Kova Kolondzic

“Kova is an excellent manager, brand strategist, cross-functional partner and leader. I had the opportunity to work under Kova recently. Kova’s understanding of brand, general management, and strategy and her leadership skills brought higher level thinking to a small business with little strategy and no understanding of brand and brand marketing. She used her knowledge and skills to establish brand strategy based on consumer insights. She created several processes to drive efficiency and organizational alignment including an annual strategic planning process, budget planning and tracking, monthly business reporting and analytics, and an agency briefing process. Kova’s leadership cross-functionally helped drive better relationships through improved trust, communication, and collaboration. She was a valued business partner to across several business units. She brought together marketing and sales and drove a better working relationship to align on forecast and drove better visibility to marketing activities and KPIs. Kova was an excellent advocate for her team, always driving visibility to our work and leadership in the business. As a manager, she challenged us to think differently about the business and bring more depth and understanding to the organization and empowered us to be leaders. Kova trusted us to build our brands but also helped us grow through coaching, educating, and challenging us in areas outside of our comfort zone. She coached and mentored me on managing difficult personnel challenges to help drive more collaborative working relationships. She is also a trusted career mentor who supported me outside of just the scope of my job. Kova’s experience and knowledge in brand marketing, strategy, general management and leadership is at the highest level; she’s one of the best managers I’ve had. I learned a lot from her during my time reporting to her. She understands the consumer and the business and can bring a balance of both to the table. She’s an invaluable asset to any organization as both a leader and a brand expert.”

“I worked with Kova on the POISE brand at Kimberly-Clark. Kova is a creative problem solver who drives results. In her initial time leading the POISE brand, Kova was inquisitive and asked "what's working / what's not working" to try and assess and tweak things to make the team more productive and efficient. Within a few short weeks Kova had more clearly articulated responsibilities across the brand and brought a lot of energy to the team. She is curious and always looks at things thru the eyes of her consumer. She brought a fresh perspective to a brand that was ready to have some new thinking applied to its already solid plans. Kova has a keen eye for assessing creative. Frankly, she is the best I've worked with in assessing and crafting actionable feedback to our agency partners. Sometimes these conversations can be tricky. It's a fine line between asking for changes and hurting creator's feelings... but Kova's experience in this area has given her a special ability to pose changes in a positive light. She builds talent in the room with all marketers whenever creative is being discussed or presented. She was also a great coach to our agency partners, being open and honest with how she thinks through creative. She has driven our team to think differently, and has improved the creative output of our team. My work with Kova spanned everything from work on Advertising and Consumer Promotion budgets to assessing and approving all stages of brand planning and creative. She asks great questions, makes quick connections and makes decisions. Kova will be a tremendous asset to any company that is lucky enough to hire her. ”