As an independent consultant, Susan has built marketing strategies and plans for both non-profit and corporations. With a practical and practiced approach, Susan has been able to help these organizations understand the value marketing can contribute, while building go to market plans that are reasonable yet impactful, balancing resources and budgets.
At LoyaltyOne, the company that owns and operates Air Miles, Susan managed the corporate marketing and communications functions. Responsibilities included building and driving corporate marketing and communications plans and budget, including those for the geographies of India and Brazil. With her deep experience in brand, Susan led the re-launch of LoyaltyOne’s brand strategy including positioning, value proposition and reasons to believe. And working in partnership with the client facing teams, Susan provided marketing strategies and services to support the client facing teams from a marketing discipline along the sales cycle. These marketing services ranged from digital marketing, direct marketing, event marketing and communications, specialized by verticals and geographies. In addition, Susan led the internal communications and internal events team, revitalizing this function to the highest metrics ever established in the company’s tenure, using creative and innovative processes and techniques to re-energize this critical engagement channel and deliver business value back to the organization. As part of this initiative, she owned the re-haul of the company’s intranet, including governance strategy, functional requirements, re-design and change management. In all functions, she closely managed the relationships with key external and internal agencies, ensuring creative objectives were realized while meeting metrics and budget parameters.
Previous to LoyaltyOne, Susan managed the Fortune 500 and public sector segments at Dell, responsible for all marketing and communications programs delivered to these portfolios, segments responsible for over $1.2 billion in revenue. Susan was a recipient of a Dell Gold award for development of a marketing portal, integrating eight different sales support processes into a centralized site. In addition, she led Dell TechKnow, a technology program for disadvantaged middle school students, a program winner of the Microsoft Impact award.
At Rogers, Susan played a core service role to the sales divisions, creating marketing strategies and plans for wireless data initiatives. She was able to combine her previous experiences in sales and channel management from IBM and 724 Solutions, delivering a unique asset of sales, marketing and channel to consistently outperform on all revenue and unit metrics.
With a strong commitment to corporate involvement, Susan co-created and founded the Women’s Networking Group and Campus Recruiting Council at LoyaltyOne. At other organizations, she has been a staunch supporter of mentor-ship and diversity programs. An involved and committed individual, Susan’s strength is building lasting relationships across an organization with a service mentality. She enjoys using creativity and new ways of thinking to improve processes, approach problems in a results-focused way while building a strong team culture and network.
Susan holds a MBA in Marketing from McMaster University and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Toronto. With a passion for teamwork, Susan played on a women’s hockey league with a game that was filmed and aired from the Air Canada Centre, promoting the growth of adult women’s hockey.
