How I got here

Setting Sail: The Story Behind Keel Consulting ⛵️

My path to customer marketing started in unexpected waters: making hundreds of cold calls in sales. Those early days taught me two things: sales was definitely not my calling, and more importantly, customer proof points were critical to winning prospects.

The real turning point came while running event marketing. Standing at our booth, I watched customers organically sharing their love for our product with prospects. They were telling our story better than any sales pitch ever could. That's when I realized the untapped potential of customer advocacy - we just needed to build the right foundation to bottle it up and scale it.

This led me through roles where I built and transformed customer marketing programs at companies like ON24, Nextiva, and ClickUp. At ON24, I grew from a one-person team to leading the customer marketing function, building a community that generated $1.5M in pipeline from referrals alone. At ClickUp, I spearheaded programs that helped close over $500K in revenue through strategic customer references and launched 60+ customer stories that became cornerstone assets for the sales team.

Each role taught me something valuable: At ON24, I learned how to build advocacy programs from scratch and scale them. Nextiva showed me how to drive quick wins with targeted campaigns. At ClickUp, I mastered the art of turning customer voices into a strategic growth engine.

The biggest lesson? There's no single blueprint for customer marketing success. Every company needs their own balanced approach.

In 2023, after welcoming my second kiddo aboard, I found my true calling: combining my passion for building impactful customer marketing programs with the flexibility I wanted as a mom. That's how Keel Consulting was created - a way to help advocacy leaders chart their course to success while building something meaningful for my family.

Now, I partner with B2B tech companies to design and build customer marketing programs that actually scale - turning ideas into strategies and playbooks that deliver results. Whether you're launching a customer advisory board, building a reference program that sales loves, or creating compelling customer stories that close deals, I bring battle-tested strategies that work. ⚓️