Fractional CMO · Agency Leader · Brand & Creative Strategy

I bought an advertising agency and ran it for eleven years.

Now I’m the marketing leader for organizations that need one without needing a full-time hire — bringing brand strategy, creative direction, and the operating structure that lets good work survive growth.

Greater Boston · Remote, Eastern time 802.598.8008 veronicajmarkol@gmail.com

Where the work has lived

The range is the argument. A quality bar that only holds in one category isn’t a quality bar — it’s a familiarity with one category.

What I do

Three ways in.

01 — Leadership

Fractional CMO

Executive marketing leadership, part-time. I set direction, own the quality bar, mentor the people already doing the work, and give a founder or CEO a peer to think with. For organizations too small for a full-time CMO and too complex to go without one.

02 — Strategy

Brand & creative direction

Positioning, messaging architecture, campaign direction, and the customer journey underneath them. Most marketing problems that look like execution problems are clarity problems. I find out which one you have before anyone opens a design file.

03 — Systems

AI enablement — Human at the Helm™

Bringing AI into marketing workflows without losing the judgment that makes the work good. Practical adoption, honest limits, and a human accountable for what ships. No tech worship.

Selected work

Six engagements, one standard.

Vermont Student Assistance CorporationCivic & advocacy · Nonprofit A grassroots campaign that won a carve-out in federal law and kept the agency alive. Federal lawCarve-out secured Downs Rachlin MartinLaw · Institutional brand Repositioning a century-old firm and taking it into a new state. +10%Market share Pond KingDirect-to-consumer · Ecommerce Rescuing a stalled site rebuild, then growing the channel tenfold. $120K → $1.25MAnnual ecommerce revenue ABA Therapy ProviderBehavioral Health · Agency Side Employer brand and recruitment marketing in a sector defined by turnover. +30%Employee retention Pop-up AgencyRetail & experiential · Agency-side Seasonal demand strategy for a pop-up agency serving premium brands. +20%YoY bookings Enterprise software platformPublicly traded · Confidential Website relaunch and digital strategy refresh for a listed company. RelaunchSite & pipeline rebuilt
Read the case studies

About

Both sides of the table.

I acquired HMC Advertising in Vermont and spent eleven years running it — scaling it from $3M to $5M in revenue, building a fifteen-person team of strategy, creative, and account people, and carrying the P&L myself.

That’s the part of my history that matters most, and it’s the part a resume tends to bury. Owning an agency teaches you something you cannot learn as a client: that quality is not a taste, it is a system. When the founders touch every piece of work, the work is good. When the founders can no longer touch every piece of work, the standard has to become explicit, portable, and someone’s job — or it quietly erodes while everyone is busy.

Since then I’ve been the client too. I’ve built a marketing function from nothing at a direct-to-consumer brand, run firmwide marketing at a commercial law firm, and since 2022 worked as a fractional CMO across a portfolio of organizations at once — behavioral health, enterprise software, retail, professional services.

I work remotely, on Eastern time, and I’ve done it that way for four years.

  • University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management — B.A., Marketing
  • Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth Management & Leadership Program · Minority Business Executive Program
  • American Association of Advertising Agencies Leadership Certification
  • American Marketing Association Member
  • Human at the Helm™ Founder — AI enablement for marketing teams
  • EPIC Leadership™ Founder — equine-guided leadership development

Contact

If the story needs sharpening, let’s talk.

I’m taking on fractional CMO engagements, and I’m open to the right full-time marketing leadership role. Either conversation is welcome.

veronicajmarkol@gmail.com 802.598.8008 LinkedIn