ABOUT IZZY
Izzy is a strategist who collaborates with businesses and creative organizations in areas where brands, culture, and people intersect. With twenty-plus years of strategic planning experience, her mission and joy are to fuel people to do their best work.
Izzy draws on her cross-cultural background and experience across diverse industries to cross-pollinate ideas and keep her approach fresh. Brands she’s worked on include Nike, Apple, Google, Visa, Oakley, Honda, Audi, Virgin America, Callaway, XOJET, Ubisoft, UCSF Health, Bare Escentuals, Proactiv, HSBC, Shane Co., McDonald’s, and Del Monte.
Executive-Level Experience
Before launching her independent practice, Izzy built the strategy group at 11 Inc. from one planner to a full-fledged department that provided dedicated strategic support to clients like Apple. At Rubin, Postaer & Associates, she ran the planning group for all of American Honda Motor.
Cross-Category Thinker
Izzy has the patience and thoroughness required to work on brands with complex architectures, diverse constituents, and multiple stakeholders like Visa and Microsoft. She also enjoys relying on experience and intuition when flying fast with founder-led start-ups like Grand Rounds Health and AAA game developers like Ubisoft.
High-Touch Facilitator & Researcher
Izzy’s hands-on research and facilitation experience include executive brand workshops, cross-discipline marketing brainstorms, ethno-documentary studies, focus groups, car clinics, high-touch one-on-one interviews with business executives, audience segmentation studies, and global brand tracking studies.
Creative Thought Leadership
Leveraging her research and strategy background, Izzy directed The Big Flip–Stories from the Modern Home Front, an award-winning documentary on families where the woman is the primary breadwinner. Izzy is an expert Film and Cultural Envoy for the U.S. State Department’s film diplomacy program, The American Film Showcase. As an envoy, Izzy has traveled to Egypt, China, and Ukraine to share the film in person and conduct workshops on storytelling and strategy.
Global Perspective
Izzy spent her childhood in Singapore and Hong Kong and has lived in Paris, Los Angeles, Fairbanks/Alaska, San Francisco, and now in the Pacific Northwest. Growing up as a global citizen means she often finds herself in the role of the outsider looking in, trying to decipher why people do what they do.
O O O
"I have had the pleasure of working with Izzy on brand strategy projects at Applied Materials and Xilinx. Izzy is an exceptional strategist whose approach includes both quantitative and qualitative research/analysis. Izzy is extremely professional and presents well to senior executive management. In addition, she has a personal style that invites open communication with all levels and technical audiences. Izzy produced award-winning results for me that had a tremendous impact on our marketing efforts. I highly recommend Izzy for any brand or positioning projects."
~ Kyra Whitten, a client when she was Managing Director of Marketing Communications at Applied Materials
izzy’s world view
I love diving into meaty cultural and social trends that are poised to dramatically flip life as we know it. The rise of female breadwinners. The intersection of human enhancement technology and artificial intelligence. The changing face of work in the freelance economy.
The stats make me wonder at the stories hidden within. What do the changes mean for real people—people like me, my friends, my daughter? The broad-stroke media analyses spark more questions—what are the tangible implications, in terms of how we live, work and play? As women rise to positions of leadership, how will society change? In a world where technology is making humans more super and computers more human, what is the line between man and machine; what will it mean to be human?
It comes down to this: I don’t want to be a passenger, and let our collective future be driven by a few experts and authority figures. I want to be in the front seat and drive the conversation on where we should be going.
“Izzy was asked by the U.S. State Department to travel as a film envoy to Egypt, China, Ukraine, and Tunisia. In addition to screenings, Izzy led many masterclasses and weeklong workshops. She has been a dynamic speaker and a thoughtful mentor to the many students and emerging filmmakers she encountered around the world. Once on the ground, she has been exceedingly flexible and positive in the face of unexpected travel and program complications, acting quickly to turn challenges into opportunities. We have heard the same sentiment echoed by American foreign service officers at U.S. Embassies, who have worked closely with Izzy in each of her international programs. Izzy is a true professional, with excellent communication skills, incredible drive, and a passion for telling stories that matter to her, and to the world.”
~ Rachel Gandin Mark, Director of International Programs, Program Director, American Film Showcase, U.S.C. School of Cinematic Arts