Why marketing and branding, and not something else?

Not the version I'd give in an interview. The actual answer.

I started in classrooms, not campaigns, teaching phonics and building curriculum for schools that needed to explain themselves to families with a hundred other options.

Marketing, done honestly, is just that moment, scaled up. The gap between what a business says and what's actually true, closed.

I'm not interested in marketing that makes a business sound impressive. I'm interested in marketing that makes a business sound like itself.

That's the thread from a phonics classroom in Surat to a Marketing, Growth & Client Strategy Executive, Company Director seat running strategy across India and Germany. Same instinct, different rooms.

Mehak holding a tumbler with a "Task List" sticky note
A Memory

I was picking brands before I could read.

The orange box always won. Then I'd "go shopping" with an old bag on my shoulder, pick things up, and sound out the labels out loud, brand names I couldn't actually read yet, just guessing at.

Color first. Then the words. Then the name that has to actually mean something once you can say it.

Young Mehak with a bag on her shoulder, mid "shopping trip"

The actual path, not the highlight reel.

Ongoing

Independent Consulting

Unpaid, by choice. Where strategy gets tested outside the agency.

2024–Present

Marketing, Growth & Client Strategy Executive, Company Director, Craft My Brand

Strategy and client leadership for a European roster.

2022–24

Digital Marketer, repalogic GmbH

Germany. Learned cross-border collaboration from the inside.

2022

The Jump

Widening scope, and realizing positioning problems energized me more than anything else on my plate.

2013–22

School Marketing Lead & Educator

Three schools, India. Positioning and admissions, years before "digital marketing" was a job title there.

2012–15

B.Com, Business Administration

METAS Adventist College. Pointed toward a classroom instead.

What I actually do with the rest of my time.

Chronic traveler. Most of my best thinking happens between two time zones. And the person friends call first to ask if an AI tool is actually useful, or just noise.

Let's talk about the role.