Alethea O'Dell

Alethea wishes she were Dolly Parton, Molly Ivins or Beyonce. Instead she is the Chief Marketing Officer for Northland Controls. After college at the University of MA, Amherst, she managed a shelter for battered women. Hoping to make the world a better place and inspired to tell the stories of the women and children she met, she packed up her car and her cat and headed to Bloomington, IN to earn a Master’s in Journalism. However, her studies only inspired a deep desire to write for the Weekly World News, a now defunct icon of journalistic integrity that frequently featured aliens adopted by first ladies. Between rows of corn and dismayed by the evolution of journalism, she heard the West Coast calling her. She went to her last exam with her car packed and pointed West.

She landed in Oakland and found herself temping for a high-tech company that needed a marketing communications person. It is there that she began to wage a war on predictable prose and bland marketing initiatives. From there, it was a glamorous ascent to professional services marketing, as the Director of Marketing and Business Development for the world’s largest earthquake engineering firm. While there, she helped the company grow revenue strategically by 150% and found a tribe of women, now known as the Ginas, who celebrate, support, and inspire each other through professional and personal challenges.

Prior to Northland Controls, she was the Creative Director and Brand Strategist for Brazen Brands where she helped clients like Skanska, HOK, and Skyline Construction unwrap their differentiators, create engaging client and employee experiences, and grow business through strategic marketing initiatives. Her 20-year career is marked by more than 30 marketing communication awards and a solid sense of humor. She is the 2016 Lifetime Achievement award recipient from the Society of Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) San Francisco Chapter, the 2012 SMPS national chapter president of the year award recipient, and was named an SMPS Fellow in 2018 – a distinction for those who represent the highest level of experience (endurance) and leadership in professional services marketing.