Our approach

“In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances.”
Jim Collins - Good to Great

We cannot agree more with Collins on this perspective.

We are a relatively small and fast moving team headquartered in Silicon Valley.We have been hiring exceptional talent from the beginning because we firmly believe in the Jim Collins advice about where most companies go wrong in business. When Collins and his team examined the companies that transformed from average to extraordinary, the difference was extraordinary people.

Kristin Pugh

Starting up a new business enterprise is something I have long dreamed about.  While completing my MBA I took classes in entrepreneurship and made it a goal for my professional career.  I was incredibly lucky to work in a series of start-ups within Hewlett Packard, Co for many years. During that time I lived and worked in Europe, Asia and United States.  After exciting years of working with first rate colleagues and customers, I left in 2009 to create my own company.

Starting up Malama Consulting, Inc. is the culmination of career focused on creating strategies and tools for fast growth and high profits through a passionately loyal customer base.  With the advent of pervasive tools on the web to support communities of customers, the time is right to bring Enterprise class customer loyalty programs to small businesses where the speed of deployment and ROI will be most dearly valued.

I hold a degree in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from the University of Southern California. I love meeting people whether it’s through professional networking, SCUBA diving, backpacking in the Sierra Mountains or most recently in the canine search & rescue community. Give me a call/tweet/SMS/FB post and check in. I’d love to hear from you.

Tiffany Tuell

Tiffany Tuell has spent the past 13 years learning, navigating and living business-to-business and business-to-consumer loyalty and her global loyalty dialect is a compilation of professional and personal experience. Tiffany’s loyalty perspectives have been evaluated for industry research and published. Tiffany has shared best practices with global audiences from San Francisco to Orlando; London to Sydney.

Prior to joining Malama in January 2011, Tiffany was supporting strategic accounts at HP (EDS) to roll out global customer experience initiatives. From 2006 to 2009, she led strategic loyalty marketing initiatives for Hewlett-Packard’s
multi-billion dollar software business. Previously, she created and launched the first ever global customer loyalty program for HP’s software business, Customer Connection, and built a global team of loyalty leaders responsible for management of a program that garnered recognition as a marketing best practice and received accolades from industry analysts. Tiffany holds a BA in Communications and Broadcasting from Colorado State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University. Her hometown is Westminster, Colorado and she now lives in San Jose, California with her husband Jeff, a 5^th grade school teacher and young daughter Lexi.

Robin Watson

Prior to joining Malama, Robin was Vice President Field Marketing for North America at CA Technologies. She was responsible for leading and developing the implementation of integrated marketing programs, processes, and campaigns tailored to support North America sales goals, and increase market awareness for key solutions while aligning to corporate objectives. Robin is recognized as a highly effective bridge between traditional marketing and sales organizations, driving and measuring lead generation programs targeted at growing the pipeline, and helping accelerating the sales process.

Prior to CA Robin was with Hewlett Packard running Americas Field Marketing. She came to HP through acquisition of Mercury in 2007. She joined Mercury in March of 2003. She was responsible for all field marketing activities across the Americas including executive events, industry conferences, and demand generation programs. In addition she managed the Mercury Customer Reference program. Her previous experience at Mercury was opening and managing the Executive Briefing Center. Prior to joining Mercury she spent several years in the software industry at companies such as Oracle, Ariba, and PeopleSoft in customer andsales facing roles for over 14 years.

Prior to joining the software industry Robin was in the fashion business and has over 11 years of experience in merchandising, sales, private label, and product development roles for various manufactures of apparel and personal care products.

Chandni Shah Markar

Chandni Shah Markar has been in the enterprise world since 2005, understanding the connection between sales and marketing in different industries, markets and cultures. She believes relationships are the business. They build loyalty, which in turn builds the trust for a fair exchange. She has worked and managed teams across the globe, breaking the communication barrier through trust, loyalty and friendship.

Before joining Malama in June 2011, Chandni was supporting the operations of Enterprise Business for HP.  She managed structure, end-to-end processes and marketing strategy for businesses across software, networking and services, and hardware encompassing analysis for over $55 billion across the globe. She created the infrastructure to process closed loop marketing for the Americas software team, including campaign set-up, lead management and ROI reporting. She has worked with support teams in India, Argentina, England, and Australia. Chandni holds a BA in Marketing and Statistics from California Polytechnic University. She is an Ethiopian born Indian who now lives in Santa Clara, Caifornia with her beloved husband Tahir, a entrepreneur in the electronics industry.