Mildred Mae is a brand strategy practice that finds the unexpected connections that earn a brand its way in.
Human behavior, culture, evidence, instinct, and operational reality, read as one system. Starting from who people actually are, and ending at what the brand is willing to prove it stands for.
Lateral by nature. ◆ Human-first by principle. ◆ AI-amplified by design. ◆ Multi-disciplinary by training.
Built by a neurodivergent senior brand marketer with 17+ years of resonant, category-defining work behind her.
The stated problem is usually only part of the problem.
I stay with the question long enough to find the contradiction, behavior, assumption, or connection that changes the read.
THE BRIEF TELLS US WHERE TO START, NOT WHERE TO STOP.
THE METHODExcavate the Pattern. Alchemize the Meaning. Clarify the Role.
01 / InvestigativeExcavate the Pattern
Pressure-test the intuition, complicate the evidence, and keep digging until the underlying pattern is defensible.
What is actually true?
02 / InterpretativeAlchemize the Meaning
Read the signals in relationship to one another until facts become a tension, a reframing, or a strategic thesis.
Why does it matter?
03/ DecisiveClarify the Role
Define the role the brand has the credibility, permission, and willingness to prove in the real world.
How should the brand act?
The work is iterative by design, and moves between evidence and instinct, psychology and behavior, brand ambition and operational reality.
MILDRED MAE’S VALUES →
RECEIPTSThe method, caught in the act.
Three different briefs. Three different deeper reads. Strategy judged by what it explains, changes, enables, or produces.
EVOFEM · PHEXXIPHARMAFrom product education to giving back control.
+94%
new prescriptions in six weeks
The apparent problem was unfamiliarity. The real problem was that patients — and their HCPs — had resigned themselves to limited choices.
L’ORÉAL · KIEHL’S SINCE 1851One brand. One voice. 40+ markets.
+40%
organic reach YoY
+25%
organic engagement YoY
BEAUTYLIGARE GATHERINGSFour truths, one brand system.
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PRE-SEED START-UPdifferent audience needs, read together.
VALUESPattern recognition over template recognition.
Frameworks can organize thinking. But the most interesting part is often the relationship between things that were never meant to be examined together.
Different minds make different work.
Lateral, multidisciplinary, neurodivergent thinking shifts what gets noticed.
Faster and deeper.
AI compounds thinking. It doesn’t replace human taste or judgment.
Receipts, not vibes.
Strategy earns its value through what it explains, changes, enables, or produces.
ELISABETH BROMBERG
FOUNDER & CHIEF STRATEGIST
Everything I do starts with a stubborn curiosity about why we choose the things we choose, and how we find connection in a loud world.
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I built Mildred Mae as a home for that curiosity. My neurodivergent brain processes the world in constellations rather than straight lines — moving between human behavior, culture, evidence, instinct, and operational reality to see what changes when they are considered together.
That way of seeing is the work: making complexity legible and the next move clear, grounded in what people feel belonging, and what a brand is willing to prove.
Mildred Mae is named for my two grandmothers — Florence Mildred and Gloria Mae — who both crossed the world to belong somewhere.
Read the namesake story →
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHERThe questions rarely stay in one lane. Neither does the work.
Agency-side / In-house · Global / North America
EXPERIENCE
Brand Strategy · Social & Engagement Strategy · Creative Strategy · Research & Insights · Measurement & KPI Design · AI Strategy, Workflows, & Custom Tools · Organizational Design for Strategy, Social & Content, and Integrated Marketing Teams
EXPERTISE
Beauty · Luxury · CPG · Consumer Healthcare · Pharma · Food & Beverage · Alcohol & Spirits · Tech · Early-stage Businesses
CATEGORY RANGE
Embedded Strategy Partner
Ongoing senior brand, social, and creative strategy inside the work — without adding another full-time layer. The scope can move with questions, from counsel and decision-making to hands-on follow-through.
BEST FOR // EVOLVING PRIORITIES AND SUSTAINED CHANGEFocused Strategy Engagements
One defined problem, answered all the way through: rethinking measurement, clarifying positioning, rebuilding a content system, reframing an audience, or resolving a strategic decision.
BEST FOR // A SPECIFIC QUESTION THAT DESERVES AN INFORMED, DECISIVE ANSWERStrategy-to-Activation Projects
Discovery, strategy, playbook, hands-on implementation, and full team hand-off — built as one connected engagement rather than a deck handed off at the midpoint.
BEST FOR // TURNING A STRATEGIC ANSWER INTO SOMETHING THE TEAM CAN USE AND REPLICATEWorkshops & Trainings
Facilitated sessions designed to produce a decision, direction, or shared operating language (not simply a room full of sticky notes.)
BEST FOR // ALIGNMENT THAT HAS TO LEAD SOMEWHEREResearch & Discovery
Standalone excavation into audiences, categories, culture, behavior, evidence, and the assumptions underneath the brief.
BEST FOR // MAKING SURE THE TEAM IS SOLVING THE RIGHT PROBLEMTeam & Organizational Design
Team structure, roles, responsibilities, workflows, and operating rhythms designed around how the work actually gets done.
BEST FOR // WHEN THE WORK HAS CHANGED BUT THE TEAM STRUCTURE HAS NOTWHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
HOW I WORK WITH AIAI speeds the work up and pressure-tests it before you see it. Nothing ships that hasn't been checked against its sources, and the tools are pointed at finding what's wrong with the thinking, not agreeing with it.
SUBSTACKThinking sideways, in public.
Unexpected Insights is where the questions keep moving after the brief ends: AI, culture, cognition, and the systems beneath what looks obvious.
The ADHD Brain on AI
01Truth in Tension: Why Complexity Matters in an Age of Absolutism
02Full Screen
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