Dan Chodrow
Dan Chodrow is Farmhouse’s Chief Storyteller. He’s spent the last 18 years crafting big brand ideas for clients such as Procter & Gamble, Post Cereals, TD Ameritrade, Sears, Western Union and Altria. Periodically, Dan gives blood, sweat and overtime in the start-up trenches, lending creative thinking to bootstrap technology companies in the Chicago area. He believes the Midwest is on the verge of another innovation renaissance, and looks forward to helping Farmhouse bring that new world to life.
Dan ChodrowPaul Earle
Paul Earle is Farmhouse’s Executive Director. Paul’s career began as a classically trained marketer via his tenure at Saatchi & Saatchi and later at Kraft Foods on the client side of the equation. Recognizing a significant opportunity and looking to satisfy his entrepreneurial inclinations, he founded River West Brands, a brand acquisition and redevelopment firm that pioneered a number of new models for collaboration among intellectual property experts, innovation houses, venture leaders and retailers. Paul has been both a Leo Burnett competitor and a Leo Burnett client. He’s pleased to finally call Burnetters "colleagues."
Paul EarleKelli Johnson
Kelli Johnson is our resident strategic muse here at Farmhouse. She’s been a force for productive imagination everywhere she’s worked over the past 10 years. Prior to Farmhouse, Kelli spent time working as a qualitative researcher with brands like Kraft, Tyson, Novartis and Pepsico, helping discover innovative new product territories that more closely matched the way consumers were living. At Leo Burnett, Kelli has a reputation as a creative sparkplug who helps nudge people and ideas in new directions. Kelli finds Farmhouse particularly interesting because she is an incredibly curious observer and loves figuring out how brands can better fit in the real world.
Kelli JohnsonDave Kuta
Dave Kuta keeps the wheels on the wagon here at Farmhouse. With seven years of hardnosed strategic account and digital production experience both on big CPGs such as Kellogg’s and within the LB new business apparatus, Dave knows how to get things done. He’s a practiced improvisational thinker, accustomed to contributing strategic and creative thinking into the mix without expecting any credit in return. More often than not, a winning proposition, regardless of what it is, can somehow be traced back to Dave.
Dave KutaKristina Lenz
Kristina is a 17 year veteran of the marketing world. Over the years, her passion for innovation has been fed by clients like JetBlue Airways, Bloomberg, Diageo, Microsoft and Qwest Communications. She has an insatiable curiosity about everything from what makes consumers tick to making things happen in a smarter, more creative and efficient way. A born and bred New Yorker, Kristina appreciates the speed and purpose that leads to successful innovation and brings her direction and motivation to the Farmhouse team.
Kristina LenzMandy Manning
Mandy has been at Leo Burnett for 18 years, helping blue chip companies build their brands and businesses. Through her leadership role on these accounts, Mandy specializes in innovation, steering clients toward new markets, launching new products and generating new thinking. She has a penchant for impossible assignments and non-traditional and below-the-line marketing methods. Mandy is excited to be part of the Farmhouse team because she believes that constant innovation is the only way that companies can remain successful in today's marketplace.
Mandy ManningCasey Martin
Casey Martin is the creative force behind the Farmhouse graphic identity and our key designer. His four years in the business belie his skill and professionalism. This kid is just plain good. He spent the first two years in the new business group at Leo Burnett, honing his turn-on-a-dime chops. A transfer to the Department of Design reintroduced him to his love of making things that are smart, clever and beautiful. He’s excited to be a part of Farmhouse right at its inception so he can help grow it, and grow with it.
Casey MartinKaruna Rawal
Karuna Rawal is one of our senior strategic leaders at Leo Burnett and a welcome addition to the Farmhouse team. She has spent her 15 years in the business on both sides of the desk at large CPG and retail businesses, including P&G, Kellogg’s and Walgreens. Karuna has been instrumental in developing the CPG Shopper Marketing practice and plays a key role in helping us understand shopper journeys and retail strategy. In an earlier life, Karuna founded and managed her own consulting firm providing branding, strategy and innovation services to CPGs and other clients. Previously, Karuna spent over a decade in brand management and customer marketing at P&G. Her last role was marketing director, Customer Marketing where she led P&G pioneering efforts in shopper marketing with key retailers in the Drug Channel.
Karuna RawalKevin Richey
Like most brand strategists, Kevin has a strange background. In college he studied the physics of black holes, ethics, and traveled to Ghana to immerse himself in ethnomusicology. Since he began his career in 2003, he has worked as a media buyer, a media strategist, an account manager, a content supervisor, and finally a planning director, where he contributes to agency growth initiatives and oversees the strategic direction of our Fifth Third Bank, Invesco and Purina accounts. Kevin loves the variety and improvisation inherent in innovation and looks forward to successes on Farmhouse.
Kevin RicheyCraig Sampson
Craig Sampson is a guiding force in the world of product innovation and a Senior Fellow at Farmhouse. As one of the early leaders at IDEO, he founded and led the firm’s Chicago office, later headed IDEO’s Global Healthcare Practice, and generally helped grow the company into a premier global innovation consultancy. He is a respected expert in new product development, technology, human-centered design, and fundamental innovative thinking. Craig currently runs TBD Innovation, a resource for bringing together business strategists, domain experts, and multidisciplinary design teams to identify and develop opportunities for new products and new businesses.
Craig SampsonHeather Torreggiani
Heather Torreggiani is our growth strategist, as adept at steering a project through its most complex phases as she is creating it in the first place. Or as Heather herself puts it, she’s an entrepreneur at heart who’s very comfortable with a blank piece of paper. For 20 years, she’s overseen the creation of brands, products and entire companies and agencies at BBDO, DDB, Merkley and Partners and, for the past two and half years, Leo Burnett. Today, Heather directs Leo’s business development efforts, where she’s helped create Farmhouse as well as brought in new business from Invesco, Esurance, Firestone, Nintendo, Purina and more.
Heather TorreggianiSarah Tynan
Sarah is a business director at Farmhouse. Her career in innovation started around the age of 10 when she dreamed up a deodorant called "Pit Stop" and videotaped a commercial for it. In the past dozen years or so of working as a grown-up, Sarah has built a reputation for strengthening team relationships, chaos wrangling and solving problems. She has been part of a multitude of never-been-done before ideas in experiential, digital and social platforms at Leo Burnett, contributing to breakthrough communications work for Samsung, Nintendo, Kraft and the World Wildlife Fund. Sarah is also is known for her passion for, and loyalty to, the Leo Burnett brand and is looking forward to building similar fame, expertise and heritage for Farmhouse.
Sarah TynanAlisa Wolfson
Alisa Wolfson heads the Leo Burnett Department of Design, but she also acts as design queen and creative partner here at Farmhouse. With over 15 years in the business, Alisa has seen the inside, upside and downside of some of the industry’s biggest brands. At VSA, she was instrumental in launching Einstein Bagels, one of the most successful retail design stories in the marketplace. Here at Leo Burnett, Alisa has driven domestic and global design successes for clients as varied as Coca-Cola, Hallmark and McDonald’s. Alisa is tailor made for Farmhouse, and vice versa, because she believes in the most fundamental principle of design: that success happens when form and function are both unquestionably present and impossible to separate.
Alisa WolfsonOur Collaborators
We’re working with these innovation-focused organizations in the Chicago area:
1871
Kellogg Innovation Network
Impact Engine
University of Chicago
The Leo Burnett Group
Farmhouse is only as innovative as the people who work here. Luckily, we have the unique ability to leverage the entire worldwide Leo Burnett Group network to find new ways to bring together product, story and strategy. Every employee is a potential member of Farmhouse, regardless of discipline or level of experience. The best ideas can come from anywhere, and at Farmhouse, we’re ready to harvest them.
The Leo Burnett Group