Episode 4 - Local Crate Chief Marketing Officer and Serial Entrepreneur Erin Newkirk

Summary: Erin Newkirk is an award-winning innovator, tech entrepreneur, brand builder, and champion of problem solvers. After working her way up the ranks to senior marketing manager at General Mills, she left to start Red Stamp, a modern correspondence company, which she built into a mobile app that made it possible to send personalized cards and invitations on your phone with a couple of clicks. With 10 million cards sent, Red Stamp was acquired in 2013 by Taylor Corp., one of the largest privately held companies in the U.S. Newkirk continued on as CEO of Red Stamp within Taylor until 2016 when she left and quickly became chief marketing officer of one of the hottest Minneapolis-based insurance ventures, Bright Health, which made Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups list for 2017. Then last year, she joined another Twin Cities startup, this time in the food industry. Newkirk is now chief marketing officer of Local Crate, a meal kit company on a mission to source locally, from farm to chef to kitchen. How does she continue to leap between industries? “My North Star, what guides me: I’m all about doing good with good people. Where there’s a problem to be solved, you should go there.” That’s the approach she brings to her newest project, Satya, an initiative she says is based on “helping founders and leaders succeed through speaking their truth.” After our conversation with Newkirk, we go Back to the Classroom with University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business Professor David Deeds, the Schulze Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship, who talks about capitalizing on an entrepreneurial mindset.