Market Defense Announces Leadership Changes

Changes to leadership include the promotion of Brandon Pemberton to president and Vanessa Kuykendall to COO.
Changes to leadership include the promotion of Brandon Pemberton to president and Vanessa Kuykendall to COO.

Market Defense has announced changes to its executive team and client delivery teams, promoting Vanessa Kuykendall from vice president of business development to COO and Brandon Pemberton from SVP, client engagement, to brand president. 

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Kuykendall has worked in the beauty industry for 27 years in sales, training and merchandising leadership roles at The Body Shop, MAC Cosmetics, Estee Lauder and Tiffany & Co.  Prior to co-founding Market Defense in 2017, she led the Beauty.com business for Walgreens.

Pemberton has worked with consumer and retail brands for 25 years in executive leadership roles and operating positions in product development, sales, merchandising and operations. 

Prior to joining Market Defense in early 2021, Pemberton was a strategy principal at Point B where he focused on organizational design and development for global consumer data and analytics organizations.

Market Defense also announced Michael Sampson as an adviser. Sampson has been in beauty and personal care for nearly 20 years. In his early career at L’Oréal, he held several positions, eventually running the prestige professional brands as general manager of Kerastase and Shu Uemura. He also served as president of Hatch Beauty and global CEO of Kate Somerville.

Alongside these leadership changes, Market Defense has invested in its delivery teams, including a doubling of brand management, logistics and marketing teams. This investment includes the integration of its sister company, Growth Atlas, an Amazon incubator for high-potential new brands.

Chad Annis, founder and CEO, said, "I am so proud of the work that our clients and our teams are doing to support tremendous growth on Amazon.  The pace of change on Amazon is more rapid than I've ever seen, and the requirements to win are increasingly complex.  Brandon and Vanessa bring the leadership we require to stay ahead of these changes and continue to deliver outstanding results for our clients."

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