Nicole Portwood
Entrepreneur
Nicole has recently returned to her career-long love affair with distilled spirits by joining a group of entrepreneurs to launch a new-to-world brand. Before this new adventure, Nicole served as Chief Brand Officer at Live Nation Entertainment, where she was responsible for the overall development of the master brand across the channels & divisions where the company connects with fans worldwide, while continuing to expand the Live Nation product offering for both artists and fans. Prior to Live Nation, she was at PepsiCo where she served as Vice President of Marketing for Mountain Dew and the flavored soft drink portfolio. Before PepsiCo, Nicole served as the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Tito’s Handmade Vodka for nine years, building the marketing capabilities along with the brand, for which she was recognized as AdAge’s Marketer of the Year for 2017. Her early career spanned many brands in the spirits space and time at agencies across the spectrum from boutique to global powerhouses. Over the years, Portwood has dipped in and out of the entrepreneurial world, running a local theatre and creating and then selling a thriving pizza restaurant on Austin’s 6th Street. She studied theatre and philosophy at Southern Methodist University and now lives in New York with her husband and two children.