Kai is an author, speaker, and strategy advisor to C-suite executives, startup founders, marketers, and talent. He focuses on how to make things sticky, shareable, and culturally-infectious. His work concentrates on the intersection of communication, consumer behavior brand strategy, and technology. In 2019, his newest book “Follow the Feeling: Brand Building in a Noisy World” was released; the book compresses research on 1,500 fast-growing companies from Alibaba to Zara into a new five-part branding system called LAVEC that illuminates shortcuts in creating strong emotional connections between brands, consumers, and communities.

He has been recognized as a leader by Forbes, INC, Adweek, C-Suite Quarterly, and the Advertising Research Foundation. As a scholar-practitioner, he is a lecturer at Columbia University and global consulting partner at Ogilvy. His courses focus on influence, rhetoric, & persuasion, and how communication is impacted by technology. A frequent keynote speaker at conferences and Fortune 500 companies, Kai has most recently spoken at events for organizations including the American Marketing Association, PR Society of America, Association of National Advertisers, and SXSW. Recently, Kai was named to Thinkers50 Radar 2020 as one of the top 30 thought-leaders to watch in the world.

Specializing in big brand (re)launches, he has worked on the management team for a $100 million media platform (REVOLT) founded by Sean Diddy Combs, started a tech accelerator for Atom Factory (whose portfolio includes 100+ leading startups from Uber to Spotify), developed strategy for album launches (Meghan Trainor, Kamasi Washington, and Benny Cassette), and managed strategic planning for $100 million integrated marketing campaigns for Bank of America, HP, McDonald's, Bacardi, and L’Oreal.

Kai earned a masters in strategic communication from Columbia University and a bachelors in economics from The University of Chicago. An avid traveler, Kai lived in Germany during childhood and has visited over 20 countries. A trend-eating tech-evangelist, Kai also has a wicked talent for photography. In 2016, he launched Harlem Tech Village to apply scalable solutions to closing the tech access and education gap for young adults. He resides in New York City.

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