Partner Bios

ELLEN RUDY
Managing Partner

Ellen Rudy has branding credentials that go back more than 25 years. She has created corporate identity and environmental design programs for such clients as Polaroid Corporation, W.R. Grace & Co., and Chartered Semiconductor. A veteran of the Boston advertising community, she served as Creative Director for Doerr Associates for 15 years prior to coming to California, where she served as VP of Creative for Halleck for eight years before joining The Hayden Group. Clients have included Metropolitan Life, AT&T Capital, Towers Perrin, Edify Corporation, Forbo Industries, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Netscape, McKesson, ConAgra, Diageo, and The Stanford Shopping Center, as well as non-profit organizations and start-ups.

Ellen is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University. She serves as a coach/mentor for Astia (formerly The Women's Technology Cluster), an advisor for adsila.org, and is a member of Women in Consulting and former member of the Executive Forums Business Improvement Group (BIG).

An avid sailor, Ellen cruised the Maine Coast for many years, and now tackles San Francisco Bay on weekends. She lives in San Jose with her husband Jeff, and has 2 right-brain sons.

VICTORIA HAYDEN
Co-Founder, Senior Advisor

As co-founder of The Hayden Group and The Synergos Series, Victoria has more than 20 years of strategic marketing and branding experience with high profile technology, business-to-business and consumer companies and advertising agencies. 

In 2009, Victoria helped launch a start-up consumer television service, working with Best Buy and later Amazon for set-top box sales. In 2010, Victoria helped the same start-up change to a B2B model, expand globally, and sell its technology to international service providers.

As VP Marketing Communications at Pacific Bell (now part of AT&T), Victoria managed a budget of $70M and was responsible for brand positioning, advertising, customer acquisition and retention for enterprise, small business and consumer lines of business. Her telecommunications experience also includes running Sprint's international, B2B and corporate advertising at JWT San Francisco and running all lines of advertising business for Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) at JWT New York.  As VP Advertising at Northwest Airlines (now part of Delta), Victoria managed a budget of $90M and was responsible for the global brand as well as global advertising and marketing programs. Victoria began her marketing career in Washington, DC in the health care industry with Blue Cross and Blue Shield, moving to later to Ketchum Advertising.

Victoria holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana—with a double major in Journalism and Political Science.  She lives in Palo Alto with her 15-year-old son and Miss Daisy, their one-and-a-half-year-old Dachshund mix.

Victoria is a former Astia Advisor and has served on the Board of AchieveKids.