Clare Burnham - From Startups to Starbucks - Innovation at Consumer Brands

Clare has spent nearly a decade leading product, strategy, and – most recently – innovation efforts for consumer brands, as well as serving as a consultant and coach for early-stage startups.

Her career began in the apparel industry as a product manager and merchant for Abercrombie & Fitch and eventually as an intrapreneur inside lululemon, where she helped define, validate, and scale the outlet stores model as a new business line for the company.

Clare left lululemon to pursue her MBA at Georgetown, where she focused on entrepreneurship, serving as President of the MBA Entrepreneurship & VC Club, consulting with DMV startups via the InSITE Fellowship, and spending a semester in VC on the growth equity team at Revolution.

After Georgetown, Clare joined Amazon in a technical product role before being recruited to join Starbucks, where she worked with the executive team to design and implement a suite of internal innovation programs across the company. During her tenure there, the company opened its first full-service innovation facility where Clare launched and led its digital counterpart, Springboard: an online innovation and crowdsourcing platform.

Clare moved back to DC last year and has since been leading whitespace innovation for a big hospitality player in the area and continues to remain involved at Georgetown as a student startup mentor. On the side, she coaches fitness classes via her “Covid-inspired” online fitness platform: The Studio C Project.