Beverage
Constellation Brands
Architecting the earned media strategy and PR launch of Netflix Originals — the announcement that changed how the world watches television
$100M+
Reported value of the House of Cards deal
5 Yrs
First Constellation Investor Day in five years — held November 2, 2023 at the NYSE
+16.6%
STZ stock price increase across Q3–Q4 FY24 following the Investor Day
7.5 Yrs
VP Communications, Brand PR & Brand Experience
Constellation Brands
VP Communications, Brand PR & Brand Experience · Constellation Brands
Strategic communications, brand PR, brand experience, M&A communications, investor narrative, executive communications, IR partnership, presentation development, event production. Embedded partner to Robert Hanson, President of Wine & Spirits, and the Constellation Brands C-suite and IR function throughout the transformation and Investor Day.
January 2018–June 2025
2010
Netflix account engagement begins — ID PR brought on as agency of record as Netflix navigates the transition from DVD-by-mail to streaming platform and eyes a new chapter.
Mar 2011
Netflix Originals announcement — House of Cards deal breaks in Deadline as an exclusive. A streaming service outbids HBO and AMC for prestige content. Industry coverage is immediate and global.
2011
First-wave originals pipeline publicized — Lilyhammer, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and others announced and positioned in press as a coherent originals strategy, not isolated acquisitions.
Feb 2012
Lilyhammer premieres — the first Netflix Original to stream. Feb 6, 2012. All-episode binge model introduced. Press coverage frames it as the beginning of a new era in television.
2012
Orange is the New Black greenlit — Jenji Kohan's series commissioned. Early earned media groundwork laid as part of the sustained originals narrative being built in press.
Feb 2013
House of Cards S1 drops — 9 Emmy nominations. Netflix stock jumps 70% in the week prior. The PR infrastructure built over two years absorbs the moment and extends it.
A transformation that needed a narrative as much as a strategy
When I joined Constellation Brands in January 2018, the Wine & Spirits division was a large, mainstream-weighted portfolio in the early stages of a fundamental strategic rethink. The business was healthy but the trajectory was clear: the mainstream U.S. wholesale model that had built the company was under structural pressure, and leadership had made the decision to pivot — toward premium, toward global, toward omni-channel, toward a portfolio with better margins and stronger brand equity. My job was to build the communications infrastructure that would support that transformation: not just announcing the moves as they happened, but constructing a coherent narrative that made each individual decision legible as part of a larger, intentional arc.
Communicating a multi-year transformation while living inside it
The hardest communications challenge of the Constellation engagement wasn't any single announcement — it was maintaining narrative coherence across a five-year transformation that included two major divestitures, multiple acquisitions, a global expansion, a pandemic, and a leadership evolution, all while managing the day-to-day communications of a $3+ billion business. Each move had its own stakeholder set, its own timing constraints, and its own potential to confuse or concern the investors, employees, brand partners, and trade relationships that depended on understanding where the company was going. The ~$810M Gallo divestiture — announced in 2019, not closed until 2021 — was the most complex single challenge: two years of sustained uncertainty for brands, employees, and communities, requiring a communications program that could hold through constant change without losing credibility.
Building the story that would hold on Investor Day
The 2023 Investor Day was the culmination of five years of narrative work. My role covered the full scope: Wine & Spirits narrative development, executive presentation content, and full event production at the NYSE. The goal was to demonstrate — not just assert — that the transformation was complete, coherent, and creating sustainable value. That meant connecting every strategic decision made since 2018 into a single, legible arc; preparing executives to tell that story with precision under analyst scrutiny; and producing an event that matched the seriousness of the moment. The first Constellation Investor Day in five years couldn't feel like a routine update. It needed to feel like an arrival.
The market responded
STZ gained 16.6% across Q3 and Q4 FY24 — the five months following the Investor Day — reflecting sustained investor confidence, not just a day-of reaction. The Gallo divestiture, the largest M&A transaction in wine and spirits industry history at the time, closed without significant narrative damage to the retained portfolio. The Empathy Wines acquisition landed in CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Wine Spectator, The Drinks Business, and dozens of business and trade outlets in a single news cycle. The Lingua Franca acquisition established the luxury tier of the portfolio with precision. Over 7.5 years, the communications function evolved from a reactive support role into a strategic asset embedded at the center of the company's transformation story.
The announcement that satisfies the algorithm is never the one that changes the conversation.
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