Lindsay Pedersen, MBA 01

Brand strategist Lindsay Clarke Pedersen boasts an impressive client list that includes Duolingo, Accolade Healthcare, and IMDb. But what really sets her apart is a focus on her first love—psychology. 

“Marketing is psychology put inside the context of a company and inside the context of a market,” Pedersen says. 

It’s a connection she made early at Haas. During orientation, when she first heard about brand management as a career path, Pedersen recalls thinking, “You can have a job whose whole point is to understand what drives behavior and manage a business according to understanding human nature?” she says. “That was kind of a lightning bolt.”

After graduation, Pedersen worked as a brand manager in consumer packaged goods with Clorox for nearly six years before she decided to take a chance on entrepreneurship. In 2007, she founded Ironclad Brand Strategy to help companies discover their competitive advantages. 

In 2019, she published Forging an Ironclad Brand (Lioncrest Publishing). Unlike marketing books written for creatives, Pedersen’s book—and entire business—views branding as an overarching company strategy. “If you run a P&L, you’re going to benefit from having a really crystal-clear brand as the North Star of your business,” she says.

While creative elements like the look and feel of a brand are important, Pedersen encourages clients to ask a fundamental question: “Where’s your company uniquely capable of doing something that’s important to this audience that nobody else can do?” she says. “That’s really what brand is, and everything else can then follow that.”

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