I'm a social media intelligence leader, long-time brand marketer, adjunct professor, and creator focused on turning online conversations into actionable insights.

I've led social listening, analytics, and measurement across 25+ brands, translating real-time audience data into brand strategy, media optimization, and innovation. I also teach, advise, and mentor others to interpret data, uncover meaningful insights, and apply them in the real world.

Completely by accident. I studied economics, where I developed a strong interest in data analytics, which led to my first job out of college in something called social listening.

Over the last decade, I've worked across nearly every facet of social intelligence, building a skill set in storytelling, data visualization, consumer insights, and applied analytics. It's an incredibly multidisciplinary field that has opened doors for me across market research, digital marketing, and analytics.

That tools and volume equal value. I spend a lot of time un-teaching the idea that more data or better dashboards automatically translate to better insights. Real value comes from how you frame the problem, analyze the data, and apply it to business decisions.

That social data lacks rigor. In reality, most teams just aren't applying rigorous methods to it. When you combine structured analysis, effective storytelling, and clear business questions, social data becomes incredibly powerful - not just for understanding audiences, but for driving decisions.

Credibility isn’t the problem. Maturity and execution are.

The WHY behind a post's engagement. People don't just view content anymore - they rush to the comments.

It's also a paradigm shift. Social platforms didn't design for the comment section to become the new feed, which is why it's historically been harder to access and analyze. But that's increasingly where narratives are formed, shaped, and challenged in real time.

Social is no longer just a media channel - it's an input into how brands are understood everywhere, including search, LLMs, and earned media. If you're not thinking about how social conversations shape broader visibility, you're already several steps behind.

e.l.f. Beauty. They take community management and social listening to another level, especially with their presence on LinkedIn and Substack. Their CMO has talked about reading hundreds of comments personally, and the brand is known for fast feedback loops driven directly by listening to consumers in the comments.

TikTok. It's the closest thing we have to a real-time view of culture. Even without full firehose access, there's still enough data to generate meaningful insight - and it's fundamentally different from anything we've had before.

It's highly multimodal: video, audio, text, and context. This unlocks entirely new types of insights the industry hasn't historically had access to.

If there’s someone doing interesting work in social intelligence, social listening, or audience insights - or if that someone is you! - we’d love to hear about it.

Nominate someone (or yourself) to be featured in the next In the comments with… interview 👇

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