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Jen Gulvik

Scrappy CMO skilled in building & scaling B2B and B2C brands with lean resources. Strength in team building, strategy, CX, innovation, digital-first & data-driven marketing. Dog mom / Skier / Winemaker / Design snob

Jen Gulvik is a seasoned marketing executive and brand strategist with over 20 years of experience in the industry.13 She is the founder of halftimeCMO, where she currently works as a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) driving growth strategy, customer experience, and brand evolution for consumer-facing brands.14

Career Highlights

Throughout her career, Jen has held several prominent positions:

  • SVP Marketing + Creative Director at Houlihan's Restaurants, Inc., where she led the company through a successful sale to new private equity owners in 2016.1
  • Chief Marketing Officer and EVP at nbkc bank, where she spearheaded the bank's digital transformation, doubling deposits in just 20 months.1
  • Interim President for the launch of a new National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) team in Kansas City.1
  • Brand Manager at Birch Communications, where she was responsible for the entire brand creation and launch for a start-up telecommunications company.2
  • Freelance Trend Reporter for iconoculture.2

Expertise and Achievements

Jen is known for:

  • Crafting vision, engaging stakeholders, and fostering community around brands with a sense of purpose.1
  • Aligning business strategy, employer branding, product development, and marketing.1
  • Developing innovative marketing strategies and first-to-market products and experiences.1
  • Leading digital transformations and building performance marketing teams.1
  • Creating modern brands that people want to work for, do business with, and recommend to others.1

Education and Professional Development

Jen has a diverse educational background, including:

  • Executive Education in Finance & Accounting for Non-Financial Executives from Columbia Business School.2
  • Executive Education for Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders from Harvard Business School.2
  • BS in Journalism with a focus on Advertising from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.2
  • Muck Rack Certification in Fundamentals of Media Relations.2

Personal Passions and Board Service

Outside of her professional work, Jen is passionate about supporting women entrepreneurs and promoting financial literacy.1 She has served as:

  • Membership Chair for the Women's Capital Connection, an angel group investing in early-stage, women-led businesses.1
  • Board Chair for the Women's Employment Network in Kansas City.1

Jen Gulvik's LinkedIn username is jengulvik, where more information about her professional experience and achievements can be found.3

Highlights

Dec 8 · linkedin

Attended an AI event this morning. Here are a few takeaways worth sharing:

--You can’t tell your AI robot to take bias out of its response and make the engine less biased. The ‘why’ is too long for this post, but I likened it to the fact that you can’t feed mayonnaise to the tuna and expect to get a sandwich.

--Do you have an AI Policy at your company? Better get on that.

--So many job opportunities as a “Prompt Engineer.” Six figure salaries.

--The words “political campaigns” and “AI” were used in the same sentence. Ugggh. It’s getting much harder to tell what images and content are real vs. AI-generated. Could be the worst run-up yet.

--Check out perplexity.ai. It combines ChatGPT and Google, so it uses real-time data unlike other AI tools. It provides well-researched responses, citing its data sources and including useful links for more information. More like an answerbot.

--Be nice and build emotion into your AI prompts. Saying please & thank you, or even telling AI how important a project / output is to your career, for example, improves AI’s responses and performance.

--The pace of change in AI is unprecedented. It's hard to imagine what work/life will look like three years from now. The Industrial Revolution’s got nothing on this one.

Sorry if you have anxiety now.

Thanks for the great event, Social Media Club of Kansas City and panelists David Cacioppo, Michelle Frost, Chris Kovac and Simon Kuo.

Nov 13 · linkedin

Looking for go-getter biz dev, sponsorship or sales operations talent? A rock star I recently worked with is looking for his next role. He has 10 years of experience in a variety of sales functions including high-touch 'concierge' sales; contract negotiation; client/vendor relationships; and sales training. Did a lot of project management, content writing to aid the sales process and was loved by everyone. Awesome to work with.

If I could hire him , I would do so in a second. He'd be great in sponsorship sales, new biz, really any relationship-based sales functions.

Reach out if you'd like an introduction or to see his resume!

He

Related Questions

What inspired Jen Gulvik to start halftimeCMO?
How did Jen Gulvik's role at nbkc bank impact its digital transformation?
What are some of the industry firsts Jen Gulvik has been involved in?
How did Jen Gulvik's work at Houlihan's Restaurants influence its menu development?
What are Jen Gulvik's key strategies for driving consumer-centric growth?
Jen Gulvik
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Location

Kansas City, Missouri, United States