Nikita McKinney

Managed a team of 16 people across 7 different functions, a portfolio of 40 unique product formulations, and 2 distinct brand equities – with a focus on building the Maty’s equity & leveraging the Stem & Root equity as a new item incubator for established Bayer brands such as One-A-Day and Midol.

Served as the head of Marketing across Maty’s, with responsibilities spanning the spectrum – optimizing media mix, supporting new product sell-in, scaling business across new channels, building a high-functioning team, and crafting the brand strategy.

Managed Silk Dairy-Free Beverages business with a team of 3 ABMs, who I coached and progressed to the next level. In 2019, we overdelivered the largest segment within Silk Dairy-Free Beverages by $35-$40MM vs. plan. Results were driven by new marketing campaign, distribution expansion, and strong merchandising plans.

Managed a high growth and highly strategic coffee creamers business, with a team of 2 others, while actively building the talent pipeline through D&I recruiting and women's leadership initiatives.

Managed top line initiatives to grow International Delight coffee creamers through the launch of a new sub brand of dairy-based coffee creamers (including brand foundation documents and a 360, digital marketing campaign) and a companywide seasonal program (including commercialization of 6 new products and reintroduction of 16 products) which delivered 2X sales vs. target while keeping write-offs below target for a $60MM retail business. Further managed bottom line initiatives to grow contribution from International Delight coffee creamers by championing a packaging redesign that delivered the highest cost savings the organization ever realized (>$5MM) without creating consumer risk.

Drove high growth of the Yoplait kid yogurts business by fostering strong relationships with licensed equity partners to unlock new strategic insights and opportunities, accelerating the launch of 2 new products, closely managing supply constraints, and building a unique innovation and renovation pipeline to guide future marketing investments.

Positions Held: Forte Fellow Ambassador for the Class of 2014, VP of Communications for Olin Women in Business, & VP of Corporate Relations for Olin Marketing Association Graduation Achievements: Knight Scholar (Top 10 Students in Academic Achievement) & Beta Gamma Sigma (Top 20% in Academic Achievement)

Built a strategic marketing plan for the Viva® Prints portfolio by forming insights based on past brand initiatives, cross-functional team expertise, and recent purchasing trends. Communicated strategic plan tactics, which included distribution, packaging, shelving, and merchandising elements, to brand and company leadership. Once implemented, strategic recommendations create an opportunity for the portfolio to generate an additional 1.7% in market share and $2.1 million in gross profit by 2015.

Provided a detailed, quantitative methodology for segmenting member companies, which will help CEA refine its strategic goals as a member-driven organization.

Crafted and implemented testing and training strategies for new trade promotions and pricing systems for multiple clients, which required resource planning and loading across >15 resources who spanned geographic locations and companies.

Managed PMO processes across multiple initiatives, which consisted of maintaining 15 recurring reports, developing and tracking 10 Microsoft Project timelines, identifying and facilitating process improvements, coordinating contractual updates, and shepherding the change request process.

Gathered requirements across purchasing, supply chain, warehousing and logistics functions in an effort to build out critical future state business process flows based on the new IT system proposal. Leveraged future state business process flows to facilitate conversations about important business decisions with key stakeholders - detailing different perspectives, evaluating alternatives, and presenting viable options to client decision makers.

Developed deep learnings in the field of retirement planning, which allowed me to service individual client needs through strong analytics and communication skills - reducing the lead time to deliver quarterly financial metrics by 60%.

Researched long-term care offerings in the industry, analyzing which providers were most relevant for our investment management clients based on factors such as client age, risk profile, employment status, and family status and presenting these to the financial advisor as an addition to her product portfolio.