Lia began her career at Martha Stewart routing packaging for approval and overseeing production for photo shoots. She moved up the ranks rapidly and found herself leading a cross-functional team that launched the following Martha Stewart Everyday product lines for Kmart: Baby, Paint and Soft Home (including bedding, bath and window). Lia was responsible for everything from merchandise planning to product development to photography to packaging & in-store point of sale. She conceived of and launched Martha’s “bed in a bag” program, elevating it to a name she personally conceived: “The Complete Bed”.  

When Lia pitched Food Network the idea of launching a line of wine, she was met with resistance. Company leadership was conservative. At the time, the family-friendly network was not even accepting liquor ads. To Lia, wine and food are meant to go together. She felt Food Network could change the conversation and perception in America that alcohol is meant only for celebrations or nights out. Plus, if Food Network integrated wine into programming, it would open up new advertising revenue opportunities. A couple of years later, entwine was born. Entwine: the union of two things—Food & Wine; Food Network’s culinary team & Wente Vineyards winemaking team; entertainment & wine. The brand was a smash-hit winning awards and topping the sales charts. The initiative also brought in millions of dollars in advertising revenue from the wine industry and from CPG companies interested in partnering with entwine to promote food and wine pairings.

Getty Images boasts the world’s largest archive of photographs—over 200 million images spanning the birth of photography to today. The company, known for its stock photography, wanted to capture a share of the $4.2B online art market. Lia was brought onboard to launch a fine art product offering for consumers both online (Photos.com) and brick & mortar (Getty Images Gallery). Under her leadership, Photos.com grew +100% YOY and Getty Images Gallery was transformed into a well-respected fine art photography gallery.

Lia’s engagement at S’well was to ensure that their first foray into the food category would be a highly successful one. Lia began her work by evaluating the products currently in development. She recommended some very important changes—from adding measurements on prep bowls to testing the bowls to see if they could be dishwasher safe (they were!). The changes had a big impact on consumer response to the products. Lia shepherded a cross-functional team handling everything from developing packaging & in-store POP concepts, to defining product positioning (Prep, Nest, Go!, Eat), to executing an in home user test, to preparing the customer service team, and more. The product launched to massive accolades in the press and impressive sales results!

At Uncommon Goods, I let the product development team responsible for developing new, never-before-seen products. The brainstorming always started with a combination of understanding what pain points we could solve for customers when it came go gift giving. Emotional resonance, nostalgia, and customization played important roles in our thinking. Development had to keep responsible sourcing, price points, and quality top of mind and customization had to be feasible within the constraints of an aging digital infrastructure. Some of the best-selling products introduced during my tenure include the personalized Book Nook, ceramic MLB ice cream helmet bowls, The Wall Street Journal birthday book and more.

Limited Brands had a problem: the merchandise planning and allocation (MP&A) process for their various brands was so different that they were not capitalizing on economies of scale. If Victoria’s Secret was making a new bra, and Victoria’s Secret Catalog was making a similar bra, they were buying fabric from different vendors and manufacturing at different times. Limited Brands brought in Capgemini to evaluate the current process and develop a consistent future state process. Capgemini awarded Lia a leadership role on the MP&A team. Lia interviewed senior-level executives to document the current state and developed a streamlined future state process for all brands to follow. Lia’s role included securing buy-in from C-suite executives and selecting JDA software (after an extensive RFP process) to support the new process.

Orlebar Brown, makers of luxury swimsuits, wanted to bring the Slim Aarons aesthetic to their line of men’s swim trunks. The Getty Images licensing team wasn’t familiar with this type of a negotiation and turned to Lia to negotiate terms. What resulted was groundbreaking for Getty Images: a lucrative, exclusive partnership that—for the first-time—required the partner to provide attribution to Slim Aarons and Getty Images both on-product and in all marketing and promotion. In addition to sales success, the partnership piqued the attention of many media outlets including The New York Times and Town & Country.

When she joined Getty Images, Lia inherited oversight of Getty Images Gallery in London. For nearly 20 years the space had been run as a marketing space to support the local Getty sales team. Lia saw an opportunity, given the incredible assets at Getty Images, to change the positioning of the Gallery and gain respect in fine art circles. She brought in a well-respected curator and staged exhibitions including Female Gaze, Global Colors and Beat Positive. The Gallery was quickly named one of the “must see” galleries in London by Time Out and The Guardian and became a respected destination for fine art photography collectors.

Lia was a key player in the launch of Susan Cain’s company, Quiet Revolution. Susan, an advocate for introverts, wanted to support the community of introverts brought together by her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, and her TED talk to help build awareness for the power of introverts and change the way families, schools and corporations engage with them. Lia helped launch the brand and several touchpoints for consumers including a media partnership with Huffington Post, a podcast with Panoply (debuting at #12 on iTunes) and an online class for parents of introverted children.  

As Martha Stewart’s Brand Manager, it was Lia’s responsibility to monetize Martha’s brand and television assets. In addition to launching Martha’s first-ever DVD line with Warner Home Video, she developed a line of CDs (yes, it was a long time ago) in partnership with Sony Music. From determining marketable collections (we landed on Wedding and Holiday for the music launch), to overseeing packaging, marketing and A&R, it was an unforgettable experience.  The best moment may have been when Martha and Lia shared root beer floats while listening to Christmas Music with the Sony A&R team.

Food Network’s direct to retail line with Kohl’s consisted of over 1000 SKUs including a line with Food Network chef, Bobby Flay. Lia led the product development, packaging, in-store marketing and merchandising of the program working across Kohl’s, Food Network Culinary and Food Network’s licensing agency.

Uncommon Goods is a trusted retailer offering remarkable designs by independent makers, while favoring greatness over growth by operating in ways that have a positive impact on both people and the planet. The CEO, had identified an opportunity to transform the business from offering products-only to one that offered products and unique experiences. Lia was brought into the company in January 2021 and by February 2021, a pilot program offering experiences for Valentine’s Day was live. The pilot proved very successful and Lia is currently focused on building out Experiences into a robust business for Uncommon Goods.

There are times when you learn just as much from doing something as you do from not doing something. Food Network Food is one of those times… For a few years, Lia led the exploration of a branded product line for Food Network with large CPG companies, meal-kit delivery services and grocery stores. Ultimately, the network decided not to move forward with this initiative, but the insights, evaluations and learnings along the way were invaluable.

Lia identified an emerging trend and conceived and founded NYC’s first-ever street art walking tour company, Saddleshoe Tours. Focused on helping people discover the world of street art and appreciate and pay more attention to their everyday surroundings, Lia’s tours were hand-picked as one of the top three art tours in NYC by CBS and were featured in Time Out New York. Her tours, rated 5 out of 5 on Trip Advisor, paved the way for a now-thriving street art tour industry in NYC.

Food Network wanted to transform their online store, which focused on talent DVDs and branded totes/t-shirts, to an online destination for an extensive collection of cooking gear. In less than a year, Lia wound down the existing online store, launched a new website (on a new platform) and led a team re-organization. The store became not just a destination for houseware products, but a springboard for talent product introductions, including Rachael Ray’s multi-million dollar cutlery line.

Getty Images had been running a proof-of-concept website, Photos.com, selling wall art to consumers. The business proved viable and Lia was brought onboard to wind-down the existing website, secure new fulfillment partners and establish a top-performing cross functional team. Prior to the planned launch of the new site, Getty Images existing fulfillment partner went bankrupt and the launch was moved up by 6 weeks. Under her leadership, the team transformed Photos.com into not just a consumer site, but into a B2B destination providing products for hotels, restaurants, small businesses and more.  Results were impressive with conversion +40% YOY, revenue +100% YOY and an average order value nearly 3x the industry leader.

Food Network was one of the top-selling private label brands at Kohl’s. However, over time, the relationship between Food Network, Kohl’s and the licensing agency had become strained and productivity was impacted. Leadership brought Lia in to serve as a change agent in the evaluation of the existing product development, culinary evaluation and packaging review processes between the parties. She introduced improvements that both strengthened relationships between the parties and expedited the product development lifecycle. As a part of these changes, Lia oversaw the conceptualization and execution of new packaging design for 1000+ SKUS across dozens of product categories securing the buy-in of c-suite execs at both Food Network and Kohl’s. Packaging moved from concept to store shelves in under 14 months. 

J.Crew discovered artist Michael De Feo when he subverted one of their ads, painting his signature flowers over it and re-installing it in a NYC bus stop kiosk. The brand wanted to bring his signature florals to their product and marketing. De Feo was interested, but only if he could have complete creative control. Lia negotiated the terms of the partnership and helped secure a deal resulting in the creation of a line of shirts, paintings in the windows of all J.Crew stores worldwide and in-store signage and digital promotion for the collaboration. The partnership was a win-win. De Feo was given complete creative control and significant exposure, J.Crew windows received a lot of attention and the product sold-out quickly.