Megan Thomas | Fractional Chief Marketing Officer

Megan is a skilled executive marketing leader with 30+ years of marketing experience working with an eclectic array of organizations from startups to mid-market to Fortune 200 companies. A structured thinker, Megan is particularly skilled at working with technical executives. She believes that all marketing strategy is business strategy and that marketing must align with business outcomes.

Megan works as a fractional CMO with mid-sized companies and growth startups in the consumer products, technology, and FoodTech sectors.

She leverages her decades of marketing experience across two dozen B2C and B2B categories to partner with CEOs and CXOs. She has managed marketing portfolios of up to $600 million in annual revenue and driven 14x revenue growth in one role.

Key strengths include helping CEOs and CXOs to more clearly define a differentiated market positioning, crafting efficient and effective marketing strategies and plans, developing margin accretive innovation pipelines, and building high-performing teams backed by the right marketing tech stack. She has worked in both turnaround situations and with emerging brands -- developing innovation pipelines and overseeing successful market entry in both scenarios. She has led strategy across all major channels in the marketing mix during her career.

A national speaker and award-winning host of the FoodTech Stories podcast, Megan holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a BA from Northwestern University.

Executive Positions

CEO, Ladder 17
marketing consulting firm
VP, Marketing and Communications, Pairwise, a pioneering AgTech startup Pairwise. Oversaw all corporate messaging, marketing strategy, and product marketing strategy for the first CRISPR - developed food product in North America.
Group VP, MARS Advertising, now MARS United Commerce. Led the consumer healthcare portfolio, consisting of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Products (now Haleon) and Abbott Nutrition.
Founder & CEO, The Sustainable Agency
Executive Director, Six Rivers Regional Land Conservancy

Speaking

SynBioBeta, San Jose (2026)
Global Forum for Alternative Protein and Plant-Based Foods, Emcee, Durham (2025)
MISTA FoodTech Growth Hack, San Francisco (2025)
Consumer Electronics Show, FoodTech Track, Las Vegas (2025)
IFT First, Chicago (2023)
ASTA Vegetable & Flower Seed Conference, Orlando (2023)