The Person Behind Vertical Herizon

Same brain that builds $50M pipelines also picks dirt-bike lines and dachshund walking routes.

I split my time between Huntington Beach, CA and Nashville, TN — beach hair one week, honky-tonk the next — after fifteen years calling San Francisco home, SF State degree included. Before growth marketing had my full attention, I cut my teeth in travel and hospitality, which is the real reason I can talk food and beverage longer than most people can talk about anything.

2Home Bases

15Years in SF

1Weiner Dog

1Book Published

Laurel Wilke against a downtown skyline at sunset

LA — Golden Hour

laurelwilke@gmail.com 562.537.5291 Connect on LinkedIn

Remote / CA / TN

Off the Clock

The unofficial job description

Published AuthorThe Marketing Singularity

Dog MomCreative director, unpaid

Huntington Beach ⇄ NashvilleTwo home bases, zero regrets

15 Years in San FranciscoSF State alum

Boating & BikingThrottle Therapy Captain

Home

Beauty

Fitness

Reads

Curated & Shoppable

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Two Decades, One Throughline

The career story

From ballpark suites to boardrooms to AI-native marketing orgs — the roles changed, the instinct for building something people actually feel didn't.

2007 – 2012 · Bon Appétit @ SF Giants Stadium

Special Events Manager

Started in ballpark suites and stadium events, learning early that hospitality is marketing you can taste — and that nothing teaches you to think on your feet like a sold-out game with a broken sound system.

2012 – 2014 · Michael Page

Project Manager, Corporate Recruiting

Pivoted into executive search, spending two years learning how to read a room, a résumé, and a hiring manager's actual (unstated) requirements — skills that turned out to be just as useful in marketing.

2014 – 2015 · Morgans Hotel Group

Manager, Restaurants & Special Events

Back to hospitality, running restaurants and special events for a boutique hotel brand — proof the ballpark lessons scaled to white tablecloths just fine.

2015 – 2019 · Wedgewood

Project Manager, Event Sales & Marketing

Four years running event sales and marketing for a destination management company, while quietly picking up my first fractional gig on the side at MaxGen Labs — the first hint I could do this work on my own terms.

2019 – 2021 · Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center

Director, Corporate Event Sales & Partnerships

Moved into financial services, directing corporate event sales and partnerships and co-leading a digital transformation with Harvard and Penn State that grew participation 150% across 120+ countries.

2021 – 2023 · Split Software

Lead, Global Sponsorships & Field Marketing

Led global sponsorships and field marketing through a SaaS scale-up, building demand gen across a partner bench that included AWS, Twilio, and Atlassian — then watched the company get acquired by Harness.

2023 – 2026 · Quantiphi, SoftServe & Blend

AI & Enterprise Agentic Consulting

The current chapter: directing global field marketing for AI-first companies, then landing at Blend to build the agentic AI workflows reshaping how marketing teams actually operate — full circle from ballpark suites to building the bots.

Just Published

The Marketing Singularity

An immersive guide predicting the future of AI, the metaverse, and the return to human connection.

AI bots are already running the customer conversation — this book argues the next competitive edge won't be more automation, it'll be the brands that know when to bring people back into the room.

AI Metaverse Human Connection

How AI is already reshaping the customer conversation
What the metaverse actually means for brand experience
Why human connection becomes the real competitive edge

56Pages

3Core Ideas

2025Release

Get Your Copy on Amazon →

How Vertical Herizon Happened

Vertical Herizon wasn't a five-year plan — it was a professional shrug that turned into a business. After a decade-plus building growth engines inside rooms with too many stakeholders and not enough decisions (Blend, Split Software, MaxGen Labs, Quantiphi, SoftServe — you get the idea), I realized the skill set was portable and the itch to build things on my own terms wasn't going away.

So I started saying yes to the smaller, weirder, more interesting problems: a mushroom coffee brand that needed an identity, a fashion label that needed a point of view, a genetic testing company that needed both. Vertical Herizon became the name for the consulting and brand-design practice that let me keep doing enterprise-scale marketing work on my own schedule, in whatever city — or campsite, or lake house — I felt like waking up in that quarter.

The name itself is a nod to the idea that the horizon isn't a limit, it's a direction. Corny? A little. True? Also a little. That same idea is what pushed me to publish a book under the Vertical Herizon name, through HER Publishing.