Karen Sarnatskaya

I began in performance marketing at Google, where I learned that the numbers only matter once the idea behind them is right. Years of accounts, audits and platform launches taught me the mechanics — but what stayed with me was how rarely a brand sounds like itself.

Today I am CMO at FiFixU, where I lead brand and growth in the open, and I run Sarnatskaya Studio alongside it. The studio is deliberately small: it exists so that I can work closely with a handful of brands a year, on the parts of the work that need judgement rather than volume.

I teach for the same reason. Most of what I know is not proprietary — it is simply hard-won, and easier to pass on in a small room than to keep.