Ottawa skincare brand Bushbalm is bringing international experience into its marketing strategy with the addition of Michele Snyder as chief marketing officer.
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Ottawa skincare brand Bushbalm is bringing international experience into its marketing strategy with the addition of Michele Snyder as chief marketing officer.
“With her extensive experience in the skincare industry, Michele brings a fresh perspective and strong leadership to our team,” the company said on LinkedIn recently. “We’re excited for this next chapter and the impact she will have as we continue to grow the Bushbalm brand.”
Snyder, who is currently based in New Jersey, has worked with a variety of globally recognized “cosmeceutical” brands throughout her career. From 2002 to 2011, she led marketing at SkinCeuticals, then joined L'Oréal’s global marketing team after it purchased the company.
For eight-and-a-half years after that, she was senior vice-president of global marketing at Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare, then spent two years as chief marketing and innovation officer at Image Skincare.
Her career has taken her across the U.S., from Dallas to Seattle and multiple years in New York.
Snyder told OBJ that she’s learned a lot about marketing from those roles that she can put to use at Bushbalm as it scales.
“We are really looking at our brand awareness and that I think is our biggest opportunity,” she said. “We have great connections with our consumers and we seek them out online, but if they’re not a consumer that we’ve actively connected with and brought into the funnel, they don’t know us. I think we have an opportunity for more people to know about us and to know our brand.”
Though her knowledge of the skincare sector is extensive, Snyder said she learned of Bushbalm for the first time when co-founder and CEO David Gaylord reached out to her directly.
“I was intrigued by the name and I’ve been in the skincare industry for a long time, so I actually was surprised I hadn’t heard of them,” she said. “I wanted to learn more. I was just amazed that they had so many professional customers in such a short amount of time. It really made me want to understand how and why.”
Though Bushbalm takes an omnichannel approach — selling directly to both consumers and to businesses — she said the company’s success has come from a unique direction.
“It’s just so fascinating to me to see a brand that started in (direct-to-consumer) that now has such a strong and rich professional channel, (which is) the largest channel of their business right now,” she said. “I’ve never seen this happen.”
Snyder said the founders’ tech backgrounds and their data-driven approach are in part the key to this model. But she said the product itself has been a major driver in the professional market, in a way that she said isn’t often seen.
“Professionals were seeking Bushbalm out,” she said. “It didn’t really have to do a lot of prospecting. They don’t have a lot of professional salespeople. But I think it’s because they have such a great offering and such a great way to connect with consumers online and through social.”
Canada, she added, has always been a strong market for beauty and wellness brands.
“Ten to 20 per cent of business in North America is Canadian, more in this case because it’s a Canadian company,” she said. “Canada has always been a very important market. I believe the market itself, the customers, are more advanced. They really understand clinical skincare and the ingredients. The Canadian consumer is a sophisticated skincare consumer.”
Though Snyder has spent the past 20 years in marketing, she said trends are always changing and new technologies like AI have brought added challenges and opportunities into the fray.
“It’s made us a lot more efficient, but there are things to watch out for, especially when it comes to visual representation and the backlash from gen Z,” she said. “Some of the younger generations are saying, okay, we’re tired of all this AI tech and all the AI images out there and not knowing what’s authentic. But when it comes to the back end and our process and workflows, AI has been tremendous there.”
Snyder, who is now three weeks into her role, added that she’s excited to be working with the Bushbalm team and sees plenty of “white space” for the company to grow into, including closer partnerships with service providers.
“There haven’t been a lot of companies that have focused on professional services and products for the bikini line area and body hair removal in general,” she said. “That hair removal and intimate skincare space is almost untapped, so there’s lots of opportunity for us to provide them our services. With our partnership, we can help (businesses) grow their customer base.”
Other people on the move
The Ottawa Hospital Foundation has welcomed Diana Burns as its new chief financial officer. Burns brings extensive financial experience in the charitable health sector. Before joining the organization, she served as CFO and senior vice-president at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, which she joined in 2022. From 2018 to 2022, she was director of financial services at the Queensway Carleton Hospital. She has also worked for KPMG, the Halifax Regional Municipality and Emergency Medical Care Inc. In a post on LinkedIn, foundation president and CEO Tim Kluke said her experience and commitment to regional health care will be a major asset to the organization.
Hats off!
Jennifer Stewart, founder and CEO of Ottawa-based Syntax Strategic, has been named a 2026 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 award winner in the entrepreneur category. The award recognizes individuals with a distinguished career in entrepreneurship, community leadership and commitment to creating opportunities for others. Syntax Strategic has grown across Canada, with offices in Ottawa and Vancouver. Stewart is also the co-founder of The Honest Talk, a Canadian forum dedicated to women and conversations about leadership, ambition and the realities behind professional achievement.
Also named a 2026 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 award winner is Keisha Blair, founder and CEO of the Institute on Holistic Wealth. The organization is the world’s first holistic wealth certification body. Blair pioneered the holistic wealth framework and founded Global Holistic Wealth Day and Month, which has grown into a worldwide movement. An author and economist, Blair was the first Black woman in Canada to lead the foreign direct investment file in support of the prime minister.
The Ottawa Titans have earned the Frontier League Commissioner’s Award of Excellence after a record-setting 2026 season. The award recognizes organizations and individuals who make “an extraordinary impact” and contribute to the league’s growth through their accomplishments. The award celebrates the baseball club’s success on the field and its business success, as well as its commitment to fans. The club welcomed more than 116,000 fans this season, a 17.5 per cent increase from the previous year. Its sell-out crowd of 10,278 on opening night broke a league attendance record last set in 2002.
Kingston’s Jeff Hall has been named a 2026 franchisee of the year by the International Franchise Association (IFA). Hall is president of Midas of Eastern Ontario and will be honoured at the IFA Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C. next week. The accomplishment recognizes his leadership and operational success over nearly 20 years as a Midas franchisee. According to a press release, Hall helped transform a struggling location into a $1-million business in its first year. He now owns six Midas locations, generating $18 million in annual revenue, making him one of the highest-performing Midas owner-operators in North America.
Tulmar Safety Systems, a defence and aviation safety manufacturer based in Hawkesbury, is representing Canada in Europe. Global Affairs Canada selected the company to participate in the Team Canada delegation at the International Defence Industry Exhibition, taking place in Kielce, Poland, Sept. 8-11. The exhibition is one of Europe’s largest defence and security shows, bringing military and government representatives together with defence industry organizations from NATO and allied countries. Canada is this year’s lead nation. At the exhibition, the five-member Tulmar delegation will present its capabilities in tactical personal flotation, counter-UAS and non-kinetic protection, among other things.
