Sasha Strauss

In the midst of full time international work, Professor Sasha Strauss finished graduate school at USC in Communications, and UCLA in Business, and chose to stay on campus for eight more years— teaching graduate brand strategy and marketing courses as a professor at both universities to this day. Daily presentations to skeptical students and executives helped Strauss hone his speech craft, advancing him into the top ranks of global speakers.

Professor Strauss speaks at companies like Nestlé and LEGO, and conferences like TEDx and Google Think, delivering these award-winning forums worldwide, from China to Chile. He does all this while taking calls from NPR, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal as they seek his timely guidance on branding anything from corporations to nations. With a unique and proven perspective on how brands should be built and communicated, Professor Strauss opened his own brand management consultancy, Innovation Protocol, in Downtown Los Angeles. Since the company’s first day in 2006, 10% of every employee’s time has been given to non-profits and philanthropies. Now, with 20 coworkers in LA, San Francisco and New York, Innovation Protocol is a philanthropic force, delivering millions in non-profit brand development guidance internationally. The other 90% of the workforce’s time is spent brand thinking on behalf of many of the world’s most prominent brands, such as PayPal and Disney. All this traveling means Professor Strauss steps onto 100 commercial airplane flights a year, but can never check luggage for fear of missing a connection.

When feeding himself on the road he only goes for fruits, nuts and vegetables, but his favorite travel activity is dining in the homes of host families across cultures—where he will eat virtually anything he is served. Professor Strauss’ latest speech work, ‘Branding in the New Normal’, chronicles the distracted journey of the contemporary consumer mind, and outlines the seven must-do methods for building enduring brands in these wild times of global social, mobile, big data, and 3D printing.