The Bearhug Network: 16 Newly Vetted Leaders Went Live This Week (Out of 77+ Who Joined You). This Is The Company Your Profile Keeps. See Who You're Standing Next To and Join Them Today.
Some executives wait for the market to notice them. This week's slate got there first.
This week's slate tilts heavily toward commercial leadership, with sales and commercial roles outpacing every other function by a wide margin. That's not surprising given how many consumer brands and enterprise platforms are treating go-to-market talent as the scarce resource right now, but what stands out is the depth behind it, VPs who have scaled teams from zero and directors who have rebuilt distributor and wholesale infrastructure from the ground up. General management, operations and supply chain, and product and design each hold a steady presence behind that lead, proof that the market is still hungry for operators who can run complex systems end to end, not just close deals.
Among this week's standouts, one commercial director built global wholesale reach for a merino wool action sports brand, turning athlete credibility into distribution across North America's specialty outdoor and bike channels. Another led the partnership strategy behind more than 70% of new revenue at a B2B fleet payments platform, then built out embedded banking, prepaid card, and payroll lines from the ground up. A third spent over a decade rising from apparel director to owning the full product lifecycle across hardgoods, softgoods, and accessories at MLB's top bat brand, ahead of a nine-figure acquisition.
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 16 of the 77+ newly vetted executive profiles our team has added to the Bearhug Network this week:
BHRN-1834 📈 Sales — Scaling a commercial sales org from scratch inside early-stage B2B SaaS is a different discipline than managing one that already exists, and most VP-level hires haven't actually done both. This leader has built and developed high-performing commercial teams across cloud security, IT infrastructure, big data platforms, and SaaS, progressing from individual contributor to regional VP across a decade of technical software markets. Hire this person when the company needs someone who can coach a team, run pipeline process, and close enterprise deals in an IT or DevOps security market simultaneously.
BHRN-1155 🏢 General Management — Running design, development, sourcing, and planning as one integrated function is rare; doing it across technical outdoor, sustainable basics, and western lifestyle is rarer still. This product leader built that exact cross-functional capability at a PE-backed outdoor brand with 1,200-plus wholesale partners, after developing a sustainability-grounded product lens at a certified organic apparel company. For brands where design conviction and supply chain reality have to move together, this is the person who holds both.
BHRN-2129 ⚙️ Operations — Sourcing consumer electronics and outdoor gear from an Asia manufacturing network takes product development instinct and operational rigor that most lifestyle brands spend years trying to build. At a PE-owned lifestyle audio brand, that means holding China and Vietnam factory relationships to margin targets while the product roadmap shifts under tariff pressure. Brought to bear across a cross-category career connecting outdoor hardgoods to consumer electronics, with the cost-of-goods fluency a COO needs when sourcing strategy has to scale without losing speed.
BHRN-1436 📈 Sales — Athlete-turned-commercial-director who built global wholesale reach for a merino wool action sports brand out of New Zealand, growing specialty outdoor and bike channel relationships across North America and beyond. The kind of credibility that comes from being a brand ambassador for Smith Optics, Saga Outerwear, and Line Skis before leading the sales floor means retail buyers take the call and stay on the line. Wired for brands entering or scaling through specialty channels where authentic sport culture is the price of admission.
BHRN-2830 📈 Sales — Specification-driven B2B sales inside a century-old institutional sports equipment manufacturer, selling into schools, parks, and arenas through distributor networks and architectural CSI specs rather than retail shelves. One channel grew 63% under this director's oversight, built through distributor training programs, trade show presence, and spec-writing relationships with architects and facilities planners. Brings a full-stack view of institutional sporting goods commerce, from estimating and project management through international sales and dealer services, to any manufacturer navigating complex B2B channel builds.
BHRN-1811 🏢 General Management — Trucking and fleet payments is a category that looks simple from the outside and breaks most fintech products from the inside. At a B2B payments platform built for fleets, this operator led the partnership strategy and product that accounted for more than 70% of new revenue across two consecutive years, while separately building out embedded banking, prepaid card, payroll, and subscription lines from concept to scaled business. Rare product and general management depth across zero-to-one builds and channel-driven growth inside a single fintech platform.
BHRN-2481 🛠️ Product — Bat engineering, glove construction, helmet design, and performance apparel managed as a single integrated product operation, that is the complexity this operator runs at the #1 bat brand in MLB. Built from within over a decade-plus of ascending roles, from directing apparel to owning the full product lifecycle across hardgoods, softgoods, and accessories at a company that grew nearly 30% compounded before a nine-figure acquisition. Boards and PE operators navigating multi-category sporting goods complexity at the $100M-to-$500M stage will find someone who has lived every layer of that product stack.
BHRN-6649 🛠️ Product — Vertical software for construction and restoration professionals often gets built by engineers who never have to stand in front of the industry and explain why it matters. This operator spent a decade rising from engineering roles to Senior Vice President of Product at a residential construction management platform, becoming the public face for its biggest launches and rebrand. Now leading product for an AI-powered claims and documentation platform, turning on-site captures into instant floor plans and estimates for restoration teams.
BHRN-2838 🎯 Marketing — Rebuilding the wholesale relationship after a DTC-first strategy that cost a global footwear brand its channel trust takes someone who ran both sides. This director spent years as brand-side director inside the Foot Locker ecosystem before moving into enterprise transformation at the same company, which means the shift from channel tension to channel strategy is not theoretical. Rare single-brand depth spanning key-account commercial leadership, community brand activation, and corporate transformation planning inside one of the world's most recognizable consumer brands.
BHRN-3666 ⚙️ Operations — Marine-to-AWS-to-sporting-goods is not a résumé quirk, it is a through-line in building program management functions that hold together under operational stress. This operator stood up global change management infrastructure at one of the most complex organizations on earth, then brought that discipline to the world's leading ice hockey equipment brand to coordinate enterprise programs across a multi-geography supply chain. The program management leader who can absorb chaos at scale, impose structure without slowing execution, and earn trust from both the locker room and the boardroom.
BHRN-6701 🏢 General Management — Performance fabric brands rebuilding product strategy after a bankruptcy restructuring need someone who has sat on every side of the material chain, supplier, brand, and retailer. This executive spent a decade running product management at a major performance fabric supplier before being elevated to Executive Vice President, Product at a fiber and fabric company emerging from Chapter 11 with new ownership. That vantage point across fiber innovation, outdoor product lines, and retail buying floors is what a board needs when product direction must reset fast.
BHRN-6692 📈 Sales — Golf performance technology brands scaling past retail fitting rooms need someone who can turn product credibility into partnerships with tours, colleges, and simulator networks without diluting the brand. This VP built that arc firsthand, rising from fitting and sales leadership at a premium golf retail network into business development at a precision sports technology platform, landing partnerships with a golf coaching franchise and a simulator operations company. Now trusted to lead PGA Tour relationships, collegiate programs, and international sales growth, converting channel access into lasting brand equity.
BHRN-1628 📈 Sales — Non-alcoholic beer is not a mature category with predictable shelf turns and stable distributor relationships, and scaling a challenger brand into grocery, club, and natural channel leadership across an entire region requires a different kind of commercial operator. This director built the Eastern US wholesale business for the brand that defined the non-alcoholic craft segment, growing retail presence across Whole Foods, Kroger, and Costco while the brand posted 50%+ dollar sales growth. Built for high-growth beverage brands navigating the jump from challenger to category leader in complex wholesale channels.
BHRN-3924 ⚙️ Operations — When a fast-scaling activewear brand is expanding stores, launching new categories, and entering wholesale at the same time, the sourcing infrastructure has to be built ahead of the growth curve, not behind it. This operator has done exactly that, carrying VP-level sourcing leadership across six major apparel institutions including a global denim platform and a surf-lifestyle conglomerate before architecting product operations at a premium activewear brand navigating that inflection. Built for brands where supply chain has to scale before leadership realizes it needs to.
BHRN-1906 📈 Sales — Technology hardware and software companies lose channel leverage when the route to market outgrows the partner infrastructure that built it. Thirty-plus years rebuilding that infrastructure, from recapturing a major national print retailer as a first-year OEM account to expanding a global distribution footprint across 22 countries in six months. Bilingual in German, with deep OEM partner marketing and C-level direct sales across document workflow and financial data software.
BHRN-6582 🛠️ Product — Digital twin technology built on both hardware and SaaS creates a specific integration problem when a public real estate data and marketplace company acquires the platform outright. This product leader navigated that exact transition, promoted from senior director to VP and now overseeing Matterport's full hardware and software portfolio through its acquisition by CoStar Group. Directors across hardware and platform now report into a role built for running product strategy at the seam between spatial capture devices and the SaaS layer that turns captures into revenue.
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