Nicole Khandhar is an Operations Executive, Organizational Architect, Emerging Companies Expert, and Advisor with nearly two decades of leadership experience masterminding with high profile brands and executive teams to create operational frameworks that seamlessly tie vision to maximum ROI and healthy profits. In sr. corporate and advisory roles, she has led strategic planning and change management initiatives for well-funded startups and emerging B2B & B2C businesses in diverse industries—from retail, apparel, CPG, food & beverage, and health & wellness, to technology, sports, entertainment, and non-profit. A top-down thinker, she specializes in building out tactical and dynamic end-to-end operational frameworks that can rapidly bend or pivot with ever-shifting priorities in ways that help companies scale into multi-million-dollar global brands. Her expertise: organizational strategy & mapping, dynamic project management, and operational efficiency & process improvement.
Nicole is the Head of Operations at Scale, a tech-driven direct-to-consumer company that builds and deploys next-generation CPG brands in the beauty, health and wellness industries. Reporting directly to the Scale Co-Founders, she oversees the company’s strategic planning and organizational mapping for rapid growth. The entire project management department reports to her, and she manages the company-wide quarterly planning, departmental audits and process improvement initiatives, and also runs the in-house creative agency. A career highlight is increasing Scale’s revenue per employee every year while expanding the company’s headcount by over 380% in just three years.
Previously, well-versed in corporate identity and online brand reputation strategies, Nicole held various marketing, PR and project management roles for billion-dollar and household name brands. As the Marketing Director at the iconic Ed Hardy, she successfully executed a media placement strategy that leveraged celebrities and resulted in a monthly average of 75 media placements and lucrative deals with Britney Spears, Hillary Clinton, Madonna, Lil Wayne, Michael Jackson, Nick Canon, Kim Kardashian, and ‘Lil Jon’, to name a few. Entrepreneurial-minded, Nicole also founded a profitable marketing consulting company managing 25+ high profile clients and brands.
Mentorship and integrity are core to Nicole’s value system; it is why she proactively looks for opportunities to connect with aspiring young professionals—both in the workplace and in life—to equip them with goal-setting, accountability and roadmap planning skills. A dynamic speaker and a former producer / on-air host for the Los Angeles Lakers, Nicole is passionate about educating others on the subjects of leadership development, organizational strategy and operational excellence.
Nicole holds a B.A. degree in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA, and a certification in Business Process Design for Strategic Management through the MIT Sloan Executive Education program. Growing up as a competitive athlete and sports enthusiast, Nicole, the proverbial boy mom, is likely spending weekends or Monday nights curled up on the couch with her two littles watching basketball or football (go LA Rams and LA Lakers!).