The Strategist Behind the Strategy
Stacy Wellborn has been doing this a long time — not because she had to, but because she keeps coming back to it.
Over the years, she’s tried on other hats. She’s built restaurants, run a coworking space, launched a jewelry brand, and built a career in academia. But marketing strategy? It always pulls her back. Because she’s genuinely, almost unfairly good at it.
It started in Austin in the late 1990s
Stacy was part of the early team behind ApplianceOrder.com — one of the first proof-of-concept ventures testingwhether consumers woul d buy big-ticket items online. It was there, working alongside real entrepreneurs who challenged assumptions and moved fast, that she fell in love with the intersection of consumer behavior and strategy.That experience shaped everything. She learned what it means to challenge a process, to test an assumption, to build something before the market is ready for it. She’s never forgotten it.
“I can see the patterns. I ask a lot of questions. I find the common threads. And then I build something around them.”
What followed was a career that spans more ground than most consultants can claim — advertising agencies, her own marketing firm, clients ranging from Whole Foods Market to the Mobile Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau, a doctorate in marketing, a professorship at Spring Hill College, and a fractional CMO practice working with established companies ready to grow.The thread running through all of it: an almost obsessive curiosity about how businesses work, why customers do what they do, and how the right strategy can unlock momentum that was sitting there all along.
When Stacy is working with a client, she is all in.
She learns the business deeply —the history, the goals, the team dynamics, the industry quirks. She remembers
things. She shows up prepared. And she brings the kind of positive,
forward-looking energy that makes hard conversations easier and ambitious goals
feel achievable.
She’s not the consultant who hands you a report and disappears. She’s the one who stays curious about your
business long after the meeting ends — because for her, it’s always been more
about the relationship rather than the work.
She just happens to be exceptional at the work too.The Real Bio
Stacy holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of South Alabama and a Master’s in Counseling from UNC Greensboro — a combination that makes her unusually good at both the analytical and the human sides of strategy. She is an Assistant Professor and Program Director for Marketing and Strategic Communication at Spring Hill College in
Mobile, Alabama.She splits her time between Mobile and New Orleans, where she is an active member of the entrepreneurial and creative communities. She founded MaisonMariann, a fine jewelry brand, and has spent more than two decades building brands, businesses, and strategies for companies across industries.
She also believes there is nothing happier than bubbles. But that’s a story for another time.
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