Brand Alchemist Podcast

Zach DeAngelo is the Founder, CEO, and Investor at Rodeo CPG, a product and services firm designed to help innovative brands in the CPG space scale effectively. Rodeo's tools and top-notch team allow CPG innovation leaders to build, scale, and sell their products with better productivity. Zach builds an action-based ecosystem to solve the largest structural problems in the CPG industry. Before fou...

Alex Bayer is the Co-founder and CEO of Genius Juice, the world's first all-organic plant-based smoothie made from coconuts. After a friend offered him an organic coconut smoothie, he founded Genius Juice in 2014 with the goal of helping people reach higher levels of health and happiness. Before co-founding the smoothie brand, Alex served as the director of marketing and social media for VirginRaw...

Amy Cohn has a hybrid of experience building new businesses and growth for global brands and hyperlocal high-growth startups. She has run online product innovation teams and digital strategy at Disney, Oprah, and Sony and was a marketing and growth executive in healthcare (Heal) as well as blockchain (Dapper Labs). After being diagnosed with colon cancer in 2020, Amy is now focused on creating acc...

Logan Mahoney is the Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Atomic Coffee Roasters, a North Shore-based coffee roaster, wholesaler, and retailer. In his role, he manages grocery, office, and contract manufacturing. With a passion for business management, Logan began working in customer service before becoming a Business Development Manager for both Atomic Coffee Roasters an...

Cygne Cooper is the Co-founder and Chief Brand Officer at hiyo, a brand producing stress-relieving social tonics crafted with natural adaptogens, nootropics, and functional botanicals. As a creative director and brand strategist, she has experience building thoughtful and impactful brands and creative assets for the media, entertainment, lifestyle, and fashion industries. Cygne has worked with not...

Brittany Lo is the Founder and CEO of Beia, a beauty wellness brand that empowers women to indulge in self-care through a diverse line of clean beauty and wellness products. She founded Beia with the intention of encouraging women to feel and look their best while dismantling the stigma of indulgence. Brittany is also the Founder and CEO of Beautini, which provides hair and makeup services for wed...

Emanuel Storch is the CEO of Blackbird Foods, a plant-based food company producing wholesale and retail seitan, frozen pizza, and plant-based meat. His passion for social entrepreneurship, animal welfare, the environment, and public health inspired Emanuel to found Blackbird. As one of the first team members at Simply Gum, he played an integral role in transforming the small, natural chewing gum s...

Jennifer Liao is the Co-founder of Xiao Chi Jie (XCJ), a direct-to-consumer food company specializing in authentic Chinese street food. As a second-generation Asian American, she founded the brand with her husband to connect with family history and create new and genuine representations of their experiences as multicultural individuals. XCJ's mission is to create widespread awareness for the inclu...

Taja Dockendorf is the Founder, Owner, and Creative Director at Pulp + Wire, a female-founded, award-winning, full-service, CPG branding and marketing agency. Pulp + Wire specializes in helping natural and organic foods, cannabis, hemp, and lifestyle brands discover their identities and create websites, packaging, and social media strategies that resonate with their audiences.  Taja has built P+W...

Nick Grossenbacher is the Founder and Chief Product Formulator at REÅLEA Skincare, which delivers potent, topical solutions rooted in global traditions of medicinal alchemy. He has studied herbalism and traditional healing with regional experts worldwide and trained as an academic historian of pre-modern science and traditional medicine at the Spagyricus School of Alchemy under esteemed alchemist...

Raina Kumra is the Founder of Spicewell, the world's first nutrient-dense, Ayurvedic line of pantry essentials. As an operational leader, investor, and advisor, she is a Partner at The Fund — where she leads healthcare and consumer deals — the former CEO of Juggernaut, and the former Co-founder of the app engagement platform Mavin.  Raina served on the Biden-Harris transition team overseeing the U...

Nina Damato is the Managing Partner at Blue Circle Foods, a company that provides consumers with clean, nutritious, 100% traceable seafood using best sustainability practices. Her mother, father, and uncle founded the brand in 2005 with the goal of delivering organic seafood through transparent processes. Nina has held a variety of roles at Blue Circle, including product and supply chain manager....

Hawa Hassan is the CEO and Founder of Basbaas Foods, an authentic, packaged line of Somalian hot sauces and chutneys. The brand has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Eater, and many other notable publications. As a dynamic chef, recipe developer, and entrepreneur, Hawa is the author of In Bibi's Kitchen, where she shares recipes and stories from grandmothers in eight African countries b...

Jeff Weaber is the Owner of Aqua ViTea, a Vermont-based brand that brews authentic kombucha. Previously, he was a Brewer at Lucky Labrador Brew Pub, where he gained experience in fermentation and helped the brewery scale to meet increasing demands. After moving from Oregon to Vermont, Jeff launched Aqua ViTea in 2007 with a mission to provide consumers with naturopathic principles of vitality and...

Nabeel Alamgir was born in Bangladesh and moved to Kuwait seven years later, then to Queens, New York, seven years after that. He began his career as the first busboy at the Bareburger flagship store in Astoria and spent his free time devising marketing objectives for the CEO. In 2019, Nabeel founded Lunchbox, the modern ordering system for restaurants to grow their online revenue, which was built...

Abraham Kamarck is the Founder and CEO of True Made Foods, a brand that reinvents America's favorite condiments using real fruits and vegetables instead of sugar. Before founding True Made Foods, Abraham served as a Naval aviator for eight years, where he ran operations and deployments around the world and worked in counter-terrorism. He also lived and worked as an entrepreneur in emerging and fro...

Amy Zitelman is the CEO of Soom Foods, a supplier of globally-inspired pantry foods. The company has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Food & Wine, and Cooking Light. As Soom's strategic leader, Amy utilizes interpersonal communication skills to develop and maintain relationships with key stakeholders, manage sales and marketing strategy development, and ov...

Matt Weiss is the Founder and CEO of RIND Snacks, a healthy snack brand focused on whole fruit nutrition. Their mission is to help consumers snack better by eating the whole fruit, maximizing nutritional value, and minimizing food waste. Matt launched RIND Snacks in 2017 — prior to that, he spent 20 years in investment research at Baron Capital where he covered consumer growth stocks. Today, Matt...

Ramon Vela is the Founder of CommerceFocused Media, which produces The Story of a Brand , a podcast that features DTC, CPG, and omnichannel brands. The podcast has more than 950 episodes, over 700 interviews with brand founders, and tens of thousands of listeners. As The Story of a Brand's host, Ramon covers various business categories including fashion, health and wellness, personal care, and mor...

Laureen Moyal is a Founding Partner and Creative Director at Paperwhite Studio, a multi-disciplinary design consultancy. Paperwhite collaborates with clients to build identities and grow them into full-blown experiences and digital spaces. Laureen has experience developing integrated branding solutions and creating web experiences in the food and hospitality industries. She served as a visiting cr...

Luis Gramajo is a Co-Founder and Partner of Wunderkeks, a consumer-packaged cookie brand. He is responsible for the company's product development, sales, and customer relationship management. With a background in trade marketing and PR, Luis has experience in the CPG space running supermarket brands in the skincare and food industries across Central America.  Hans Schrei is a Co-Founder and Partne...

Join Taja Dockendorf, Founder and Creative Director of Pulp+Wire and host of The Brand Alchemist Podcast as she sits down with the founder of Wellfare, Cole Riley. In today's episode, you will learn about how Wellfare was born from the largest private food relief effort in New York City at the peak of the pandemic, as well as its social and economic mission to lessen food insecurity in food desert...

Join Taja Dockendorf, Founder and Creative Director of Pulp+Wire and host of The Brand Alchemist Podcast as she sits down with the founder of Daily Crunch, Laurel Orley. In today's episode, you will learn about the amazing career Laurel had before coming to her personal crossroads, about Laurel's Aunt (who is the heart behind daily crunch), why mental health is so important to the brand, and how t...

Join Taja Dockendorf, Founder and Creative Director of Pulp+Wire and host of The Brand Alchemist Podcast as she sits down with the founder of Daysie, Tara Pate. In today's episode, you will learn about how important a coffee experience is to Tara and how it sparked the idea for Daysie, the superpower that propels Tara in continuously supporting other women entrepreneurs, and the animal that guides...

Join Taja Dockendorf, Founder and Creative Director of Pulp+Wire and host of The Brand Alchemist Podcast as she sits down with the founder of Freestyle Snacks, Nikki Seaman. In today's episode, you will learn about how Freestyle Snacks was born, the superpower that propels Nikki in everyday entrepreneurship, and gain a peek inside the mind of a data and analytical maven.  Connect With Nikki Seaman...