Hi, I'm Tara.

I've been doing product marketing since before it was called product marketing.

My career started in the San Francisco startup scene nd ran through some of the world's best advertising agencies — McCann Worldgroup and CKSK in Dublin, where I worked on accounts like Microsoft, PlayStation, and Heineken — and learned the craft underneath product marketing: creative strategy, sharp briefing, client services, customer research. Then I moved client-side just as PMM was becoming a recognized discipline, and I've been shaping it ever since.

Two decades of doing the work

I've led product marketing at eBay, Etsy, Better Place Forests, and Loop Returns — through 0→1 launches, two-sided marketplace strategy, platform repositioning, and the strange and rewarding challenge of marketing memorial trees to people who only need them when they're gone. I've worked with C-suites, first-time founders, and teams of every size.

That's the short version. The longer version includes consulting, recession swings, three role redefinitions, and a lot of growth and retraction.

What I see right now

The PMM playbook most people learned is no longer the one the market rewards.

The role itself is being redefined: the product marketers who define their value by deliverables are getting commoditized, and the ones who define it by judgment, market POV, and cross-functional influence are becoming indispensable.

The fractional PMM market is exploding. What nobody talks about is the part that's hardest: when you go independent, you lose the manager. The sounding board, the person who's done it before and can help you make the hard calls. Fractional PMMs are expected to advance fast and deliver senior-level work for multiple clients, with no one to connect with on the way through. That's the gap I fill.

This is the third major role redefinition I've seen in product marketing. It's the biggest one yet. And it's the reason I built Trellis.

Trellis Marketing

Trellis exists to help product marketers and the brands who hire them work the new playbook well. Today I do three things:

1:1 coaching for product marketers — especially those navigating role transitions, going fractional, or stepping into more strategic seats. I'm an ICF-certified coach (Level 1, 2025), so this is real coaching, not consulting with a softer name.

Advising and fractional product marketing for companies whose work I believe in — mostly in sustainability, climate tech, and social impact. I act as an extension of your team, bringing 20 years of senior PMM leadership without the headcount.

Launch Lab — practical playbooks and AI-augmented tools for PMM teams of one. Built for the people who need to plan, launch, and grow without burning out doing it.

How I work

My style is part coach, part player, a little bit therapist. I trained as a yoga teacher (E-RYT 500, 2021) before I became a coach, and that's part of how I work too — breathwork, slowing down to find clarity, treating time and energy like the scarce resources they actually are.

The product marketers I see doing the best work in this market are the ones who stop performing and start thinking clearly. Trellis is built to support that.

If any of this sounds useful, let's talk.