About

Prior to starting Knecht Solutions, LLC., Karla spent over 29 years serving in various roles within Starcom, a Publicis Media Agency. She spearheaded strategies to grow brands, revenue, and market share of Fortune 500 companies while ensuring results through operational excellence.

She served as the Chief Operating Officer for Starcom US, where she drove operational excellence both internally and with clients. Her oversight included the Starcom US Analytics & Technology practice, new client onboarding, a project management practice, client operations, and executive responsibility for client connectivity into the group's Operating System. She optimized people, processes, and technology to meet client needs. 

Before her role as COO, she served as the Chief Client Officer, where she had client responsibilities for more than 50% of their Chicago-based revenue and 100% oversight for the Starcom New York office. 

During her tenure, she worked across various categories, including: Consumer Packaged Goods, Pharmaceuticals, Retail, Entertainment, Insurance, Restaurants, Airlines, and Government, serving top clients: Abbott,  Advance Auto Parts, Alcon, Allstate, Altria, American Egg Board, Applebee’s, AutoZone, Blue Cross Blue Shield, ComEd, Delta Air Lines, ESPN, Esurance, Fairlife, Grupo Bimbo, Heinz, Keebler, Lowe’s, Luxottica, Mars-Wrigley, Maytag, Novartis, Olive Garden, Oracle, Paper & Packaging Board, PUIG, Sealy Mattress, & Wingstop.

She is a master in collaboration, partnering with cross-functional teams, clients, and their agencies to implement business-building ideas that generate cost-efficient results. Key Achievements include implementing new automation processes that decreased reporting time by 50% and saved over $1MM in overhead, increasing team productivity by 35% YOY, increasing revenue within key products and services by over 15%, creating new audience strategies that delivered incremental client sales, renegotiating contracts to deliver significant client savings and implementing improved tracking mechanisms that demonstrated $20+MM in client value.

She understands the power of precision marketing and the influence of data on the industry. Under her leadership, Keebler undertook its first digital foray. Applebee’s was a first mover in the addressable TV space, and Allstate benefited from her leadership in developing a one-of-a-kind cross-channel attribution beta test that linked first-party transaction data to media exposure.   

She builds teams that foster innovation, exemplified by launching the Effie-winning Allstate Mayhem campaign, winning the first Gold Lion for Starcom via the Allstate Save 11 campaign, and receiving Ad Week’s Media Plan of the Year for the best use of Programmatic for Mars Petcare.