Coologee is a brand transformation firm that partners with executives and senior leaders to solve mission-critical business challenges: stalled growth, a merger that must succeed, a reputation under pressure, a customer experience that no longer meets expectations, or a marketing function unable to execute strategy. Coologee addresses these challenges through brand, marketing, communications, and technology, treating each as a business strategy discipline. The firm operates through four practices: Build Brand, Protect Brand, Experience Design, and Operational Design. Two practice highlights receive dedicated focus: AI Adoption, within Experience Design, and Comprehensive Cyber Preparedness, delivered exclusively with RSM through Protect Brand. Founded in September 2021 by President and CEO Cat Holt and co-founder Dino Cattaneo, Coologee believes brand is business.
Unlike traditional consultants, agencies and communications firms who focus on decks without execution and creative instead of business strategy, Coologee works as an extension of internal teams to deliver integrated brand, marketing and communications strategies, brand platforms and customer experiences that make brand a business model.
By putting brand at the heart of business transformation, Coologee is redefining how companies profit and grow with integrity, clarity and purpose.
To redefine how businesses grow by making brand the engine of transformation, performance and purpose.
Brand is business — and these five say why. The sequence is the argument, which is the one place on this site where numbering carries information rather than decoration.
We choose our clients as carefully as they choose us. Brand work that moves business outcomes is done with leaders, not for them: a discipline they exercise alongside us.
Clients hear bad news from us first, and early. Scope creep gets named the moment it appears. Trust is built by being predictable about what we do when we are wrong.
We cut through complexity so clients see clearly who they are and where they are going. Plain language, no buzzwords. If a decision does not make the reader’s job easier, it is wrong.
Bold ideas, disciplined execution. We make the case emotionally and we make it in numbers, because the executives who fund the work require both.
We help companies scale without losing their soul. We prioritize long-term impact over short-term wins, and we tell a client when the fast decision is the expensive one.
We work in your meetings, your tools and your constraints. A recommendation delivered from outside the organization is a document. One built inside it is a decision the team already owns.
A brand platform the executive group has not argued with does not survive the first budget cycle. We bring the disagreement forward rather than discovering it later.
Clarity, rigor and warmth, in that order. We stay through the part where the strategy has to work, because that is the part that determines whether it did.
Every person here has held the seat they now advise from, which is why we work inside your team instead of presenting to it.
Cat has run the marketing function from both sides of the table — head of marketing strategy at a Fortune 100 insurer, chief integration officer of a merged agency enterprise, and interim CMO inside client organizations. At Progressive she led strategy through the company's shift to high-value segments and its rise to #3 auto insurer in the U.S., built its first enterprise marketing scorecard, and created Dr. Rick. Earlier she launched Responsibility. What's Your Policy? for Liberty Mutual. She founded Coologee in 2021 on the conviction that brand is a business asset requiring executive governance. She is the developer of the Happiness Openness Index and the author of Brand is Business.
Emily works at the intersection of customer, category, and company — the place where a business decision becomes something a customer can actually feel. She spent a decade at TIAA leading brand strategy and innovation, evolving the brand position through the acquisition of a bank and an asset management firm and building the processes for naming, messaging, and creative briefs that the marketing organization runs on. Before that she led design-thinking work at SapientNitro and consumer segmentation at Allen & Gerritsen. Her work includes brand architecture for Xbox 360, positioning for Zildjian, portfolio rationalization for Burton, and naming a global health NGO.
Brian has spent nearly four decades turning commodity products into preferred brands. He led the public relations practice and new business team at one of the Midwest's leading brand-building firms, working with Duck Brand, FrogTape, Henkel Consumer Adhesives, and Forest City, and grew that practice from $300,000 to more than $3 million in net income — work that earned over 100 national, regional, and local awards. He later spent fourteen years as senior vice president at a Cleveland integrated communications firm. Earlier in his career he managed both Sherwin-Williams divisions and served as spokesperson for two Superfund sites, which is where he learned that the hardest audiences are the ones who live nearby.
For four decades Kevin has helped organizations protect their reputation through the events that threaten to define them. He has taken an airline into Chapter 11 confidentially, led cyberattack communications for two global manufacturers, run the on-site response to one of the deadliest mine accidents in U.S. history, and headed communications for a school shooting that reopened the school within three days. He supported an $8 billion acquisition that doubled a Fortune 500 aerospace business, and spent three and a half years as Midwest lead of reputational risk and crisis management at the world's largest insurance broker. A former broadcast journalist, he brings a reporter's instinct for what the story will become to the work of shaping it.
Dave builds the systems that make strategy operational. Over twenty years he has led product, program, and delivery work across financial services, insurance technology, wealth management, and the public sector — including a white-labeled SaaS insurance sales platform, an API-based comparative rate engine for large insurance partners, an enterprise data warehouse and data governance program at a global asset manager, and a multi-year digital interoperability platform connecting public agencies. He works where product design, data governance, and delivery discipline meet, which is usually where transformation projects succeed or quietly fail.
Co-Founder and Senior Advisor
Dino Cattaneo is a seasoned business strategist, marketing executive, and leadership coach with over 25 years of experience helping companies grow through clarity, performance, and purpose. A co-founder of Coologee, Dino now serves as a Senior Advisor to the firm while focusing on his executive coaching practice. He brings a rare combination of financial acumen, digital expertise, and human-centered leadership to the intersection of brand and business transformation.
Dino began his career in investment banking, where he developed a deep understanding of capital markets, business models, and strategic growth. He later transitioned into consulting and marketing leadership roles, where he led digital transformation and performance marketing initiatives for Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups alike.
As a former senior executive at agencies and in-house teams, Dino has built and scaled marketing operations, led cross-functional teams, and advised C-suite leaders on aligning brand with business outcomes. His work spans industries including financial services, healthcare, technology, and consumer goods.
In addition to his operational and strategic expertise, Dino is a certified executive coach and trusted advisor to leaders navigating change. He is known for his clarity, candor, and ability to connect the dots between vision and execution, helping organizations unlock growth without losing their soul.
Tell us what you are working on. No qualification gauntlet — we qualify in the conversation, not on the page.