The brand-led value
creation consultancy, carved out of Blackstone.
FUNDAMENTALco transforms the role of brand from a marketing tool into a high-leverage strategic asset—used by investors, CEOs, and boards to accelerate enterprise value creation.
Solutions
Fundamental
Strategy
Value Creation Fundamentals
Transformation & Growth Strategy
Brand Strategy & Positioning
Messaging & Communications Strategy
Brand Architecture & Ecosystems
Brand-Led Change Management
Fundamental Futures
Transformation & Growth Strategy
Brand Strategy & Positioning
Messaging & Communications Strategy
Brand Architecture & Ecosystems
Brand-Led Change Management
Fundamental Futures
Fundamental
Creative
Brand Identity
Brand Expression
Brand Experience
Marketing
Brand Expression
Brand Experience
Marketing
Fundamental
Ventures
Fundamental Portfolio
Fundamental Equity
Fundamental Arts
Fundamental Labs
Fundamental Equity
Fundamental Arts
Fundamental Labs
Partners
















Leadership
Jonny is the founder and CEO of FUNDAMENTALco. Prior to this he was the Global Head of Blackstone’s Brand Strategy and transformation for its portfolio of over 230 companies. He built the team responsible for ensuring a brand’s purpose, categorical positioning and values are clearly defined upstream in the sequence of value creation and are connected to all elements of the business transformation. Over a career that has crossed four continents, Jonny has helped create some of the most innovative and influential brand transformations over the last two decades. Prior to Blackstone, Jonny was Partner and Global Chief Strategy Officer at Droga5 (Adage’s and Adweek’s agency of the decade 2020), where he founded and led the strategic function at the agency while overseeing all strategic efforts for clients and new business, including brand and business strategy, innovation, media, data strategy and experience strategy. Experience includes leading the transformational thinking for JP Morgan Chase, Google, Facebook, Dyson, LVMH, Prudential, New York Times, Unilever, Mercedes-Benz, Adidas, United Rentals, among others. In 2011 he was the youngest inductee to the American Advertising Federation's Advertising Hall of Achievement (and only strategist), and in 2020 was named Chief Strategy Officer of the Year by AdAge’s Creativity Awards, in 2023, Jonny was honored on the Forbes list of most influential CMOs.
Jonny Bauer
CEO
Jenna Lyons will drive the creative vision for select engagements at FUNDAMENTALco. She is an iconic creative entrepreneur and media personality. Lyons spent 27 years, mostly at the helm of J.Crew Group as President and Executive Creative Director. Her style catapulted the company’s appeal and success.
Since leaving the brand in 2017 her most recent endeavors include The Real Housewives of New York on Bravo, her beauty brand LOVESEEN, a menagerie of private interior design clients and a partnership with Rockefeller Center to lead Placemaking design to execution. Lyons’ often Pinned homes have been featured heavily in print and online. She is one of the top designers on The Expert. Her style has an aspirational draw that is undeniable. She has delivered strategic design recommendations for Blackstone portfolio companies Interior Logic Group and Shopcore with the goal of elevating the direct to consumer offering inclusive of the UX, UI, design curation and retail experience.
Jenna Lyons
Exec Creative Director
Olivia facilitates and guides the company operations and talent to ensure the company's strategy and goals are met. Olivia joined from Blackstone where she scaled and operationalized brand transformation, enabling a small but senior team to engage successfully. She has led brand management at Unilever and Bacardi Limited, responsible for scaling brands globally and establishing JVPs with critical strategic partners including Facebook, TikTok. Prior to Blackstone, Olivia ran the Global Creative Centre of Excellence at the Estee Lauder Companies. In this role she established and deployed the brand and creative transformation initiatives to support a strategy designed to future proof brand equity, across a portfolio of 27 brands and 8000 stakeholders. She has a proven track record of establishing global practices to operationalize agency and client business, support margin expansion and enable agile and high-performance teams to drive meaningful brand strategy and produce award-winning creative.
Olivia Legere
President
Kate is an MD, Strategy, at FUNDAMENTALco, using brand to drive and operationalize value creation strategies for private equity backed businesses. Prior to FUNDAMENTALco, Kate was a Principal in Blackstone’s Brand Transformation group, who focused on growth and multiple expansion efforts for portfolio companies in Blackstone’s Infrastructure Fund. Her early career has spanned many types of roles from consulting at Deloitte in financial services, corporate strategy at Nike, and running strategy at Bullish, a hybrid consumer VC and brand consultancy, working with companies and investments like Peloton, Casper, Warby Parker, Function of Beauty, and other companies looking to disrupt their category.
Kate graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Business Economics and a B.A. in English literature. She also was a D1 athlete while at Brown, playing women’s soccer.
Kate Scott
MD
Jason is a multidisciplinary Executive Creative Cirector with over 25 years experience in design and branding. He’s the former ECD for JKR, North America, co-founder and ECD of For The People, and CD for Landor Paris and Sydney. His work is known for the seamless integration of strategy, writing, technology and design to create transformational work with both economic and social value. Jason has led major brand projects for clients such as Yahoo, Chime, Culture Amp, and NSW Government. He’s the former Chairman of the Australian Graphic Design Association and has always had a focus on developing talent in others. Jason is a highly awarded creative, with over 200 awards and accolades from all the major award shows.
Jason Little
Head of Design
Mike D’Estrada is a proven financial leader with close to 20 years experience managing agency growth, investment, capability expansion, client negotiations and ways of working, annual planning and all reporting, and employee KPI and compensation plans. Prior to Fundamentalco, he built a world class financial team able to support five Droga5 offices, and was instrumental in helping to grow and manage expansion of the company to $300M in revenue and industry high margins.
Mike D’Estrada
CFO
Tom Callard is a Managing Director of Strategy at FUNDAMENTALco. Previously he was Chief Strategy Officer for BBH across the New York and LA offices. BBH is a globally renowned brand strategy and creative agency, recognized as the world’s most effective agency (in driving commercial results), and famous for iconic long running campaigns for the likes of Audi, Axe and Jonny Walker.
At Blackstone, Tom ran Brand Transformation across their $600BN Real Estate Portfolio globally. He led initiatives across all Real Estate asset classes; Industrial and Warehouses (Link Logistics, Indurent, St. Modwen), Co-Working spaces (Tog, Fora), Hospitality (Crown Casino, Great Wolf Lodge, Extended Stay America) Housing (Tricon, Home Partners, Livcor), Retail (Shopcore) and Office (EQ, Willis Tower). He was responsible for developing a process for bringing best in class brand strategy and design to impact Real Estate asset valuations.
Tom Callard
Head of Strategy
Matthew Gardner is an award-winning strategist, creative director and entrepreneur with pioneering success in luxury, fashion and technology. Matthew was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in 2015 for his work at Droga5, which included leading the development and creation of Dwayne Johnson’s lifestyle brand Project Rock, rebranding the entertainment industry conglomerate Endeavor and leading strategy work for Hennessy, Puma, Spotify, Newcastle Brown Ale and the New Museum. He’s been awarded at Cannes Lions, the Effies, Jay Chiat Awards and more.
Matthew co-founded the AI and Web3 brand consultancy Rumfoords in 2020, where he served as creative director and chief strategy officer for Adidas’ “Into the Metaverse” campaign. The campaign, the first major brand success in the worlds of NFTs and the Metaverse, generated sales of $42M in NFTs in 72 hours. Matthew went on to serve as creative director for the first crypto and NFT projects for Dior, Ralph Lauren and Givenchy.
Matt Gardner
MD
George holds over 17 years of experience partnering with global business leaders to build brands, communications, and customer experiences that drive growth and create enterprise value. He has led a broad range of C-level client engagements for Google, JPMorgan Chase, T-Mobile, American Express, Rimowa, Tiffany & Co, and the New York Stock Exchange, among many others.
Prior to joining FUNDAMENTALco, George was Head of Strategy at Accenture Song, where he oversaw a team of over 70 strategists across brand, content, social, CRM, and comms. Previously, George held strategy leadership roles at Droga5 and R/GA, where he led digital and brand projects for Mastercard, Verizon, Nike, and Walmart.
George’s work has been awarded by the Cannes Lions, Effies, and Webby Awards. He has lectured at Miami Ad School and VCU Brandcenter, and has written for Fast Company.
George Bennett
MD
Ben Brown has served as a strategic lead on projects related to brand-building, service and product innovation, customer experience design, digital engagement and customer relationship management. His past client experience includes companies such as Blackstone, Prudential, DELL, Kimberly-Clark, LVMH, Uniqlo, The Coca-Cola Company, Pernod Ricard and Cirque du Soleil, among others.
After serving as Group Strategy Director at Droga5 for several years, he joined Blackstone in 2021 as part of its Brand Transformation and Strategy team, where he was dedicated to businesses falling within the firm’s flagship private equity fund. Since 2024, he has held the title of Managing Director, Strategy at FUNDAMENTALco.
Ben Brown
MD
Matt Kandela is a client leader specializing in brand transformation and growth strategies. Since 2017, he has partnered with CEOs and Founders of Private Equity and VC-backed companies to drive value-creation processes through his consultancy practice. Before this, Matt held several key positions at Saatchi & Saatchi where he served as Worldwide New Business Director and was instrumental in expanding the agency's global client base. Additionally, he took on roles as Global Client Lead managing significant client relationships and regional operations. Beyond his professional endeavors, Matt actively participates in the marketing community. He has been a Board Member at the Association of National Advertisers since October 2022, contributing to the advancement of business marketing practices.
Matt Kandela
MD










