Kait Stephens

Helping brands bridge offline & online commerce 🔁 | Omnichannel Queen 👑 | Host of the Omnichannel Marketer podcast 🎙️ | CEO & Co-Founder @ Brij 🌉 | Angel Investor

👋👋👋 I’m Kait the CEO and Founder of BRIJ! My friends call me the queen of Omnichannel 👑. I also host a podcast called the Omnichannel Marketer 🎙️. 

My background is in Omnichannel Retail and Ecommerce. I help brands solve the pain of having no connection, relationship, or insights from buyers coming through retail and marketplace channels.

I share Omnichannel strategy and best practices. 

And I founded BRIJ, a platform for brands to build Omnichannel Experiences - a new digital touch point in physical channels to communicate key messages, collect 1st party data, and drive reorder.

If you ever want to talk Omichannel, the future of retail, connected experience, or QR codes, I’m happy to chat any time!

CEO & Co-Founder

Brij is building the infrastructure to "bridge" online & offline channels.

Do you know anything about the people who purchased your product at Retail or on Amazon today?

It is a simple, powerful question. That no one in consumer marketing can answer. 

Retail and Marketplace are black box channels… until now.

Where most consumer brands see darkness, Brij sees a new brand touch point, a communication channel, access to customers (and associated data), and new marketing opportunities. 

Brij is an Omnichannel Marketing platform that empowers brands to bridge the offline & online gap to create a connected on-brand experience that provides more value to buyers. 

And helps marketers to know who purchased what, when, and where - every day, in real-time, 24/7/365.

I’m so excited to be speaking at empowHER. x Shopify’s Built By HER Summit on March 11th.

This event is a full-day, invitation-led, workshop-style experience for women building within the Shopify ecosystem - founders, decision-makers, marketing leaders, and operators across DTC, retail, and commerce technology.

Here’s what I’ve learned as a founder:
1️⃣ Access matters
2️⃣ Community matters more
3️⃣ Seeing someone who looks like you on stage? It changes what feels possible

When I started Brij, I wasn’t thinking about “being a female founder.” I was thinking about solving a real problem for brands and retailers. 

But along the way, I’ve realized how powerful it is to build in public as a woman in tech, especially in AI and commerce - industries still largely shaped by men.

Events like Built By HER create something bigger than a panel. They create momentum.

I’m excited to share:
✨ Lessons from scaling Brij
✨ What I’m seeing in AI + retail right now
✨ And how to build with conviction (even when the odds aren’t stacked in your favor)

If you are responsible for growth, innovation, or execution inside your company, this room is for you.

It’s such an honor to be speaking alongside these incredible women: Amanda Sannella, McKayla Lankau, Julia Winn, Lizzie Andrew, Lena El-Ayoubi, Tash Courtenay-Smith, Gina Perrelli.

Tickets linked in the comments👇

People say to me, “You make running a business and being a mom look effortless.”

And I always laugh a little.

Because what you’re not seeing is:
- The board deck getting rewritten at 11:47pm
- The Slack threads I’m mentally responding to during bath time
- The five-year product vision living next to the girls’ story books
- The constant toggling between CEO brain and mom brain

It’s not effortless or easy. It’s integrated.

Building a company is a full-time job. Raising kids is a full-time job.

I just happen to love two full-time jobs at once.

Is it chaotic? Definitely. Is it worth it? Every single time.

The real skill isn’t balance. 
It’s knowing when to zoom out, and when to be fully, completely in the room.

Curious, what’s something people think you make look easy that absolutely isn’t?

If you want to see where CPG is headed next, you go to Expo West.

March 3–6, Sarah (Davidson) Molloy, Andrew Zimmerman, Paul Piazza, and I will be in Anaheim, CA. Natural Products Expo West is one of those rare moments where you can actually feel the future of consumer brands unfolding in real time.

New products. Fun outfits.

There is truly no conference that is more fun.

If you’re going to be there, let’s connect.

What are you most excited to see this year? #expowest

Congrats to our friends & customers at Gimme Beauty on their nationwide Target launch. 

👏👏 Jeff Durham

CEO, Co-Founder Durham Brands (Gimme Beauty®), Founder CPGX Forum

Launching TODAY nation-wide at Target 
🎯 🙌 🎉 !!!

Heatless curling done the Gimme Beauty way. The BETTER way.

Wrap.
Rest.
Reveal.

Women know that heat damages hair. Curling hair while you sleep is not new. 
BUT... other solutions are bulky, make it hard to sleep in, too silky that hair slides off, and most get bad reviews.

This new disruptive version is minimalistic, super soft, comfortable, breathable fabric that grips without damaging, and the CURLS - the Women who have used this system are hooked! 

And of course, they are all designed by hair type: Fine, Medium, and Thick versions. (also doubles as big curls, medium curls, and small curls) Find the one that's right for you. 

Go to Target - Find the Gimme Beauty collection. Give it a try.

Your support means the world to us and our mission!

Go Gimme!!! Enjoy one of our national commercial spots here below. A lot of eyeballs are going see this and the campaign fireworks are just getting started...

Hot take: Getting on shelf is the easy part.

Staying on shelf is where brands live or die.

I’ll be at Natural Products Expo West March 3–5 with the Brij team, meeting founders focused on driving the velocity that keeps buyers happy and driving repeat purchases.

If retail performance is the goal - not just logos on a deck - let’s talk.

Here’s what I’m hearing from brands right now: 
1️⃣ Retail is more competitive than ever
2️⃣ Paid acquisition costs aren’t getting cheaper
3️⃣ Brands are sitting on incredible in-store demand, but not capturing the data

That’s the gap we help close.

At Brij, we use AI-powered rebates to help brands:
- Drive conversion & velocity at shelf
- Capture first-party data compliantly
- Build owned relationships beyond retail
- Actually measure what’s working to drive revenue growth and ROAS

If you're a brand leader thinking about how to connect retail to growth and retention, I’d love to meet.

Grab time with us below! 👇

Let’s make Expo count.

Excited to be part of The Shortlist NY Founder Showcase on February 23rd!

I’ll be sharing what we’re building at Brij - and why I believe the future of commerce is owned relationships, not rented audiences.

10 spots left if you want in 👀

gathering extraordinary people & angel investing | x-google, meta

I'm excited to reveal the extraordinary founders who will be presenting at The Shortlist NY Founder Showcase on Feb 23

This month's lineup features six breakout founders in NYC - the types of startups you want to know before everyone else does.

– Chris Hladczuk, Goldman Sachs alum who raised $31m to build Hanover Park, an AI-native fund administrator with $10B+ in assets.

– Weber Wong, former Evercore and Menlo Ventures, who raised $42m for FLORA, from Redpoint, a16z, and Menlo Ventures to build Cursor for creatives.

– Rohan Pavuluri, Harvard alum who scaled Speechify to 50m+ users and 160 people.

– Kait Stephens, Airbnb, Blackstone, and Goldman Sachs alum who raised $8m to bridge offline-to-online customer relationships with AI with Brij.

– Oliver Brocato, former founder of Tabs (8-figure revenue), who scaled Bustem.com to $3m+ ARR to protect eComm brands from copycats.

– Kevin Weatherman, Twitter alum who raised $6m from M12, Eniac Ventures to build Upscale AI – an AI platform to generate and optimize video ads.

Each founder will have 8 minutes to convince you why you should join their mission to transform the world.

Meet them in person on Feb 23 at betaworks!

Apply to attend (we have 10 spots left): https://lnkd.in/esj4DkNe

TrackMage

Key Responsibilities:
- Defining the clear, concise, and compelling vision for the business
- Recruiting the team, setting up company operations and managing employees payroll
- Marketing research and execution
- Planning, defining and prioritising of all key activities
- Scheduling and building TrackMage.com software
- Raising money and promotion of the company
- Sales management and setting up of a sales pipeline

Founder

WeBananas Software Inc.

Irina set up the SCRUM process in the company with in-house and remote teams in the mix. Key responsibility is driving the application to the release and make it a success.

Scrum Master / Project Manager

Nimbus Web Inc

Review: 
"Originally when I first contacted Irina I was a SAAS founder stuck in managing all my teams' operations trying to make all the developers work efficiently and deliver good results.
The thing is, my team always asked too many questions and they didn't have a good idea what to do all the time.
The biggest obstacle was that I wanted to start finally focusing on marketing our system, but I couldn't step away from managing the daily operations. That meant I couldn't really grow the business if I didn't switch the focus, which meant I wasn't able to make my project a success.
Then I hired Irina to help to build a company culture that can support self-organization!
In only a few hours it became crystal clear to me how to make developers manage themselves and still be on track because I saw that I actually could do less hands-on management and my team could still perform.
With Irina as our Agile coach, I can now finally focus on growing my business and be sure my team has got my back.
And that's why I'm providing my highest recommendations to work with Irina so you can get these types of results too."

Agile Coach to optimize team workflow and project management

CloudAnswers

As a consultant, Irina is streamlining and optimizing business processes and operations.

Agile Coach / Scrum Consultant

Think Media Labs

Responsibilities of an Agile Project Manager or Scrum Master:
* Define all of the touchpoints that are typical of a Sprint: backlog, velocity, sprint review meeting, sprint retrospective meeting,
* Providing, in writing, the guidelines for each of the sprint touchpoints above. For example, Daily Scrum Meeting / Standup has a maximum of 15 minutes,
* Advising on how the above touchpoints can be used in a non-software development environment of consulting,
* Attending with us the initial set of touchpoints to monitor and give feedback on what is working and what needs more work
* Helping set up a tool (or tools such as ClickUp) to organize the sprints

Agile Project Management Consultant / Coach

StoriesOnBoard

Agile consultant with content management experience

Foretold.io

Review:
"Irina is fantastic. Highly responsive, very plentiful advice. She worked with me to understand Jira and Upwork hiring. She responded to several periodic messages incredibly quickly with useful feedback."

Project Management Mentor / Coach for Statistica l/ Technical Nonprofit

Mustly.io

Review: 
"Irina is one-of-a-kind, a hidden gem on the platform. Thoughtful, straightforward, resourceful and with very special expertises. Definitely hope to work again with her soon."

Startup consultant / advisor

Automated Dreams

Review: 
"Hire Irina if:
🚫 You're tired of hiring and re-hiring amateur project managers
🚫 You know that your project management system is lacking
🚫 You aren't surrounded with people that give you the constructive and direct feedback you need to grow your business
🚫 You're in charge of managing projects and you HATE it or like it but are lying to yourself at being good at it
✅ You're ready for growth
✅ You're ready for clarity on what's going on in your business
✅ You're a business owner long overdue for a vacation but can't take one because you're afraid everything will fall apart.

Irina was a pivotal resource in our growth as a company at a very crucial point. She came in as I was really feeling the pain of being a solo business owner that was trying to grow their organization and was feeling the growing pain of wearing so many hats in the business that I wasn't suited for.

Irina was outside of my initial budget, but I was 100% certain she was the right expert to untangle the mess and set our startup in a better growth trajectory with a cleaned-up PM experience. She was confident and decisive from the get-go, which was great. I get that some people want to collaborate with experts, but in an area where I have no expertise, that is the last thing I need to be doing. 

There are very few people that you can 100% trust, and Irina is one of them. With her, I always felt that if something went wrong she would take complete ownership to fix that problem at all costs and wouldn't throw up her hands. She's not only a specialist in PM but a generalist overall when it comes to growing a business and it's operations, and getting sh*t done! 

Had I not hired Irina when I did, I'd not be surprised if our business had closed due to crumbling operations and lackluster project management expertise."

Project Manager

Vyng, Inc.

Review:
"We were finding our engineering velocity had ground to a halt as we brought on more engineers. Especially with remote teams, improving communication and process became a necessity. So we set out to find a coach to help us improve our agile process and communication.
Irina was incredibly professional and came in with well-honed process principles. She met with team members and reviewed Jira, then hit the ground running with team education via video demos, process proposals and overall consensus-building (what good is a process if everyone is not on board).
She then set up all our team meetings with agendas, and acted as a scrum master, moderator and referee for standup, backlog refinement, sprint planning, sprint review, and retrospective ensuring we all adhered to the process, played our defined roles and stuck to the principles of Scrum. Additionally, she added some time-saving automation in Jira and introduced us to some cool 3rd party tools that saved us real-time.
Overall, Irina quickly became an invaluable member of our team, including offering great insight to our leadership team and helped us graduate from the world of the processes to a more self-governing team with unified understanding and accountability.
If you are a startup or maturing engineering team that has sort of made-up process, as an amalgamation of what different engineers have picked up from various companies they’ve worked out, we would highly recommend working with Irina, to unify your process, and provide the predictability that communication and accountability bring."

Scrum Master for Android App Project

Founder @ TrackMage | I help DTC ecommerce brands create memorable post-purchase experiences, foster repeat business, customer loyalty, boost sales and streamline ops with TrackMage.

🚀  Nice to meet you, I'm Irina, your ecommerce Business Optimization Expert! 🚀

🌐 Specializes in Operations & Processes Optimization for businesses worldwide
🏆 Worked with 50+ small and large companies to create outstanding results
🛍️ eCommerce industry veteran with 10.5 years of experience
📦 Founder of TrackMage.com, your eCommerce automation solution

TrackMage's Outstanding Features:

📦 Automated shipment tracking for seamless order management
📈 Upsell additional products to boost sales effortlessly
💌 Automatic follow-ups for reviews, improving customer satisfaction
⏱️ Reduce customer support time by 70% and increase sales by 5-10% on autopilot

💡 Empowering Online Content Creators:
💰 Monetize your following without relying on social media platforms
🧵 Efficiently manage the supply chain for branded merchandise
🎨 Focus on what you do best: creating content

🎙️ Available as a Podcast Guest:

📚 Expert insights on optimizing processes and standing out in a competitive market
🎯 Topics: post-purchase sales funnels, automation, customer retention, and more
💼 Discuss entrepreneurship, leadership, and management strategies


🎁 FREE eBook:
📈 Learn how to make 5-10% extra sales on autopilot without increasing ad spend or hiring more staff
📚 Grab your copy at: https://trackmage.com/flywheel-extra-sales/
🔗 Connect with Irina today and supercharge your business!

Irina Poddubnaia

Reinventing yourself is not an identity crisis. It is a growth strategy.
I reinvent myself every 2 to 3 years. Sometimes - every project.
Same brain. New mission. New skill stack.

Marketing culture wants you boxed into one label.
One lane. One headline. One “thing”.
That works for selling templates. Not for building real leverage.

Here’s my rule.
Keep exploration private. Keep outcomes public.

Public:
What I ship. What I learned. What I can do for you now.

Private:
The messy rebuild. The doubt. The experiments. The pivots.

If you post every reinvention in real time, you look unstable.
If you hide forever, you look invisible.

Publish when the new version has proof.
Revenue. Results. Reps. Receipts.

From the Top of The World Burj Khalifa in Dubai 1920 feet (585.36 meters) high

Results-Focused Investor | Strategic Advisor. I turn big ideas into unstoppable ventures that scale fast. I talk about AI, Robotics and Growth

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Kait Stephens's LinkedIn Performance

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