Accor

Curating and launching Accor’s flagship Supreme-luxury lifestyle brand in North America

Brand Build | New to the World Luxury Hotel Brand

Sienna Senior Living

Led Marketing, Brand Strategy, and Business Intelligence at Sienna Senior Living. Architected the company’s first enterprise BI platform—now a cornerstone of strategic decision-making.

Commercial Strategy | Vice President - Marketing, Brand Strategy & Business Intelligence

Brought a new brand to life. Launched Aspira—a fresh Active Retirement Living experience built for today’s aging population.
As VP of Marketing & Brand Strategy at Sienna Senior Living (TSX:SIA), I led the full brand development and go-to-market launch across Canada.

Brand Build & Launch | Vice President, Marketing & Brand Strategy

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

A global role leading the Distribution strategy and execution, Distribution operations and Call Centre, B2B Sales and support for the group.

Key responsibilities included

✅ Turnover of $500 million business segment
✅ Manage $25 million expense budget
✅ B2B marketing, sales, contracting, and management 
✅ Responsible Distribution Channel technology and strategy
✅ Responsible for the Global Call center
✅ Lead a global team of 100+ team members

Commercial Strategy | Senior Director, Global Distribution & Channel Strategy (Marketing)

Shangri-La Group

Based in Corporate Headquarters of Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts, Hong Kong.
The role entails managing Corporate Reservations, Customer Contact Centers & Distribution for the group.
Established a new contact centre in Guangzhou, China, to support inbound and outbound interaction in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Commercial Strategy | Director Distribution Management & Corporate Reservations (Marketing)

Based in Corporate Headquarters of Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts, Hong Kong.
The role entails developing new Marketing concepts
Establishing and opening new hotels; Led Brand and Marketing to open hotels in Brisbane, Singapore, Puteri Harbour (Malaysia), Abu Dhabi, Muscat, amongst others

Brand Build & Launch | Director of Sales & Marketing - pre-opening hotels (new markets development)

Based at Shangri-La Hotel, Doha, Qatar
Hotel Pre-opening Executive Committee member
Leading Sales & Marketing

Brand Launch | Director of Sales & Marketing

Based in Traders Hotel Dubai
Leading the Sales & Marketing Department
Responsible for Revenue, Sales, Distribution, Events & Public Relations teams.

Director of Sales & Marketing

Based at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok
Leading the Revenue Management Department
Responsible for Revenue Management of all revenue-generating areas of the hotel, Pricing and Optimising yields.

Director of Revenue Management

InterContinental Hotels Group

Based in Holiday Inn Silom, Bangkok
Marketing Plan
Revenue Management & Pricing
Budgetting & Forecasting

Revenue Manager

Taj Hotels

City Revenue Manager

VP-Marketing & Brand Strategy | On a mission to make Strategic Marketing your superpower, so you can add value, drive commercial success, get unstuck and grow. I do this 1 post, 1 conversation, 1 mentee at a time.🏍

Building Brands That Drive Growth and Command Loyalty

I’ve spent my career at the intersection of luxury hospitality, brand strategy, and commercial leadership, working across global markets from India to Thailand, Dubai, Doha, Hong Kong, China, and Canada. With over two decades of experience in revenue management, brand positioning, and customer experience design, I’ve had the privilege of building strategies that not only drive revenue but also strengthen brand equity and customer loyalty across diverse cultures and business environments.

My journey took an unexpected turn during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted my career’s upward trajectory and gave me the chance to step outside hospitality into the retirement living sector. That experience, combined with my pursuit of an MBA at Kellogg School of Management, helped me realize that my core strength lies in connecting customer insights, brand identity, and revenue strategy into a cohesive, competitive advantage.

Today, I leverage my global leadership experience, strategic mindset, and customer-first philosophy to help organizations align brand promise with business performance, ensuring they remain customer-obsessed, commercially smart, and future-ready. Whether repositioning a brand, driving market growth, or building high-performing teams, I believe great brands are built at the intersection of people, profit, and customer experience.

Contact: arvind.bala@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Arvind Bala

As a seasoned leader in the marketing space, AK brings deep strategic expertise to solving complex brand and marketing challenges that go beyond conventional playbooks. He leverages his ability to mobilize talent and manage change to drive lasting impact across organizations.

With an empathy-led approach, AK has partnered with leading Healthcare and Life Sciences companies to deliver results across Brand Strategy, Brand Positioning, Vision & Values, Ways of Working, Growth Strategy, Portfolio Strategy, Patient Acquisition, Service Line Marketing, MarTech Assessment, and more.

Associate Principal

Driven to Succeed, LLC

Member- Expert Collective

RADARX LLC

Advisory Board Member

Curae LLC

Inspiring key notes- from vision and mission to workplace essentials.

Founder

Wellstar Health System

Led the brand transformation for one of the largest and most integrated healthcare providers in Georgia with annual net revenue of ~$4B. Laid the brand foundation in ~9 months, including brand positioning, brand visual identity, consumer segmentation, campaign platform and multi-year brand strategy. 

Led brand strategy integration with mission, vision & values, and within business strategy. 

Established a Brand Resource Center to provide self-service resources to 24k+ team members and improve brand governance across functions. 

Built an in-house Consumer Knowledge & Insights capability and drove systemwide change management to inspire a consumer-first approach and integrated brand strategy with the business strategy. Led systemwide patient experience to advance consumer-centric design, advance innovation and mitigate pandemic-driven challenges.  

Developed strategies to drive systemwide patient acquisition and to market key upstream and downstream service lines. This included responsibility for the CRM partner, claims data vendor, primary & secondary research, patient experience measurement & innovation, and management of top business intelligence tools.

Vice President Brand Strategy, Knowledge & Insights 

Georgia-Pacific LLC

Leader and P&L owner of $800 million brand. 
- Set clear vision and goals to establish brand as growth leader in the premium TP segment.
- Executed two complex portfolio redesign projects to improve price competitiveness and margins by double digits.   
- Reversed multi-year declines at top customer by deploying targeted promotions and innovation. 
- Developed the innovation pipeline and launched a sustainability-focused line extension that was adopted as the positioning for the largest sub-brand within two years. 
- Transformed team with matrix structure to reduce total FTEs by 50% while improving effectiveness.
- Developed team members and engineered roles to maximize value creation and fulfillment.  Recognized for mentoring and coaching a large and diverse team in matrix organization structure.

Brand Director

Accountable for all brand building initiatives (strategy, planning, content, media, research, shopper marketing and design) on a $2B+ business including the Angel Soft and Quilted Northern brands
- Developed the brand architecture, visual identity system and new packaging for the Quilted Northern brand in partnership with Landor.  Drove high single digit sales lift in two quarters post-launch.
- Led integrated marketing planning process with brand, shopper marketing team and creative agencies to develop marketing objectives, key strategies, investment alternatives and integrated plans.
- Deployed media across traditional, digital and social channels. Leveraged marketing mix modeling and analyses to significantly increase reach and frequency and improve ROI by double digits.   
- Partnered with top tier creative agencies such as Deutsch LA and droga5.  Creative examples: Angel Soft First Breakup, Quilted Northern Robe.

Brand Building Leader

Led short-term and long-term innovation pipeline development for tableware brands.

Director Innovation

Strong general management focus:
- Vision and marketing strategy development/implementation
- Led innovation team to develop new platforms and deliver new products from insight to shelf
- Led waste elimination initiatives with R&D, operations and manufacturing taskforce

Sr Brand Manager, Angel Soft Bath Tissue

The Hershey Company

Lead a cross-functional team to manage a multi-category, all-natural health & wellness portfolio

Sr Marketing Manager

Led a cross-functional team to launch a natural cocoa based sports recovery beverage to drive cocoa credentialing and gauge proposition’s revenue potential in growing functional beverage space

- brand architecture, blueprint, target definition, positioning
- copy development; brief to integrated activation
- P&L ownership
- entrepreneurial learning model

Marketing Manager

Hershey Canada Inc.

Assignment in Hershey Canada: managed the sugar confections & snacks portfolio, including brands such as Twizzlers & Jolly Rancher.

Sr Associate Marketing Manager

Led multiple innovation projects to fill the pipeline through 2010, worth over $40 million.

New product launch, situation assessment, budget management, monthly and quarterly business updates, annual brand planning, supply chain efforts and quality enhancing projects.

Associate Brand Manager

• Managing the product lifecycle of assigned products, developing strategy for product direction, and leading cross-functional teams to develop, maintain and enhance product lines.
• Conducting customer research and maintaining a deep understanding of customer needs and industry trends to ensure product line is competitive and meets market needs.
• Product positioning, supporting sales team in meeting revenue goals, and ensuring assigned products are competitive in the marketplace.
• Identifying opportunities for revenue growth and developing business cases for new product offerings.
*Creating messages and content for sales aids and collateral material including factsheets, web content, white papers, demos and sales presentations.
*Creating and managing business reports, statistics and analysis of product line.

Aramark Corporation

Managed up to 70 employees managing a department that generated $18 million in annual revenue, achieving profitability goals while ensuring the highest level of customer service to all clients.
Managed key relationships with clients such as Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, NIH that led to repeat business worth more than $3 million annually. 
Cut annual labor costs by 20% or $112,200 by reorganizing deliverables and streamlining job functions.
Created annual budgets and fortnightly forecasts within a variance level of 5% versus actual. Exceeded budgeted numbers for revenue in 6 of 8 quarters managed, while controlling costs at the same levels. 
Implemented an e-marketing initiative to boost transient traveler revenue by more than 200%.
Won the ‘Manager of the Quarter’ award for achieving 90%+ customer service satisfaction rates. Attained quality scores of over 95% on a consistent basis.
Reduced turnover to 30% vs. 100% industry standard.

Front Office Manager

Delivering growth and strategic marketing solutions for Life Sciences and Healthcare Providers. 

Whether as a Board member or a partner in the trenches, I am passionate about:  
• Always putting people first- the rest follows.
• Caring for those I work with; please read my recommendations.
• Putting traditional brand discipline and advanced data-driven marketing to work for short-term and long-term impact. 
• Building ecosystems that combine experts and technology.
• NOT being a yes man, because no one benefits when the emperor is sans clothes.  

Past:
My journey started in the hospitality industry where I learned customer service fundamentals and empathic approaches that still help me serve all around me. At Hershey’s, I was trained in CPG brand management fundamentals and rapidly advanced as a general manager, cross-functional leader, innovator, and reliable partner. At Georgia-Pacific, as a senior brand leader facing some of the prickliest business challenges, I deployed conflict-driven storytelling and cutting-edge marketing to get consumers to pay attention- that’s super hard when you are selling TP.

In my Healthcare role, I transformed brand and marketing with consumer-centricity, data-driven storytelling, scientific measurement, and an overhaul of the vendor ecosystem. By combining inclusion, sensitivity, and proactive change management, I got more done in months than is often possible in years.

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Arvind Bala

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