Bio

Karuna is an accomplished brand builder and Emmy award winner with 25 years of success transforming the world’s most iconic brands. She is a strategically driven business leader who excels at creating a long-term vision and leading teams to grow brand equity, sales and profit across diverse industries. Broad experience from brand building and sales/retail channel experience at P&G to entrepreneurial experience as an insight-driven innovation consultant to creative agency management at Arc/Leo Burnett. Award-winning strategist and persuasive speaker with an outstanding industry reputation. Inspiring team leader who is passionate about identifying and developing talent, building performance driven cultures and empowering teams. Karuna was the lead strategist on the wildly successful P&G Always #LikeAGirl campaign, which won 14 Lions at Cannes Festival 2015 and a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial. Karuna was most recently President, Groupe Client Lead at Publicis Groupe charged with driving innovation, growth and business/digital transformation across key Groupe clients. Prior, she was U.S. President and Chief Strategy Officer at Arc Worldwide, Publicis Groupe’s key Commerce Agency. Previously, she was EVP, Business Director & Global Planning Lead for Arc Worldwide and the architect of the ''Shopper Back'' philosophy which drove significant revenue growth for the agency. She was the overall Business Lead of P&G North America for Arc leading shopper, digital and e-commerce. Prior to joining Arc, she managed her own consulting firm providing branding, strategy and innovation services to brands including Sunny Delight and Sara Lee. Previously, Karuna spent over a decade in brand management at P&G working on brands such as Jif, Folgers and Duncan Hines. Areas of expertise include Brand Building, P&L Management, Insights, Customer Journey Mapping, Strategic Planning, Innovation, Omnichannel Marketing, Social/Digital/eCommerce Strategy, Channel Marketing, Retail Strategy and Design, Agency Management.