wasn't connected to CRM in a way that could sustain a lifecycle relationship. The work was to transform a content repository into a functioning retention engine: personalized journeys, triggered follow-up communications, and a measurement framework that could prove the platform's value in the language finance teams speak.
What I Did
- Designed personalized content journeys mapped to customer financial stages and product relationships
- Built triggered communication workflows in Adobe Journey Optimizer connecting platform engagement to CRM follow-up
- Developed engagement programs surfacing relevant content at key customer lifecycle moments
- Built performance measurement framework connecting content engagement to retention metrics and revenue outcomes
Results
- Platform delivered 780% ROI — quantifying the retention value of financial literacy content for the first time
- Deepened customer relationships across measured retention cohorts
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Building the retention and lifecycle marketing program for a digital-first banking brand
Led retention and lifecycle marketing strategy for Tangerine — developing the email program, customer journey frameworks, and CRM communication strategy for a digital-first consumer banking brand where the owned channel is the primary customer relationship.
The Challenge
Tangerine operates differently from a branch-based bank: the customer relationship lives almost entirely in digital channels, which makes lifecycle marketing not a nice-to-have but the core of how the brand maintains and grows customer value. The email program and CRM strategy are the branch. The mandate was to bring enterprise retention discipline to a digital-first environment — aligning lifecycle communications with product strategy, designing segmentation that reflected actual customer behaviour, and building the calendar infrastructure that kept communications relevant without overwhelming.
What I Did
- Designed and executed the retention calendar, aligning lifecycle communications with trading moments, product launches, and customer milestones
- Rebuilt audience segmentation frameworks and personalization strategies to improve email relevance
- Developed CRM communication strategy connecting email touchpoints to customer lifecycle and product engagement data
- Improved open and click-through rates materially across key customer segments
Results
- Strengthened customer lifetime value metrics through improved engagement
- Reduced churn signals across key retention cohorts
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VP-level communications and lifecycle strategy across seven international markets
As VP, Communications at Citi, led lifecycle and retention communications strategy across seven international markets — building the frameworks that maintained customer engagement and deepened relationships across a genuinely global customer base operating in distinct regulatory environments.
The Challenge
Multi-market communications at a global bank is a coordination and localization problem as much as a strategy one. Each market has distinct regulatory constraints, customer expectations, product offerings, and brand considerations — but the underlying lifecycle logic needs to be coherent across all of them. The role required building infrastructure that could be adapted to each market without losing strategic cohesion — and doing that at VP level means being as comfortable in a boardroom conversation about market positioning as in the weeds of email segmentation strategy.
What I Did
- Led lifecycle and retention communications strategy across seven markets, adapting frameworks to local regulatory and audience requirements
- Managed CRM and email platform strategy, building segmentation and personalization programs for a global customer base
- Developed triggered communication frameworks that maintained engagement across the full customer lifecycle
- Operated at VP level across Communications and Marketing functions, managing cross-functional alignment and C-suite relationships
Results
- Improved retention metrics and customer engagement scores across markets
- Built durable lifecycle infrastructure applicable across multiple international regulatory contexts
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Leading enterprise communications through Ontario's COVID-19 response
As Managing Editor at the Government of Ontario, led the communications response as the pandemic scaled — rapidly building the lifecycle and triggered communication programs that kept millions of Ontarians informed, connected, and trusting their government at the worst possible moment to lose public confidence.
The Challenge
Government communications during COVID-19 was a completely different problem than peacetime comms. The volume requirements were impossible, the stakes were life-and-death, the audience was panicked, and the information itself was changing faster than the communication infrastructure could keep up with. The challenge wasn't creativity — it was scale, speed, accuracy, and trust. Building systems that could deliver accurate information to millions of people across multiple channels without a single preventable error, while managing the human panic on both sides of the communication.
What I Did
- Directed the enterprise communications response — rapidly scaling email and CRM programs to meet exponential demand
- Built triggered communication frameworks delivering real-time public health information at provincial scale
- Developed retention and lifecycle communications infrastructure that maintained public engagement through an 18-month crisis
- Led cross-functional editorial teams under extreme time pressure, maintaining accuracy and tone across all public-facing communications
- Managed the editorial governance process ensuring compliance with evolving public health directives
Results
- Maintained public trust and engagement through an unprecedented communications crisis
- Built provincial-scale communications infrastructure under real-time pressure
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Let's talk about the role.
Senior communications and marketing leader, available now. Toronto-based, open to hybrid and remote arrangements.