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 METHOD
Excavate the Pattern. Alchemize the Meaning. Clarify the Role.
01 / Investigative
Excavate the Pattern
What’s actually true?
Pressure-test the intuition, complicate the evidence, and keep digging until the underlying pattern is defensible.
02 / Interpretative
Alchemize the
Meaning
Why does it matter?
Read the signals in relationship to one another until facts become a tension, a reframing, or a strategic thesis.
The work is iterative by design, and moves between evidence and instinct, psychology and behavior, brand ambition and operational reality.
03/ Decisive
Clarify the Role
What should the brand do about it?
Define the role the brand has the credibility, perission, and willingness to prove in the real world.
RECEIPTS
The method, caught
in the act.
EVOFEM · PHEXXI
PHARMA
From product education
to giving back control.
+94% new prescriptions in six weeks
The apparent problem was unfamiliarity. The deeper issue was resignation to limiting choices.
Three different briefs. Three different deeper reads.
Strategy judged by what it explains, changes, enables, or produces.
L’ORÉAL · KIEHL’S SINCE 1851
LUXURY / BEAUTY
One brand. One voice.
system.
LIGARE GATHERINGS
PRE-SEED START-UP
Four truths, one brand
40+ markets.
+40% organic reach · +25% engagement rate
Guest, host, founder, and investor needs — read together.
VALUES
What I believe
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5
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Curiosity is the engine.
Everything starts with a stubborn need to know why people choose what they choose. The M-shape (lateral, neurodivergent, multi-disciplinary, AI-amplified) is how that curiosity gets turned into work. Different minds make different work.
Pattern recognition over template recognition.
The job is the connection nobody else has spotted, not the framework everyone is already using.
Faster and deeper.
I point AI at the work to argue against it, not to churn out more of it. If the thinking gets shallower, the tool is being used wrong.
Show the work.
Publish before pitching. Clients hire me for what I've already said in public. Read the writing →
Receipts, not vibes.
Strategy gets judged on what it produces, not how it sounds in a room.
VALUES
Pattern 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.
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
The questions rarely stay in one lane.
Neither does the work.
EXPERIENCE
EXPERTISE
Agency-side / In-house · Global / North America
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
CATEGORY RANGE
Beauty · Luxury · Consumer Healthcare · Pharma · Food & Beverage · Alcohol & Spirits · Tech · Early-stage Businesses
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 CHANGE
Focused 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 ANSWER
Workshops & 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 SOMEWHERE
Strategy-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 REPLICATE
Research & 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 PROBLEM
Team & 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 NOT
HOW I WORK WITH AI
AI 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.
Pattern recognition,
in public.
Unexpected Insights is where the questions keep moving after the brief ends: AI, culture, cognition, and the systems beneath what looks obvious.
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