Elena Crespo is a marketing and business development executive with a unique blend of Fortune 100, entrepreneurial and nonprofit management/board experience across a range of industries. Her ability to navigate complex organizational environments, cultivate relationships, manage large cross-functional teams, engage volunteers, and secure the support of diverse constituencies has enabled her to build organizations, drive major initiatives and deliver superior business results.
Elena is known for her ability to assess business and market conditions and create/implement effective initiatives to address overlooked opportunities, obsolete strategies, and inefficient processes. Her knowledge of diverse industries, marketing disciplines, customer strategies and sales models enable her to bring fresh perspective to every business challenge, and her ability to blend strategic thinking, analytics, and superb execution enable her to deliver superior results.
Currently, Elena serves as an Advisory Board Member and as Principal – Marketing, Business Development & Customer Engagement for Verisave, a growth stage cost reduction consultancy. Other companies Elena has worked for include Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Unilever, Citi, and Dun & Bradstreet. She also co-founded a media company and has worked for and mentored startups. Elena has developed, launched, marketed, and managed B2B and B2C products and services in industries including SaaS/Data & Analytics, Financial Services, Media & Entertainment, Consumer Goods, and Health & Wellness. Senior marketing and product management roles she has held include CMO and SVP of Market and Product Development.
Elena’s business accomplishments include creating the marketing strategy that enabled an independently produced PBS lifestyle series to achieve distribution to 95% of the US in under four months and attract over twenty million viewers. She also led strategic partnerships and product innovation for a newly launched consumer lending product, enabling it to grow to $1Billion in assets in under 18 months. Her product management accomplishments include creating customer lifecycle and up-sell strategies that enabled her to exceed revenue targets for a $450Million product portfolio of digital data/analytics products, and she has served as a key member of management teams with P&L responsibility for businesses with revenue of $1billion. Elena also was head of client management for a startup “big data” customer analytics business.
Elena has served as a Board Member of the Harvard University Alumni Association. Initially elected to the board by Harvard’s 300,000+ alumni, at the end of her term, she was reappointed and asked to chair the University Wide Alumni Outreach Committee which worked to drive alumni engagement initiatives across Harvard’s 12 graduate and professional schools. In this role Elena conceived and led a groundbreaking study of alumni engagement best practices. Subsequently, she was appointed to the HAA Nominating Committee which is responsible for selecting candidates for the Harvard University Board of Overseers.
Elena’s nonprofit experience includes serving as President and Board Member for the Harvard Business School Club of NY, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit which serves 10,000+ alumni. As President, she launched the club on a transformative path by enhancing programming, installing new technology and revamping staffing. Under her leadership the club also set new fundraising records.
Elena has AB magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is fluent in Spanish.