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By Taiwo Babatunde
SmashBrand, the Idaho-based brand strategy and design agency, has expanded its leadership team with the appointment of Christy Lebor as Partner and Director of Strategy.
The move brings decades of experience from multinational consumer packaged goods companies into a boutique agency model that has increasingly drawn the attention of both emerging and established brands.
Lebor previously held senior roles at Kraft, PepsiCo, and Unilever, where she was involved in large-scale product launches and strategic planning across global markets.
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At SmashBrand, she will lead strategy development as the agency scales its consumer testing capabilities and works with a growing portfolio of clients.
“I joined SmashBrand because their model is different,” Lebor said. “They’re not chasing creative awards; they’re tying design directly to consumer outcomes, which is what global companies are demanding.”
The addition of Lebor marks another milestone in SmashBrand’s evolution since its founding in 2009 by Kevin Smith and Michael Keplinger. Smith, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former Department of Defense Marine of the Year, launched the agency after a series of ventures in the nutrition industry. His portfolio included Nutrition Distribution, which grew past $50 million in revenue, and Athletic Xtreme, named Bodybuilding.com’s Brand of the Year.
Drawing on that entrepreneurial background, Smith co-founded SmashBrand with a focus on performance-driven design backed by data.
In 2019, the firm launched its PREformance® Testing Suite, integrating consumer research into design development. Keplinger, who leads testing and insights, has since expanded the function into a fully integrated stage-gate process.
Alongside strategy and testing, the creative side of the agency is led by Shelbi Sturgis, a former design lead at Kellogg’s and Publicis Groupe, who now oversees packaging design for categories ranging from food and beverage to wellness, pet products, home improvement, and supplements.
Smith said Lebor’s addition reflects an “up-market shift” in the firm’s work with leading brands. “Her experience in global corporations gives us the ability to speak the language of multinational teams while keeping the agility that makes smaller agencies attractive,” he explained. He added that SmashBrand avoids categories like perfume, where packaging claims cannot influence consumer choice, and focuses instead on sectors where packaging has direct impact at retail.
SmashBrand has built a team of about 25–30 employees and contractors, operating remotely with leadership spread across Chicago, Eden, and Boulder in addition to its Boise headquarters. The company said Lebor’s appointment will strengthen its strategy arm at a time when demand for data-driven packaging design continues to rise globally.
