Greater Houston
Tanu Grewal is a VP of Marketing and AI-forward brand transformation executive with 20 years' experience building brands across Whirlpool, Kohler, and AlEn USA. She specializes in and speaks about multicultural market strategy, AI-driven consumer intelligence, challenger brand growth, and cross-cultural leadership across the US, Mexico, India, and Europe. Growing up in India, girls like me weren't expected to lead. I decided early I would not be waiting for permission. I moved to the US. Waited 11 years for citizenship, tied to an employer, watching colleagues move freely while I built deep instead of wide. I have spent a decade as the senior leader inside a major Mexican company building its entire US operation, brand, innovation, ecommerce, and growth strategy, without speaking Spanish. I ran teams in Italy without speaking Italian. For 20 years I walked into rooms where I was the only one who had come the way I had come, and turned that into the reason I was exactly who the room needed. At Whirlpool, I brought the flagship brand back to #1 in consumer preference. At Kohler, I digitized a luxury interiors business for a new generation of affluent consumers. At AlEn USA, I built the US business from the ground up, delivering 5X topline growth, building eCommerce from scratch, and establishing the company as the authority on the multicultural growth consumer in the cleaning category. I'm also a practitioner of AI-driven marketing. I've used AI to surface consumer insight patterns that years of traditional research missed, the emotional undercurrents that live in the data but rarely make it into the brief. My view: AI is exceptional at processing what consumers do. Cultural intelligence tells you why it matters. The leaders who combine both are the ones who will build the next generation of category-defining brands. I serve on the boards of TiE Houston and GFI Academy, and speak regularly on brand transformation, multicultural leadership, AI in marketing, and The Outsider Advantage, the framework I developed for leaders who have built their careers from the outside in. I thrive where constraints exist and I'm energized by rooms that weren't built for me, because those are the rooms that change the most. STRENGTHS:► Brand Strategy and Positioning► Marketing Structures and Capabilities for an omnichannel world► P&L Management► Innovation & New Product Development► Full Funnel Brand Marketing► Performance Marketing: Digital, Social, Experiential► Omni-channel Experience Creation► High performing Teams► Ecommerce► Sustainability
Over eleven years at AlEn USA, I have served as the architect of the company's U.S. consumer growth engine, building the brands, the team, and the enterprise capabilities that took a company known in 25 countries, but virtually unknown to the American consumer, to a nationally distributed, fast-growing CPG portfolio with a $1B enterprise growth ambition. That growth required building infrastructure that didn't exist: a consumer-led brand architecture, a proprietary multicultural insights platform, an innovation ecosystem rebuilt from stage-gate to agile, an omnichannel and e-commerce center of excellence, and now AI-enabled capabilities that position the U.S. as a model for the broader global organization. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒆𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒂𝒄𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆: 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒅, 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒎, 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒇𝒓𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒉 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕. 𝐕𝐏 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌&𝐀 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐮𝐠 2023 - 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭 ✔Integrating Lemi Shine into the AlEn ecosystem, aligning brand positioning, and omnichannel commercialization to protect founder equity while unlocking scale. ✔Expanding the portfolio into the largest U.S. home care category with a product built from the ground up for the multicultural consumer, bringing cultural relevance to a historically underserved segment. ✔Leading AlEn USA's role in the company's digital transformation, building AI-enabled capabilities across insights, content, and performance marketing, positioning the U.S. as a model for the global organization. Core Strengths: 📈 Growth Strategy | 🌎 Multicultural & Consumer Insights | 💡 Innovation & Brand Building | 🛒 Omnichannel & E-Commerce | 📊 Digital Marketing & Analytics | 👥 Team Leadership & Capability Building I 📈 Smart P&L Management
𝐀𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 ✔ Built AlEn's e-commerce business from concept to a scaled revenue channel, acting as a general manager across product portfolio strategy, team and agency structure, forecasting, and fulfillment. ✔ Expanded the digital commerce footprint beyond Amazon 1P to include Instacart and retailer.com partnerships, establishing an omnichannel center of excellence that continues to evolve with the media and retail landscape. ✔ Unified marketing, innovation, insights, and e-commerce into a single integrated commercial engine, marking AlEn USA's evolution from a brand-led to a fully integrated growth business.
𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐕𝐏 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐠𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 & 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬. ✔ Built a data-driven insights and communications platform that positioned ALEN as the go-to expert on key growth audiences: Hispanic, Value, and Scent-focused consumers—driving credibility with U.S. retailers. ✔ Expanded marketing expertise beyond performance marketing to serve new retailer media ecosystems as distribution expanded. Started investing in brand marketing to complement the strong performance marketing, updating activations and investments as the media landscape evolved. The demand generation model now included a 360 digital approach: SEO, SEM, programmatic, DSP, social media, influencer marketing, PR, and experiential activations. ✔ Worked with McKinsey & Co. to create an agile innovation structure, making ALEN one of the first CPG companies in Mexico and among the first in the U.S. to adopt this approach. ✔ Managed an aggressive demand surge during Covid, ensuring product availability and strategic marketing investments during the pandemic. Result: AlEn USA established itself as a must-have in retailers’ portfolios, scaling brand visibility and impact.
TiE is an organization with a mission to foster entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking, education, funding and incubation. Leveraging my experience of being a intrapreneur in Fortune 100 and Start-Ups, my goal with TiE is to help budding entrepreneurs build and scale their companies. Tie Houston also has the audacious goal of working with similar organizations in Houston to build an innovation ecosystem in Houston rivaling those of Silicon Valley and Boston. I am a firm believer in the potential of Houston and this is my way of giving back to the community and the city of Houston.
GFI Academy’s is the fastest growing soccer academy in Houston with a mission to transform lives through soccer and beyond. It’s not just about training players—it’s about developing intelligent, adaptable, and socially responsible individuals who can lead in sports, life, and their communities. With soccer’s rapid growth in the U.S. and the upcoming FIFA World Cup, the sport is poised for explosive expansion, making this an exciting time to drive meaningful impact. Using sports as a vehicle for creating the leaders of tomorrow, is a mission I care deeply about.
Selected as part of the US CMO Fellowship Program cohort for The Marketing Academy, a non-profit organization which develops leadership capabilities in talented senior marketing and growth leaders. This tailored program consists of immersive masterclasses covering all elements of Board stewardship including strategy, corporate finance, organizational health, leading transformational change, operational effectiveness and stakeholder influence.
Brought on to lead global brand development and set up business for profitable growth and valuation, I managed a global 10-person team firmly position Baker - the cornerstone of Kohler's Interiors Group - as the #1 designer-preferred luxury furnishings brand. In this role, I set the foundation for comprehensive brand architecture overhaul that to transformed marketing executions Highlights: ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾ ➥ Developed 3-Year innovation pipeline, ensuring product mix was modernized to expand reach to younger, affluent consumers, opening up the brand's first collaborations with influencers. ➥ Created and executed a transformational global campaign with innovative digital content and turnkey marketing collateral, setting highest order history record for the designer. ➥ Launched new collection with internationally renowned French designer Jacques Garcia aimed at acquiring high net worth customers.