Our Leadership Team

Brad Costello brings over 20 years of experience with Fortune 500 corporations. Brad began his career at Federal Express Corporation. His tenure included the formative years of FedEx during which time the core infrastructure and service strategy still used today was implemented. Brad’s ever expanding responsibilities culminated in his role as a managing director with US-wide responsibilities for the company.

Following his tenure at FedEx, Brad held executive positions at Pillsbury, PepsiCo and Office Depot. His roles at these companies included world-wide staff and general management responsibilities. While at Office Depot, he managed the company’s entry into the contract stationers industry. In this capacity he ran the simultaneous integration process for eight acquisitions and twenty-plus major market start-ups in order to create a national service network. Having completed the integration and launch for the company, Brad moved on to run the western U.S. region for the division.

Brad’s executive experience working for companies that represent some of the world’s leading brands gives him unique insights into what it really takes to create an organization that lives its brand. As a principal of BrandActive, Brad now brings this perspective to BrandActive’s clients.

Robynne Budish has been part of the marketing and branding community in Canada for over 20 years. She spent the first 6 years of her career in a traditional marketing capacity with Kraft/General Foods and from there moved to the agency side to become a partner at one of Canada’s leading branding consultancies, Spencer Francey Peters (SFP). During her 10 year tenure at SFP, Robynne worked across a broad range of industries and partnered with clients such as Seagrams, Proctor & Gamble, Nestle, Sara Lee, Mount Sinai Hospital, Second Cup, Black’s Camera, Imperial Oil, in the development of product positioning and brand strategy.

Robynne has been a principal at BrandActive for the past 8 years. She has used her understanding of what makes brands live in the marketplace to help clients translate brand objectives into implementation strategy. She has fulfilled this role for many of the highest profile branding projects in Canada in recent years including Alcan (acquisition of Algroup), Telus (acquisition of BC Tel), Allstream (formerly AT&T Canada), CIBC rebranding.

During her career, Robynne has spoken at numerous conferences for organizations such as the Packaging Association of Canada, Marketing Magazine and the Conference Board of Canada on a broad range of marketing and branding topics including Private Label Segmentation, Marketing to an Aging Consumer and Strategic Implementation Planning.

James Burn has a business and branding background and has worked for international and global clients on both sides of the Atlantic for over 20 years. As previous CEO of one of Canada’s top branding consultancies he was responsible for many substantial branding and re-branding projects in North America, and for several years, he led his agency’s team as global brand partner for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. James co-founded BrandActive in 1998 and has for many years played a central role in the evolution of the business, its processes and value delivery for clients. His general business background combined with his brand related experience positions him ideally to ensure that brands are implemented optimally from both a marketing and business perspective.