Influential Woman · Marketing
Christy Waldner
Founding Partner, Revive Connects
Parrish, FL
Her Story
About Christy
I’ve worked in marketing and advertising for more than 20 years across both agency and in-house environments, building a career that started in creative execution and evolved into business strategy, operations, and growth leadership. My background includes work across food and beverage, editorial, luxury residential and commercial development, corporate branding, and business development, giving me experience in both high-level strategy and the day-to-day realities of running and scaling businesses.
I began my career as a graphic designer and professional photographer and spent years working hands-on in creative execution before moving into leadership roles including Senior Designer, Art Director, and Director of Brand & Marketing Operations. Throughout my career, I’ve led brand development, campaigns, creative direction, operational systems, and cross-functional teams while serving as a client-facing strategic partner focused on measurable business growth.
During COVID, I returned to school and earned my Master of Science in Business from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business to strengthen my focus on strategy, operations, leadership, and business alignment. I wanted to bridge the gap I had seen for years between creative execution and the operational side of business growth.
I’m the Founding Partner of Revive Connects, a marketing and growth infrastructure firm I launched in October 2025 alongside a former client turned business partner. Together, we created a collective model that brings together highly experienced professionals from agency, corporate, and specialized backgrounds to build tailored teams around each client’s needs.
Our focus is helping businesses create alignment between brand, marketing, systems, operations, and execution so growth becomes clearer, more measurable, and easier to manage. Instead of disconnected vendors and fragmented efforts, we build integrated solutions designed around the actual goals of the business.
Today, much of my work centers around leading the agency, guiding strategy, building partnerships, integrating AI and operational efficiencies, and helping businesses simplify complexity while creating marketing that supports long-term growth.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Christy
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to hard work and aligning myself with the right people – people who challenge you and make you better. The network that I've put together has been huge, and I'm really proud of the caliber of people that trust me. That trust feels good and has been essential to building what I have today.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I don’t know if there’s one specific piece of career advice that has stayed with me over the years, but there is one question I consistently come back to when I’m making decisions, both professionally and personally:
“This is your life, are you who you want to be?”
It probably sounds a little unconventional, but it’s something I’ve carried with me for a long time. There’s a song from the ’90s by Switchfoot that sparked that mindset for me, and it stuck.
Whenever I’m evaluating an opportunity, making a career move, or deciding whether to take on something new, I try to ask myself if it aligns with the person I want to become. Will this help me grow? Will it challenge me? Will I learn something meaningful? Does it move me closer to the kind of life and work I actually want?
That perspective is what led me to go back to school for my master’s degree during COVID, transition from pure creative execution into strategy and operations, and eventually build my own agency. I’ve learned that growth usually comes from being willing to evolve instead of staying comfortable.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Look for a mentorship. Look for somebody who's been there and is willing to help. There are so many different ways to go, but when you can learn from other people's experience, you're so much further ahead of the game.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge right now is AI, but it's also the biggest opportunity. For people who know the core principles of things, it's used as a tool, and it can make you more efficient, but it can also make you sloppy. You just need to stay aware of that human factor and not just trust it blindly. It's only as good as what we put into it. The biggest opportunity is being educated in certain areas, because a lot of people aren't, and they're just blindly accepting information, copy, strategies, and design. There's no real theory behind it, or a real big picture that only comes from studying and understanding. You just need to have a critical understanding of it.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Fairness and honesty are the values most important to me in my work and personal life.
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