Complex growth and marketing priorities need someone who can see the whole picture and move the work forward.
I’m Emily Hext, a growth and marketing executive with more than 20 years of leadership across health plans, pharmacy, healthtech, and B2B. Companies bring me in as a fractional executive or to lead an important initiative, and I stay with the work until it moves.
I pair that experience with AI-enabled research and analysis, so the decisions in front of us get more information and more perspectives behind them.
When companies bring me in
Most of my work starts with a situation, not a service request.
- The strategy is clear. Execution isn’t.Everyone agrees on where the company is going, but functions are moving at different speeds, ownership is unclear, and the plan hasn’t turned into work people can actually do.
- Something important is launching.A new product, service, market, or business unit needs someone to connect the customer strategy, the business decisions, the communications, and the people who have to make it real.
- Growth isn’t working the way it should.Acquisition, engagement, retention, adoption, or channel performance has stalled and needs a fresh look grounded in data, customer insight, and how the business really runs.
- The team needs experienced leadership now.There’s a leadership gap, a transition, a critical initiative, or simply more senior work than the current executive team can absorb.
- The problem doesn’t belong to one function.It sits somewhere between marketing, product, operations, analytics, finance, sales, and customer experience, and someone has to connect them.
I’ve worked through versions of each of these from the inside, as the executive accountable for the result.
What I bring
Deep marketing expertise, put to work on business problems.
Marketing is where I built my career, but the work I’m most useful for rarely stays inside marketing. Four kinds of experience show up together in nearly every engagement, and the problems that stall usually sit where they meet.
Growth & business strategy
Acquisition, engagement, and retention. Go-to-market, channel strategy, and commercialization for new products and new businesses. Pharmacy growth and member behavior. Finding the opportunities worth pursuing and deciding which come first.
Marketing & customer strategy
Brand and positioning, segmentation, customer and member experience, integrated B2B and B2C marketing, communications, content, and creative strategy, with research underneath all of it.
Leadership & organizational execution
I’ve built and led marketing teams and the leaders inside them, run cross-functional initiatives, and led change through new operating models and integrations. I build around what each person does best, and I help organizations turn strategy into work their teams can carry out.
Data, economics & performance
I’ve managed marketing budgets of $25MM to $40MM and moved money toward the work that changes results. I build the measurement to match: dashboards, attribution, lifetime value, experimentation, and ROI that tie marketing activity to business outcomes.
Ways to work together
Three ways to bring me in.
Each one is a different way of engaging the same person. You work with me directly. When the work calls for additional specialists, I bring them in and stay accountable for the result.
PE operating partners and advisors can also bring me directly into a portfolio company with a defined growth, marketing, or organizational challenge.
Fractional executive leadership
For organizations that need experienced growth or marketing leadership without hiring a permanent executive right away. I become part of your leadership team, not an advisor on the outside of it.
Often includes: fractional CMO or growth leadership, interim marketing leadership, leading and developing the team, planning and budget priorities, the marketing organization and operating model, measurement and performance, and leading key initiatives from strategy through implementation.
Strategic initiative leadership
For an important initiative that needs an experienced leader for a defined period. I set the direction, bring the right people together, oversee implementation, and solve problems as they come up. The work doesn’t end at a recommendation.
Often includes: business or brand integration, a new product or business-unit launch, go-to-market, marketing, or communications strategy, customer and member engagement, positioning and messaging, organizational change, executive and stakeholder communications, and moving an existing strategy into implementation.
Executive advisory & healthcare expertise
For leaders who need senior input without an embedded role: strategic recommendations, program design, executive problem-solving, research interpretation, workshops, or an experienced subject matter expert inside a broader initiative.
Healthcare depth: Medicare, Medicaid, and individual health insurance; Medicare Stars, CAHPS, and quality; pharmacy and specialty pharmacy; medication adherence; prescriber engagement; member acquisition, engagement, and retention; healthcare communications and education; and healthtech.
Selected experience
Results from the organizations I’ve led.
Most of these come from my corporate leadership roles, where I owned the team, the budget, and the result.
Medicare acquisition at Priority Health, after we redesigned acquisition marketing around data and the highest-impact activities.
Priority Health · Director, Acquisition MarketingIn pharmacy script conversions at Elevance Health, through data-driven optimization and cross-functional alignment.
Elevance Health · Senior Director, MarketingIdentified at Humana over two years, mostly in how member communications were produced and mailed. I did it again at Elevance and moved the savings into medication adherence campaigns.
Humana · Elevance HealthAt Chevron, I led a channel business development program for a coolant product line, built on co-op marketing and a council of distributors. The line grew 30% a year.
Chevron · Strategic Channel ManagerRecent consulting work
Practitioner curriculum strategy
I partnered with an instructional design firm to advise a national healthcare organization on how it prepares the practitioners in its field. I assessed its training against how the industry works today and where it’s heading, set a direction for the next generation of its curriculum, and presented it to executive leadership. In a second engagement, I’m defining the content of a new course, so the strategy carries through to what practitioners actually learn.
How I work
A way of working, not a proprietary method.
It’s the pattern I’ve followed in every leadership role, whether I’m embedded with a team or leading a single initiative.
- Understand what’s really happening.I get oriented quickly: the business, the customers, the numbers, and the people. I look at the whole system and at the details that are keeping the strategy from working.
- Find the decision that matters.Stalled work is often waiting on one or two decisions nobody clearly owns. I name them and get them made.
- Bring the right people together.I connect the functions that need to contribute and get them working from the same understanding of the problem.
- Build a practical path.A plan the team can carry out with the people, budget, and time it actually has.
- Stay with the work until it moves.I stay close to implementation, adjust when reality pushes back, and leave the team stronger for having done it.
Where AI fits
I use AI throughout the work to expand research, synthesize information, test assumptions, and look at a decision from the point of view of each stakeholder it affects. In practice that means analyzing survey results, turning web analytics into website recommendations, synthesizing meetings, pressure-testing positioning and messaging, and building templates that make a team’s work more consistent. I’ve also coached colleagues on putting AI to work well, including where it shouldn’t be used.
The value isn’t only speed. It lets me consider more information, more alternatives, and more perspectives before I make a recommendation. It doesn’t replace experience or judgment.
About Emily
More than 20 years of leading the work, not only advising on it.
I’ve learned the answer is rarely “more marketing.” It’s usually a business problem that shows up as a marketing one.
I started at Chevron, leading communications and employee engagement during the Chevron and Texaco merger. Later I led a channel business development program built on co-op marketing and a council of distributors who helped shape how we served the channel.
I then spent about 15 years in healthcare, leading marketing, member strategy, and acquisition at Humana, Priority Health, and Elevance Health. Humana trusted me again and again to build the next team it needed, starting with marketing for its new ACA exchange business, which beat its acquisition targets. Elevance Health brought me in to do the same. I’ve owned large budgets and been accountable for Medicare, Medicaid, and pharmacy results. I know where strategies break because I was usually the one responsible for making them work.
That range is why I’m useful when a problem doesn’t fit neatly inside one function. I’ve worked across brand, acquisition, member strategy, analytics, and channel, so I can usually see how the pieces connect and who needs to be in the room.
- Elevance Health Senior Director, Marketing: Medicare, Medicaid, and pharmacy
- Priority Health Director, Acquisition Marketing: Medicare growth
- Humana Director roles across marketing, engagement, member strategy, and the ACA launch
- Chevron Strategic Channel Manager: channel business development and product launches
Contact
In the middle of something that isn’t moving the way it should?
I’d be glad to talk it through. Tell me what you’re working on and where it’s stuck. If I’m not the right fit, I’ll usually know within one conversation and say so.
