Welcome to this episode of the Marketing Vanguard podcast. Host Jenny Rooney speaks with Erika Ayers Badan, CEO of Food52, about her unconventional career path and her vision for transforming food commerce and content.
Drawing from her experience scaling Barstool Sports and her current role at Food52, Erika offers unique insights on building community-driven brands and the intersection of content and commerce.
Erika shares her journey from a legal department at Fidelity to becoming a CMO at AOL, and ultimately serving as CEO of Barstool Sports and now Food52.
She discusses the challenges and opportunities in transitioning between vastly different company cultures, the importance of maintaining brand focus, and her strategy for evolving Food52’s business model.
“When you move [to CEO], you can’t be deferential,” she says on the podcast. “You have to be in charge, and that’s a big pivot from the enablement of other people’s things and putting a wrapper around them to facilitating the thing itself.”
