Rod Whitson
Senior Brand Advisor
Rod has been there and done that, and brings tremendous experience and value to helping Nominee and its clients achieve their goals.
Rod serves as a trusted advisor to CEOs, founders, owners and other key executives, with a proven record of leading strategic growth initiatives in diverse organizations. Rod has served as CEO/President of three financial services firms. Rod also served as President of The Townsend Agency in San Diego, a firm specializing in technology and life sciences branding and marketing. There he led successful international strategy and branding engagements for Bank of Southern California, Marsh & McLennan, Intel, BAE Systems, QUALCOMM, ARM, Toshiba, Dowpharma, Merck Biosciences, Accelrys, Diversa, Gen-Probe, Applied Molecular Evolution and a host of early stage companies. Rod and The Townsend Agency were awarded the Strategic Planning Award for distinction in the practice of strategy by the Association of Strategic Planning. He serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Brand Strategy based in London in addition to teaching branding, messaging and positioning at The University of California, San Diego.
In between meetings, you'll catch Rod reading The Wall Street Journal and restoring vintage BMW motorcycles (he currently has four, but is always on the lookout for the next barn bike). Rod has been married to his #1 fan & inspiration, Kathy, for over thirty years who he's raised four "mostly grown" children with.