The Bearhug Network: 27 Newly Vetted Leaders Went Live This Week (Out of 254+ Who Joined You). This Is The Company Your Profile Keeps. See Who You're Standing Next To and Join Them Today.
What if the person who needs exactly what you've built doesn't know your name yet, but is looking anyway?
Marketing and Brand dominates this week's slate by a wide margin, and the pattern underneath it is worth noticing. Brand leaders who have carried both wholesale and DTC at once, CMOs who turned scattered post-acquisition marketing into a single growth story, creative directors who scaled outdoor and action-sports identity past its subcultural ceiling. Sales and Commercial follows close behind, dense with operators who built category presence and shelf velocity from nothing. If your career sits inside consumer brands or enterprise tech marketing, this is a week where that experience is in unusually good company.
Among this week's standouts, an engineer who built Google Street View from prototype to global scale and then led Lyft's autonomous driving division through its Toyota acquisition. A CMO who took a data protection platform's pipeline from single digits into the tens of millions while folding 6 acquired products into the funnel in 2 years. A brand operator who grew a mission-driven outdoor company from startup to 9 figures and set 3 consecutive Amazon Prime Day records along the way. And a CISO holding the senior security seat at an international investment bank under full EU regulatory scrutiny, the kind of exposure most security leaders only advise on from a distance.
Bearhug surfaces these profiles to the CEOs, investors, PE partners, and board members who are actively building leadership teams, without requiring executives to post publicly, signal distress, or compromise their current roles. The network exists for operators who are open to the right conversation, not for those who are desperate for any one.
How it works
Your profile goes in anonymized. Nothing identifies you. No one at your current company, no one in your LinkedIn network, no one browsing casually will ever see your name. You stay protected while becoming visible to the people who matter. The only way someone learns who you are is if you want them to.
The people browsing this network aren't recruiters blasting InMail. They're CEOs with a specific leadership gap, investors pointing a portfolio company toward the right hire, and board members who need to make a recommendation they're confident in. When one of them wants to meet you, we screen it before it reaches you. Nothing hits your inbox that isn't worth your time.
You're not committing to anything. You're not on the market. You're making yourself findable for opportunities you don't even know exist yet. Whether you're exploring what's next, open to advisory or board work, raising capital, or simply want to know what's out there without broadcasting it, your profile works for you in the background while you keep doing what you're doing. Five minutes now, and the right thing finds you when the timing is right.
Know someone who's too good to be invisible? Send them this page. You become the person who opened a door they didn't know existed. And when you refer a hiring authority who ends up working with us, whether they hire through the network or engage us for a full search, we cut you a $5,000 check for making the intro. All from a single introduction you probably would have made anyway. No paperwork, no hoops. Just a standing commitment that the people who make this network stronger get rewarded for it.
Takes less than 5 minutes. We handle everything from there. Your profile is reviewed by our team, anonymized, and goes live usually within 1-2 business days. The right people are already browsing. The only question is whether they can find you.
Here is a fresh cross section of 27 of the hundreds of newly vetted executive profiles our team has added to the Bearhug Network this week:
BHRN-5925 🎯 Marketing — Specialty retail in an outdoor category runs on three levers that almost never move together cleanly: brand, digital customer experience, and in-store merchandising. This executive has pulled all three simultaneously at a PE-backed ski and outdoor retailer, rebuilding brand identity, digitizing a rental reservation system, and taking on the merchandising remit inside the same tenure. Backgrounds that combine content-led brand work, omnichannel DTC, and physical retail merchandising at the CMO level are genuinely rare in active-lifestyle specialty.
BHRN-5921 🏢 General Management — When regulated infrastructure networks must commercialise faster than their governance structures allow, the gap between public mandate and private return becomes the operating problem boards cannot afford to get wrong. Forty years across gas distribution, transmission, and national water services in Britain, including board-level roles on both the regulated operator side and the commercially autonomous subsidiary side of the same infrastructure challenge, is the proof of fit.
BHRN-5870 💻 Engineering — Most vision AI companies are training foundation models on synthetic data and hoping it transfers to the real world. The engineer who built Google Street View from prototype to global scale, then built Lyft's autonomous driving division before its acquisition by Toyota, is now leading R&D on a platform trained on more real-world driving miles than any simulation can replicate. Rare depth from first-principles research to billion-user deployment.
BHRN-5937 🛠️ Product — Product and brand leadership inside the world's largest fishing tackle company means managing a portfolio of category-defining names, each with its own retail positioning, consumer base, and channel tension to resolve. This operator works at the intersection of multi-brand product strategy and wholesale-to-DTC channel evolution at a Sycamore Partners-backed business with a portfolio spanning everything from entry-level rods to premium fly fishing gear. Rare fluency across the full commercial of a PE-owned consumer goods platform at scale.
BHRN-5914 📈 Sales — Building wholesale velocity for a growth-stage CPG brand means earning shelf space category story first, with no legacy account relationships and a sales function still under construction. This executive has done it across better-for-you snacks, natural pet treats, and outdoor first aid, moving each brand from limited distribution to presence across natural, conventional, mass, and specialty channels. Built for CPG boards where wholesale is the primary growth lever and the commercial function needs a CSO who has done it at exactly this stage.
BHRN-6458 🎯 Marketing — When an outdoor lifestyle brand needs its creative identity to scale as fast as its product line, someone has to build the systems that keep culture intact through hypergrowth. This director drove major organizational growth at a paddleboard brand while directing 100+ new product launches a year, after helping shape one of the outdoor industry's early premium heritage brands as its third employee. He builds the creative infrastructure that lets founder-led brands grow without losing what made them matter.
BHRN-5928 🎯 Marketing — State government communications built from scratch, then scaled across ten-plus agencies before being formalized into a senior advisory seat at Connecticut's primary environmental regulator. Founded a digital agency, ran a technology consultancy as CEO, and spent years as the contracted communications and digital backbone for departments spanning public health, education, child welfare, and crisis response. A practitioner who knows how to translate complex institutional mandates into public messaging that moves audiences, not just informs them.
BHRN-5871 👥 People & Culture — Recruiting at a Series B autotech platform posting 180% year-over-year growth means every open role is a constraint on the business, not a backlog item. This talent acquisition professional has operated inside that environment, coordinating executive hiring alongside investor-connected leadership at a company scaling from dozens of employees toward a defined profitability target.
BHRN-5876 👥 People & Culture — Services organizations that need to scale revenue without breaking client trust have a specific failure point, the handoff between sales promises and delivery reality. This executive closed that gap repeatedly, growing a services line into eight figures within a global multi-country book of business, then directing delivery revenue across a large enterprise client base and workforce. Now guiding client success through an aggressive acquisition cycle at a governance and compliance software platform.
BHRN-5910 🎯 Marketing — Action sports and outdoor brands hit a wall when the visual identity that earned subcultural credibility starts to feel like a ceiling on growth. This creative director built brand language at a major action-sports footwear company, a technical hunting gear brand, and a leading outdoor DTC retailer, each navigating that exact transition. Rare in combining creative direction, brand architecture, and customer loyalty strategy into a single engagement.
BHRN-5880 📈 Sales — Furniture retailers chasing growth across sprawling multi-state territories need someone who has done it for two decades without a flat year. This territory manager built and led a sales team across dozens of stores in six western states, posting a double-digit sales jump in 2024 and earning entry into a national revenue milestone club. Four decades of wholesale and retail leadership back every account he manages today.
BHRN-5947 🎯 Marketing — Digital transformation at enterprise scale and DTC growth inside a founder-built watersports brand occupy opposite ends of the experience spectrum, and this leader has operated at both. Five progressively senior roles at a major tools and hardware manufacturer, a marketing leadership stint at an outdoor lifestyle brand before its acquisition, and now driving innovation strategy inside a global electronics company. Bridges the gap between enterprise-scale digital programs and the consumer brand instincts that make DTC channels convert.
BHRN-5933 🎯 Marketing — Social retail is one of the few channels where awareness, conversion, and community all have to move together or none of them work. This operator grew a mission-driven outdoor brand from startup to nine figures, owned three consecutive Amazon Prime Day unit-selling records, and built a DTC channel compounding at 30% annually. Leading a full rebrand and profitability reset at a social retail accessories brand, with ownership across both marketing and operations.
BHRN-5939 ⚖️ Legal — Regulated financial institutions facing DORA and NIS2 need a security leader who has operated inside that compliance reality, not advised on it from a distance. This CISO-level executive holds the senior security seat at an international investment bank under full EU regulatory scrutiny and co-founded a peer community of senior CISOs built around AI security risk. Genuine practitioner credibility, earned inside the institution, not borrowed from a consulting deck.
BHRN-5872 🎯 Marketing — Five acquired brands unified into a single marketing platform ahead of exit, a product-led growth motion that generated a quarter of total company revenue, and an ARR doubling engineered inside a cybersecurity startup. This is the marketing executive brought in to turn scattered brands and stalled pipeline into one coherent growth story before a sale or IPO. Now steering AI strategy and channel growth for a DaaS/SaaS transportation data company navigating its next stage.
BHRN-5949 📈 Sales — Licensed IP merchandise sits at a strange intersection where entertainment rights, sourcing logistics, and brand equity all have to move together or the deal falls apart. One operator has built that capability from scratch at an INC 5000-recognized private label firm, running full-package production on properties including a major zombie franchise and a superhero title from a top comic publisher. Brands and creators that need someone to close commercial partnerships and turn IP into physical product have a ready partner here.
BHRN-5941 📈 Sales — Enterprise sales cycles at a safety tech startup targeting schools and campuses are not won with a deck and a demo. Sixteen years in global sports, a founded startup, and early commercial work at a seed-stage emergency safety company built the instincts to close institutional buyers from scratch. A builder who brings go-to-market muscle and founder-level scar tissue to organizations still establishing the category.
BHRN-5912 🎯 Marketing — Forty years of brand-building at the table where CPG giants, financial services firms, and a publicly traded outdoor recreation company make strategy decisions. Built and led marketing at a regional bank through its IPO, ran global advertising at a household-name soup brand, and spent fifteen years in the brand laboratories of one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world. Boards navigating brand repositioning, go-to-market overhaul, or consumer trust at scale have a director who has sat inside those problems at every organizational level.
BHRN-5935 🎯 Marketing — When a fast-growth menswear brand crosses into wholesale and retail after building its foundation in DTC, the marketing function has to carry both the performance engine and the brand architecture at the same time. This CMO has run that dual mandate at a premium menswear DTC brand through 30-plus percent annual growth, and built the same muscle at a major outdoor apparel subsidiary and a Southern California lifestyle headwear label. The marketer a scaling apparel brand calls when brand and channel need to grow together.
BHRN-5916 📈 Sales — Corporate sustainability commitments stall when nobody can translate them into commercial execution at the retailer level. A Director-level seat at one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world, owning the sustainability and ecommerce partnership with a top-five global retailer, built exactly that bridge. Now applying that intersection of ESG conviction and commercial rigor at a venture-backed corporate giving platform.
BHRN-5945 🎯 Marketing — Most outdoor brands have someone who owns wholesale and someone who owns DTC, and the two strategies drift apart. At a leading hydration brand, this marketer held director-level accountability for specialty sales and global ecommerce commercial strategy at the same time, then carried that fluency into a multi-brand portfolio through a complex spin-off. Outdoor brands caught between wholesale growth and direct channel investment gain a CMO who has managed that tradeoff from both sides.
BHRN-5882 🎯 Marketing — Pipeline that stalls after a funding round or acquisition is the problem this CMO has repeatedly solved, taking marketing pipeline from single digits into the tens of millions while integrating six acquired products into the funnel within two years. Marketing leadership across a data protection platform, an AI chip innovator, and a global enterprise software giant built the range to run demand generation from zero to one through hypergrowth. Channel partnerships with AWS, Dell, Microsoft, and Snowflake back the go-to-market now scaling fund data and fintech platforms past nine figures.
BHRN-5923 ⚙️ Operations — Two decades running North American field operations for a major satellite network provider, consumer, SMB, franchise, and enterprise all reporting up through the same function, is an unusual background to bring into a PE-backed archery and hunting manufacturer. That operational depth is now focused on supply chain modernization and brand integration at a multi-brand roll-up that has executed four acquisitions since 2015. Built for the complexity of stitching acquired businesses into a single operating system without losing the product identity that made each brand worth buying.
BHRN-5890 💻 Engineering — Vertically integrated manufacturers need a CTO who can hold together factory floor systems, enterprise ERP, and DTC commerce at the same time, and most leaders have only owned one layer. This one owns all three, built on SAP leadership at a major snowsports brand and then full-stack architecture responsibility at a premium domestic sock manufacturer through its most aggressive growth phase.
BHRN-5953 🎯 Marketing — Rooftop tents had a cult following and no real brand until this marketer rebuilt the identity from scratch, then guided the company through an acquisition by a global outdoor conglomerate without losing the story. That track record spans a CMO role at an overland vehicle startup, VP-level ecommerce and brand at a hunting marketplace, and founding an outdoor marketing agency from zero. Built for brands at the intersection of outdoor recreation, overland culture, and automotive aftermarket.
BHRN-5883 🎯 Marketing — B2B tech companies moving past early growth stages need marketing that converts into pipeline, not brand noise alone. This CMO drove marketing pipeline from single digits into eight figures across successive growth stages, while supporting six M&A integrations in two years and building channel partnerships with major cloud and data infrastructure providers. Fortune 500 marketing discipline paired with scale-up speed, now applied at a global fund technology firm.
BHRN-5874 👥 People & Culture — Service delivery organizations that run as cost centers rarely turn into growth engines without someone rebuilding the model from the ground up. This executive did exactly that, growing a services P&L from four million to over fifteen million across five countries and two hundred forty clients, then repeating the pattern leading program offices that converted field innovations into enterprise-wide products for a large call center operation. What he brings now is the ability to turn client services into a revenue line, not a support function.
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