Arlene Wszalek is a strategic advisor and growth leader with 25+ years of experience spanning marketing, innovation, digital transformation, and governance-related work across the media, entertainment, hospitality, destination, and consumer lifestyle sectors.
She works with a select group of organizations on growth strategy, marketing, and decision-making, advising leadership teams at moments when direction isn’t obvious and decisions need to hold up under pressure. Her work often intersects with board-level priorities around growth, capital allocation, and performance..
As EVP, Strategy and Innovation at Allied Global Marketing, she led high-stakes engagements for Carnival Corp., The Venetian Las Vegas, Sony, LA Tourism, The Guardian, Netflix, Telemundo, and other global brands. Her work drove revenue growth, capability building, enterprise-wide innovation, and organizational alignment, including early leadership in AI adoption, automation, and data-driven decision-making.
Alongside her strategy and innovation work, Arlene has a long track record of developing leadership talent and building succession-ready teams. She’s identified and sponsored early- and mid-career leaders, helped organizations retain high-potential talent, and strengthened bench depth in roles critical to long-term growth and continuity.
Today, she advises a select group of companies on growth strategy, market expansion, business planning, and RFP structure and evaluation, supporting leadership teams in making sound strategic decisions. She brings particular perspective to organizations navigating leadership transition or talent pipeline constraints, where early investment in people materially affects execution and resilience.
Earlier in her career, she began in paid media at Ogilvy in Los Angeles before moving across artist management, film and television, digital production, and startup ventures—experience that underpins her ability to connect brand, performance, and results. She also speaks regularly at industry conferences and executive forums on marketing strategy, emerging technology, and leadership.
Arlene is a member of the Producers Guild, the Television Academy, and NARAS. Her speaking engagements include the Netflix x Otis Entertainment Certificate Program, the Women in Hospitality Leadership Conference, Digital Hollywood, the USC Annenberg School for Communication, Chapman University, and the Otis College of Art and Design. She was a founding board member of Vintage Hollywood Foundation and served on the President’s Council of her alma mater, Smith College. She’s lived and worked in both the US and the UK.