Who we are
coFounder
Baiba is a strategist, educator, and co-founder of brandLingual, based in Berlin. Her work sits where brand strategy, communication planning, and marketing education overlap, with a steady obsession: turning dense theory into tools thinking teams can actually use, without needing a decoder ring.
Over the past decade, Baiba has worked across the full communications ecosystem. She has held agency strategy roles, conducted market research at Kantar, led in higher education as a CMO and research project manager, and built learning communities in both physical rooms and digital ones. Her client work spans global brands including Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone, ALDI, L’Oréal Paris, and Google, alongside airlines, pharmaceutical companies, and financial services platforms across Asia, Europe, and North America. Across these contexts, she has navigated the cultural, commercial, and political realities that decide whether strategy lives or dies once it leaves the slide deck.
She uses evidence, but isn’t tied to it. She watches when a theory fails under pressure and figures out how to rebuild it stronger. That outlook makes her a trusted partner for brands, universities, and leadership teams wanting clear, realistic alignment.
Alongside her consulting work, Baiba is a committed educator and community builder. She lectures internationally, including at Miami Ad School, co-founded 30-Minute Planning University, and leads Strategy Pints Berlin, a practitioner community designed for honest conversation, shared learning, and sharper thinking beyond conference stages and slideware.
She is also the founder of Planning Folklore, a platform focused on strengthening strategic craft through shared language, open dialogue, and collaborative problem-solving. Baiba holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Management and Public Relations from Rīga Stradiņš University. Across everything she builds, she’s driven by a consistent belief: better outcomes come from thoughtful translation, not rigid doctrine.
coFounder
Christopher is a brand strategist, educator, and co-founder of brandLingual, based in Dallas, Texas. His work spans brand strategy, marketing effectiveness, creative planning, and education, with a long-running focus on helping organizations build brands that are easier to buy and harder to forget.
Christopher entered advertising during the industry’s early digital shift and has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of creativity and effectiveness. He built a 25-year career at TRG, shaping work across categories including automotive, retail, spirits, beverage, hospitality, telecommunications, entertainment, higher education, and media. His client experience includes brands such as Alfa Romeo, The Home Depot, Sub-Zero/Wolf luxury appliances, Chick-fil-A, Patrôn Spirits, Keurig, Dr Pepper, 7-Up, Farmers Insurance, Dave’s Killer Bread, and too many casual dining restaurants. Along the way, the work earned Effie recognition for effectiveness, the kind of applause that has to show its math.
Beyond client work, Christopher has focused on building strategic capability inside organizations. His experience includes leading strategist training across international markets, serving as a long-term liaison to a partner agency in Tokyo, and helping guide TRG’s re-founding as a creativity collective centered on making memories that move markets.
In parallel, Christopher has built a deep career as an educator. For more than twenty years, he has taught, mentored, and lectured at institutions including Miami Ad School, SMU, VCU Brandcenter, and UT Austin, as well as professional communities worldwide. He is an Ehrenberg-Bass Institute executive program graduate, graduated with distinction from the Master of Advertising Effectiveness program, and was named Educator of the Year by the American Advertising Federation in 2025, the first non-university practitioner to receive the honor since 1968.
Christopher’s teaching and writing share the same translation mindset as his strategy work. He treats evidence as a decision aid, not a belief system, and focuses on helping practitioners navigate the messy middle where intuition, creativity, and empirical reality collide under pressure. brandLingual reflects that shared philosophy, built for people making real decisions with real budgets, real stakeholders, and real consequences.
