Founder-side strategist & builder

Michelle
van Eck

I work beside founders whose businesses have outgrown the way they were built, clarifying the idea, positioning it, and building the brand, experience and operating structure that can carry it. Eighteen years, eight industries, three continents. The same wall, in different rooms.

Built for consequential chapters: growth that has outpaced coherence, repositioning for a new market, or a business whose ambition no longer matches the structure beneath it.

Built from the inside

Marketing lead through California Closets’ record month. Brand and communications through Sharegain’s rebrand and Series‑B chapter, credited by name in the agency’s published case study.

Built from nothing

A creative business built and led from zero, with its own pricing, contracts and delivery. I have carried the risk I advise on.

Built for founders

Watchtower: thirty years of operational authority, given a business the market can reach. It now trades by introduction only.

The origin

The instinct began early, between markets. I grew up around businesses in Singapore and Hong Kong that behaved one way at home and quietly stopped working when they crossed a border. That is where reading a market before you can name it started.

At fifteen came an internship at the five-star Royal Plaza on Scotts in Singapore: a masterclass in service standards, customer experience, and the quiet art of exceeding expectations. That became the first cornerstone of how I think about brands, as something people feel, remember, and decide to trust.

Since then I have founded businesses, worked in-house, advised from the side, and built the systems that connect the parts. I cut through the noise of growth-hacking to build things that are robust, valuable and sustainable.

I see the pattern. Then I build the system.

Formed between markets

Born and raised in Singapore, British-European, with bases in Vancouver, London and Singapore. Experience across Asia, the Gulf, Europe and North America. Across eight markets and eight industries, the same patterns repeat. I recognise where a business is stuck because I have watched the same wall appear in other markets, other industries, other chapters.

Singapore · Hong Kong · Melbourne · Dubai · Vancouver · London.

Eight industries: luxury · retail · real estate · hospitality · healthcare · fintech · art & culture · media.

Explore the markets

How I think

Nature as methodology

I use movement and landscape, "strategy walks", to unlock non-linear thinking. The clearest structures rarely arrive at a desk.

The intersection

I work across disciplines because a business rarely presents its real problem in one category. A positioning issue is often also a customer-experience issue, a market-entry issue, or an operating issue.

Structure over intensity

I ran the Royal Parks Half. Twenty-one kilometres is not won by effort, it is won by a structure you can hold for two hours. Businesses fail the same way, rarely from a shortage of intensity, usually from a shape that cannot be repeated at the distance.

Outside the work

Taste is not a talent. It is what you have spent time around.

Movement

Group sport since I was a child, then running, then training most days. Team sport teaches you that the best player rarely decides the result. Distance teaches you that pace beats effort. Both show up in how I work.

Stage and studio

Theatre and dance, art and music. Years of watching how a room is held, how a piece is staged, how attention is earned and then released. Most of what I know about pacing and restraint came from there rather than from marketing.

Food and culture

Food, hospitality and the places they come from, across the six places I have lived. It is the fastest way to understand what a culture values, and it is where I notice most of what I later use.

Change is the only constant. I build for what's next.

Study, ongoing

Formal study, then continuous executive learning, because the problems keep changing shape.

Degrees

BA, Communication & Political Science, Simon Fraser University (2014). Business & Marketing studies, RMIT University.

Executive & online coursework

Continuous executive study in leadership, strategy and organisational design.

Honour roll for highest academic achievement, Canadian International School, Singapore
Where it started · honour roll for highest academic achievement, Canadian International School, Singapore
Institutions
Simon Fraser University RMIT University Yale Stanford Northwestern University of Pennsylvania University
of London

Degrees at Simon Fraser and RMIT. Continuous executive study at the others.

Recognition · work led

Best New Business 2013, West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, Ambleside Dermedics. Four consecutive Best of the City recognitions, Yaletown Laser Centre. Singapore Kindness Award.

Philanthropy

Outside client work: house building in Cambodia with the Tabitha Foundation (2004), fundraising for the Druk White Lotus School in Ladakh, volunteering with Streetlytes UK in West London, and volunteer work across Thailand, Singapore and the UK focused on women, youth and families. It started early and it has not stopped.

Affiliations

Team Manager, Women in Tech Canada, the national network for women building and leading in technology.

In the field · philanthropy, study, distance
Cambodia, 2004 · a house built with the Tabitha Foundation
Cambodia, 2004 · Bayon, Angkor
Streetlytes UK · Christmas dinner for homeless and vulnerable neighbours, Shepherd’s Bush
Ladakh, 2007 · Thiksey, on the road to the Druk White Lotus School. Photograph by Adam Miller
Ladakh, 2007 · the fundraising trek, 3,500 metres up
Singapore, 2008 · volunteer ecotourism camp with the Canadian International School
Royal Parks Half, London · bib 21059
The Mall · the last kilometre
Early brand experience

Brand instincts shaped early, through front-line ambassador and experiential work with globally recognised names, LEGO, Ferrero Rocher, Kodak and the Vancouver Canucks, an education in brand as a lived experience before becoming the strategist behind it.

LEGO Ferrero Rocher Kodak Vancouver Canucks

Selected relationships

Eighteen years, eight markets, and not one kind of relationship. Some of these I advised or built for. Some I worked inside, as an employee or a founder. Some I met early, interning across Asia Pacific. And some are where the work was published rather than where I worked.

Advised, collaborated or worked from the inside
Hootsuite Behnoush Malek DREAMGRIP CES 103.5 QMFM Sharegain California Closets Duke of Design Watchtower HOFA Gallery 1 Hotel Mayfair JD Malat Gallery Bernard Jacobson Gallery Oracle Astral Media Bell Media TSN 1040 Vancouver Pattison MAC Marketing NextFactor DM Technologies Shining AI Solutions GabiWell Qi Integrated Health Westcoast Hot Yoga The Shophouse Fish Media Group The Mark
Yaletown Elekta Philips Healthcare Galderma GEA Yaletown Laser & Cosmetic Dentistry Cynosure Sciton HALO Forever Bare BBL HydraFacial jane iredale SkinCeuticals Ultherapy Fraxel Six Month Smiles LEGO Ferrero Rocher Kodak Vancouver Canucks Vancouver Farmers Markets Vancouver Fashion Week The Wellness Show Grand Designs Live Surface Design Show EclipsysAPH Group

Eclipsys and APH Group are healthcare and health IT across Singapore and Hong Kong, early internships, and where the international instinct started: watching a business behave one way at home and quietly stop working across a border.

Work has been featured in
The Globe and Mail CineD Elle Boulevard Magazine CTV Global News The Real Housewives of Vancouver North Shore News Life Magazines House Magazines Fashion Magazine Western Living Vancouver Magazine The Georgia Straight Mayfair Life VancouverMom West Vancouver · North Vancouver

Includes early experiential and brand-ambassador work alongside later strategic engagements.

In their words

Named, attributed, shared with permission. A client of ten years, the people who managed me, and the people who worked beside me.

Michelle built the brand underneath my website: the positioning, the language, and a named offer, The Vision Review, that gives sellers a real reason to call me before they list. It finally looks like the calibre of property I represent, including a $12.8 million sale.
Behnoush MalekLuxury real estate · West Vancouver · client
I’ve had the privilege of working with Michelle across multiple ventures in my business portfolio for over ten years.
Veronica ChanPortfolio owner · manufacturing & construction · client of 10+ years
I was most impressed with the impact she had on the marketing department in a very short time. Efficient, proactive, dependable and extremely creative.
Margo DalinghausClinical Consultant · Yaletown Laser
One of the most proactive, driven and creative individuals I’ve ever come across. A highly skilled professional marketer who adds great value to any organisation.
Gabriele BrencherFounder, Gabiwell · wellness & nutrition · client
From our first meeting until my last day working with her, she has shown nothing but the utmost in professionalism, creativity and support.
Sarah EnmanManager · Westcoast Hot Yoga

Read them in full →

She brought high-impact initiatives that left a lasting mark, a tremendous asset to any team. Liad Amit · Co-Founder & CMO, Sharegain

Her strategic insights and creative capabilities played a pivotal role in enhancing Sharegain’s brand visibility… including a rebrand, resulting in a measurable increase in user acquisition and retention.Susan C. Peters · then Head of Americas, Sharegain, managed Michelle directly

Read the recommendations, in full →

Advisory areas Start a conversation

Questions

What a founder-side strategist is, and how the work happens.

What is a founder-side strategist?
Someone who works beside the founder, not outside the business as a vendor, connecting strategy, brand, experience and operating structure. I turn ambitious visions into structures that can hold: clear positioning, a coherent brand, and systems a team can actually run.
What does "structure" mean?
The relationship between what the founder believes, what the business promises, what the market understands, what the customer experiences, and what the organisation can consistently deliver. Most growth problems are structure problems in disguise.
Who is it for?
Founders and leadership teams at a consequential build, repositioning or next chapter, especially premium, cultural, media, community and high-trust businesses whose vision has outgrown their structure.
How do you work together?
Begin with the Diagnostic or a conversation. Engagements run as a Structure Review, a Focused Build, a Strategic Build, an ongoing Advisory Seat, or an Embedded Team, with mentorship, coaching and speaking also available.
Do you work as a fractional CMO?
Sometimes, and the Advisory Seat and the Embedded Team are the closest thing to it. A fractional CMO fills the marketing seat. Most businesses that reach me are not missing the seat, they are missing the structure underneath it. I build that first and hand it over. The longer answer →
Where are you based?
Vancouver, London and Singapore. British European, born and raised in Singapore, working internationally.
If this reads like your moment

Your next chapter needs a structure that can hold it.

Most engagements begin with a conversation. If you would rather start alone, the Diagnostic takes two minutes and will tell you honestly whether the answer is “not yet.”

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