Julie Smelansky | Partnerships & Growth for Consumer & Lifestyle Brands

About

I'm a builder. Give me a blank page and a hard target and I'll come back with the strategy, the relationships, and the system to make it real, usually faster than you'd expect.

My superpower is making people feel seen, whether that's a client, a partner, or a creative team, and turning that connection into something commercially real. Hand me a complex, ambiguous project and walk away: I'll figure it out, keep everyone informed, and deliver something you're proud of.

Ten years across consumer, lifestyle, travel, and community brands, with 800+ events produced along the way. The through-line never changes: I turn high-stakes ambiguity into repeatable, measurable growth, and moments people remember.

Scaled a partner channel from $0 to $1M+ in revenue in nine months
Generated 5,000 qualified leads through integrated field marketing and co-branded campaigns
Managed 30 active partner relationships end to end: onboarding, activation, and renewal
Produced 800+ events career-wide, end to end, owning concept, budget, logistics, and post-event reporting
Delivered against an $800K annual program budget with full P&L ownership
Won a competitive RFP and turned a creator program into a recurring, self-funding growth channel

Selected work

★ Flagship CaseCreator & Brand Partnerships

I won a competitive RFP, then turned the project into a growth engine no one else in the room saw coming.

Creator program · Birthright Israel pilot · North America & LATAM · Oct 2025 – Mar 2026

Birthright Israel launched a pilot creator incubator and opened it to their tour operators to bid on. I pursued the RFP for Yael Adventures and won it.

Leadership saw per-seat revenue. I saw a growth engine. A cohort of creators posting daily, tagging our staff and facilitators on the ground, was an always-on marketing and UGC machine, the exact fix for our real bottleneck: low awareness and soft enrollment. I built the internal case, won the program, and owned it end to end.

I turned an abstract vision into cross-functional execution, translating it across registration, operations, content, and marketing so every team knew what to build. Then I built the creator engine on purpose: priming creators to tag Yael and prepping our social team to amplify it in real time through co-branded collabs, story takeovers, and reposts.

It worked. Across two cohorts, ~60 creators produced 20+ co-branded collaborations and 250+ amplified stories, generating an estimated 100K+ impressions and a measurable lift in traffic and inquiries. A creator program that paid for itself as a growth channel.

Creators across 2 cohorts: 60Creators across 2 cohorts
Co-branded creator collaborations: 20+Co-branded creator collaborations
Amplified creator stories (2 cohorts): 250+Amplified creator stories (2 cohorts)
Impressions generated: Est. 100K+Impressions generated

More experience

Partnerships are the through-line. Each one started as a blank page. Pick a theme to see what I built with them.

Director of Business Development · 2025 – 2026 · B2B2C travel platform · Tel Aviv · Company wound down, 2026

Yael Adventures

Built the partner channel and growth engine from zero, and $1M in annual revenue with it.

I joined to stand up something that didn't exist yet. With no playbook, I built and scaled the partnerships function from scratch, closing 30 accounts in nine months at a 60% close rate across a global network of community leaders, founders, and organizational partners. I owned the full partner lifecycle from outreach and negotiation through contracting, including performance-based payout and rev-share structures, then onboarding, co-execution, health tracking, and renewals. I managed a partner coordinator and built the go-to-market system behind it: the partner channel, a North American sales team expansion plan, and a relationship-led outreach strategy that generated qualified B2B and B2C pipeline.

My clients were in New York, Italy, Buenos Aires, and Australia. My team was in Tel Aviv. Bridging that gap (culturally, linguistically, logistically) became one of my sharpest professional skills and one I rely on every day. The company wound down in 2026; the partner program I'd built had become its primary revenue channel.

Annual program revenue: $1M+Annual program revenue
Season 1 quota attainment (1,200 vs. 800 program participants): 150%Season 1 quota attainment (1,200 vs. 800 program participants)
Accounts closed in 9 months at a 60% close rate: 30Accounts closed in 9 months at a 60% close rate
Impressions: 100K+Impressions

More experience

Partnerships are the through-line. Each one started as a blank page. Pick a theme to see what I built with them.

Director of Business Development · 2025 – 2026 · B2B2C travel platform · Tel Aviv · Company wound down, 2026

Yael Adventures

Built the partner channel and growth engine from zero, and $1M in annual revenue with it.

I joined to stand up something that didn't exist yet. With no playbook, I built and scaled the partnerships function from scratch, closing 30 accounts in nine months at a 60% close rate across a global network of community leaders, founders, and organizational partners. I owned the full partner lifecycle from outreach and negotiation through contracting, including performance-based payout and rev-share structures, then onboarding, co-execution, health tracking, and renewals. I managed a partner coordinator and built the go-to-market system behind it: the partner channel, a North American sales team expansion plan, and a relationship-led outreach strategy that generated qualified B2B and B2C pipeline.

My clients were in New York, Italy, Buenos Aires, and Australia. My team was in Tel Aviv. Bridging that gap (culturally, linguistically, logistically) became one of my sharpest professional skills and one I rely on every day. The company wound down in 2026; the partner program I'd built had become its primary revenue channel.

Annual program revenue: $1M+Annual program revenue
Season 1 quota attainment (1,200 vs. 800 program participants): 150%Season 1 quota attainment (1,200 vs. 800 program participants)
Accounts closed in 9 months at a 60% close rate: 30Accounts closed in 9 months at a 60% close rate
Impressions: 100K+Impressions

What I'm known for

Built for the work that doesn't have a playbook yet.

01

I get people in the room

Partners, executives, founders, brands, sponsors, cross-functional stakeholders. I'm relationship-first, and I know how to turn a relationship into a signed deal, and keep it healthy enough to renew.

02

I turn first meetings into long-term partnerships

I remember what matters to people, follow up on the small things, and show up with the same energy every time. Clients don't just renew. They refer.

First meeting

→

Signed deal

→

Renewal

→

Referral

03

I build without a playbook

Three of my last four roles started with a blank page. Standing up a partner channel, building a creator program from an RFP win, launching virtual programming overnight, architecting a demand-gen engine. I don't wait for process. I create it.

04

I'm commercially minded

I think in close rates, quota, and pipeline. $1M+ in first-year revenue closed from zero. 60% close rate. 150% of quota in season one. 5,000+ qualified leads generated at 167% of target. I don't just connect the work back to a number. I close against it.

05

I'm a doer who finishes

From concept and budget to run-of-show, on-site direction, and post-event reporting, I own the whole arc. 800+ events produced career-wide, two international program cohorts launched in 3.5 months. I close the loop and report on it.

06

I make creative work land

I speak both languages fluently. I can sit with a client and genuinely feel what they're trying to say, then walk into a creative review and translate it into something the team can run with. When there's tension between what the client wants and what the team needs, I'm the person who finds the version everyone's proud of.

01

I get people in the room

Partners, executives, founders, brands, sponsors, cross-functional stakeholders. I'm relationship-first, and I know how to turn a relationship into a signed deal, and keep it healthy enough to renew.

02

I turn first meetings into long-term partnerships

I remember what matters to people, follow up on the small things, and show up with the same energy every time. Clients don't just renew. They refer.

First meeting

→

Signed deal

→

Renewal

→

Referral

03

I build without a playbook

Three of my last four roles started with a blank page. Standing up a partner channel, building a creator program from an RFP win, launching virtual programming overnight, architecting a demand-gen engine. I don't wait for process. I create it.

04

I'm commercially minded

I think in close rates, quota, and pipeline. $1M+ in first-year revenue closed from zero. 60% close rate. 150% of quota in season one. 5,000+ qualified leads generated at 167% of target. I don't just connect the work back to a number. I close against it.

05

I'm a doer who finishes

From concept and budget to run-of-show, on-site direction, and post-event reporting, I own the whole arc. 800+ events produced career-wide, two international program cohorts launched in 3.5 months. I close the loop and report on it.

06

I make creative work land

I speak both languages fluently. I can sit with a client and genuinely feel what they're trying to say, then walk into a creative review and translate it into something the team can run with. When there's tension between what the client wants and what the team needs, I'm the person who finds the version everyone's proud of.

Recommendations

From the people who've worked alongside me.

The care she puts into every detail is a reflection of how she approaches all of her professional relationships and why she excels at creating deep partnerships. She remembers what matters to people, follows through on the small things, and shows up with enthusiasm every time.

Lynnley Miller

Director of Innovation · Honeymoon Israel

Julie joined us at a pivotal time and literally built our partnership department from the ground up. She has a remarkable talent for identifying and cultivating new relationships, which significantly expanded our global network. Beyond just making connections, Julie brought a high level of operational excellence to the role. She successfully streamlined our reporting processes, ensuring that our growth was both measurable and sustainable.

Madison Greene

Director of Registration & Recruitment · Tailor Made Birthright

Julie is one of the best thought partners I've had while building Birthright Israel Onward Storytellers. Whatever Julie sets out to do, she exceeds expectations by multitudes and genuinely took the project to the next level.

Jacqueline Korren

Director · Birthright Onward Storytellers

How I work now

I've spent the last several months making AI a real part of how I operate.

Not the buzzword version. The operational version. When a project is moving, I use AI to build the research brief, draft the outreach, generate the proposal, and prep the campaign narrative, faster than most people open a slide deck. I build systems and automation flows, not just prompts. This portfolio is one example of what I build when I have a problem to solve.

//Prospect and market research & account intelligence, built with AI, not Googled
//Outreach and campaign systems I build and iterate, not just send
//Proposal and campaign toolkit generation for partner and brand conversations
//Workflow automation: reminders, follow-up triggers, reporting
//Vibe coding, including this portfolio

Tech Stack

The tools I rely on to manage pipeline, run programs, and keep operations tight.

SalesforceCRM

Monday.comPipeline & Partner Management

AirtablePartner Tracking & Reporting

AsanaProject Management

SlackTeam Communications

ChatGPTAI · Writing & Ideation

ClaudeAI · Research & Content

LinkedInProspecting & Outreach

CanvaDesign

MailchimpEmail Marketing

Google WorkspaceProductivity · Docs, Sheets, Slides

WixWebsite Building

ZoomCommunications

CventEvent Management

TripleSeatEvent Production · BEO Management

Microsoft OfficeProductivity

Certifications

CertificationEvent-Led Growth (ELG) MasterclassCvent & Splash

Using events as a revenue channel across the full funnel

What drives me is the moment something clicks — when a client stops vetting you and starts treating you like a collaborator. I've spent my career engineering that moment.

Everything I've built has been commercially connected:partner channels, demand gen engines, brand activations, retention systems. What I want now is to apply those instincts at a faster pace and a bigger scale — inside a high-growth company or across a roster of clients. Recurring revenue, tight feedback loops, and work that compounds. My sweet spot: account direction, partnerships, field marketing, and GTM — anywhere that rewards moving fast, owning ambiguity, and building the kind of client relationships that close deals and keep renewing.

I raise the energy in the room— a client pitch, a team kickoff, a tough negotiation. People do their best work when they're energized and trust the person leading. I take that seriously.

Creator & Brand PartnershipsExperiential & ActivationsEvent ProductionPartnershipsAccount DirectionGTM StrategyField MarketingLifestyle & TravelCommunityFull-cycle BDClient Services

Contact

Let's talk about what you're building.

EmailJulie.smelansky@gmail.com LinkedIn/in/julie-smelansky

JulieSmelansky

I won a competitive RFP, then turned the project into a growth engine no one else in the room saw coming.

Yael Adventures

Yael Adventures

Built for the work that doesn't have a playbook yet.

I get people in the room

I turn first meetings into long-term partnerships

I build without a playbook

I'm commercially minded

I'm a doer who finishes

I make creative work land

I get people in the room

I turn first meetings into long-term partnerships

I build without a playbook

I'm commercially minded

I'm a doer who finishes

I make creative work land

From the people who've worked alongside me.

I've spent the last several months making AI a real part of how I operate.

The tools I rely on to manage pipeline, run programs, and keep operations tight.

The work I'm here for: taking something being built from scratch and giving it the system, the relationships, and the momentum to match.

Let's talk about what you're building.

Julie
Smelansky