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From start-ups to global corporations, Mercatus Consulting helps companies launch, activate, and achieve while always staying true to their brand spirit.
From start-ups to global corporations, Mercatus Consulting helps companies launch, activate, and achieve their objectives while staying true to their timelines.
Led by Heather Jacobs, Mercatus Consulting is the solution when in-house teams are short on resources or simply stuck in a process, to quickly identify gaps, bounce off ideas, jump-start stalled projects, and own extensive, long-term scopes.
With Heather’s 25+ plus years of work in brand, marketing, hospitality, financial services, consumer packaged goods, technology and agencies, we offer the essential skills needed:
- Executive Relationship Management: The ability to build and sustain trust with C-suite and senior stakeholders is foundational. Heather has spent years navigating complex organizations, grasping the nuances and dependencies of interdepartmental collaboration and ownership, politics, earning credibility quickly, and communicating at the right level of abstraction for senior audiences while motivating project teams.
- Business Development & Commercial Acumen: Sustainable ideas and transformation require understanding how to position a product or service’s value to drive revenue, identify upsell/cross-selling opportunities, build efficient, yet adaptable roadmaps, and shape deals.
- Strategic Consulting & Problem Solving: Heather has years of experience designing transformation roadmaps, defining requirements, and architecting multi-workstream programs using structured thinking, the ability to synthesize ambiguous problems, and sound judgment on tradeoffs between speed, scale, and operational reality.
- Program & Delivery Leadership: Owning execution across complex, global, multi-workstream engagements requires strong program management skills — risk management, stakeholder alignment, offshore/onshore team coordination, and quality oversight
- People Leadership & Talent Development: Any initiative, regardless of size or scope, requires thoughtful people leadership, group motivation, and ideally, talent leadership. Building and mentoring a team means coaching for both industry knowledge and consulting craft — a skill set that blends management, teaching, and culture-building.
Put it this way: there's no risk of “death by Powerpoint” in our meetings.
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HEATHER JACOBS
As the principal of Mercatus, Heather Jacobs is a senior marketing and brand leader with over 20 years of experience turning complex global strategies into aligned, measurable action across matrixed organizations. Known for her ability to build trust with C-Suite executives, continent leaders, and cross-functional teams alike, Heather brings a rare combination of strategic vision and executional discipline to every initiative she leads.
Her career spans brand building, marketing strategy, loyalty, and organizational transformation across hospitality, financial services, and consumer goods — with deep roots at Marriott International, where she has shaped some of the company's most iconic brand moments, including the global creation of Marriott Bonvoy and the cultural evolution of The Ritz-Carlton. Heather has a proven track record of leading high-stakes, multi-continent initiatives that require both rigorous planning and the ability to earn buy-in from senior stakeholders at every level.
Whether she is building an annual strategic plan, orchestrating global leadership forums, or integrating a new brand into a complex organization, Heather leads with clarity, collaboration, and a deep commitment to results that last.
Prior to founding Mercatus, Heather held leadership positions at Marriott International, Delaware North, and Navy Federal Credit Union. For over a decade, she provided brand management, marketing, planning and communications services to Marriott International brands and corporate departments' special projects. Heather also served as the Director of Client Services at Micromarketing, E-centives, and Catalina Marketing.
Heather holds a BA from the University of Mary Washington and a Masters degree from the Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School.