Jess Clifton is an experienced executive leader who successfully navigates the complexity of modern marketing, brings order to chaos, and builds brands through culture and experiences. Her expertise spans across metric focused performance and digital marketing, creative brand building, experiential, and public relations strategy. Having spent over a decade managing P&Ls ranging from $5M – $125M, Jess is an active advocate of using data and analytics tools to predict, measure and optimize business outcomes on behalf of both agency and client’s businesses.
Jess currently serves as the Head of Brand and Marketing Advisory at Media.Monks. She joined the the Monks in January 2021 after merging her agency, Low Earth Orbit (LEO), into MediaMonks. Prior to founding L.E.O., Jess served as U.S. Head of Digital for Edelman for nearly a decade. In this role, Jess focused on building out Edelman’s Digital portfolio of services, including paid media, social strategy, influencer programming and analytics, while leading various client engagements ranging from business strategy, product launches, social community building, performance marketing, analytics and brand reputation initiatives. Prior to Edelman, Jess worked as a Business Strategy Leader at agencies including Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Carmichael Lynch, Merkle and FCB.
Notable client partnerships include Activision, Disney Parks, Dole, Frito Lay, General Electric, Hawaii Tourism, LA28, Petco, PepsiCo, GE, Porsche, Starz Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Volkswagen.
As a frequent public speaker, Jess has delivered presentations at many industry events including SXSW, DigiDay, Advertising Week, PRNews and more. She was recognized by PRWeek in 2016 as “40 Under 40 Innovator in Creativity and Influence” and recognized by Holmes Report in 2017 as “Innovator 25 North America.”
Jess is a serial mentor and fierce advocate of women in business. In 2021, she founded a non-profit organization called Females Forward, which is designed to bring executive leaders together to mentor and support the next generation. To date, she has hosted over 120 senior executives to mentor young women and signed up thousands of mentees to the program.