Alex Cozort
Growth Marketing Leader | Field & Events Strategy | 10+ years in B2B demand generation
Remote
Artifacts
Nava Benefits · Senior Engagement ManagerBuilding Nava's Field Channel from Zero to $20.4M in Pipeline How three and a half years of small, smart tests built Nava's largest inbound channel without playing the standard HR-vendor playbook. I joined Nava in late 2021 to build their field marketing channel from scratch. By the end of 2024, that channel was Nava's highest-performing source of inbound pipeline, contributing $20.4 million. The path there was full of small bets, tight feedback loops, and a refusal to participate in the standard HR-vendor playbook of booths, branded pens, and money thrown at the problem. The quick stats: $20.4 million in field-sourced pipeline in 2024 Largest inbound channel by pipeline amount at Nava that year Built from literal ground zero over 3.5 years Budget grew 6–10x through the program to support scale Long-play community partnerships including PIHRA and NNAHRA Signature activations: Benefits Bestie friendship bracelets, the rage room, cosmic brownies guerrilla at Lattice, sunset horseback rides in Hawaii Premium-brand approach: no chintzy small footprints or swag, no pay-to-speak, no copy-paste scale The messy middle: Testing: Field marketing fails when teams scale before they know what works. So I tested everything at the right spend and the right velocity, then leaned into what hit. Co-sponsored events and community partnerships took off quickly, and we scaled those fast. Longer-play sponsorships needed years to pay off, and I fought to keep the budget for them because trust in the HR community isn't built quickly. By 2024, those longer plays were producing some of the most reliable pipeline in the entire mix. Trust building: HR leaders get marketed to constantly, and almost all of it lands as noise. Booths and crappy swag are just money thrown at the problem. HR is also one of the most isolated communities in any company. Their job is to hold things in confidence, so they can't confide in coworkers the same way other roles in the org can. So our entire field strategy was built around community. Every event, every activation, every partnership had to feel human and add value. And it didn't always need to be huge things, sometimes is was as simple as taking coffee orders ahead of a session so attendees walked in to find their drinks already waiting. Over time that all earns trust–and trust drives revenue. The activations: A few are worth naming because they prove the philosophy. We launched Benefits Bestie friendship bracelets at PIHRA during the Taylor Swift bracelet trend, paired with a 360 photo booth and TSwift playing in the background. Attendees grabbed one at one event and showed up to the next looking for the new bracelet to add to their collection. We weren't a booth they had to escape, but a brand they wanted to engage with. The rage room was the risky one. HR leaders don't get to vent at work because confidentiality is the job, so we gave them a room to break things and a peer community that understood why they needed it. Clients were still quoting it back to me years later. At an event hosted by Lattice, our budget didn't fit a real booth, so we opted out of one entirely. I dressed our team in astronaut gear to match the event's theme and gave each person a branded metallic backpack full of Cosmic Brownies and Benefits Bestie bracelets. We walked the floor, aligned with the host's brand on purpose, and were the hit of the show. The $20.4 million isn't a one-year fluke. It's the compounding result of three and a half years of small calls made in the same direction. Refuse the cheap version. Hold the line on partnerships that need time. Give your audience something they actually want and will remember.
How I went from "What's an adoption?" to over 50% district adoption against a 25% goal, on a statewide literacy bid I'd never run before. I was running field marketing for the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions at Lexia Learning when leadership came to me with a project. Florida's State Board of Education was running a statewide literacy curriculum adoption, and they wanted me to lead our submission from the marketing side of thigns. I'd never run an adoption before. I actually didn't even know what an adoption was. Two years later, we'd doubled our goal by hitting over 50% district adoption against a first-year goal of 25%. The quick stats: Goal: 25% district adoption in year one Outcome: over 50% district adoption in year one Continued growth in the years after I moved on Built two complete submission packages from scratch: elementary and middle school categories First marketing-led adoption submission at Lexia (previously handled by sales) Cross-functional team spanning marketing, education, sales, and product Project ran during peak COVID, fully remote, while K–12 was being reshaped in real time The messy middle: The crash course: I started this project not knowing what a curriculum adoption was. The state board of education creates a shortlist of approved curriculum vendors, then school districts choose from that list. Categories are organized by grade band and subject. The submission package has to clear bars at every stage from the unboxing experience to how curriculum standards map to specific state requirements. I had not handled a project like this previously, so the first thing I set out to do was learn and understand the process. By taking some time to listen I was able to walk anyone through the entire process from criteria to timelines to judging in six weeks. The partnership: Kimberly, my counterpart on the Education team, was the engine of this project alongside me. She had a strong history in curriculum and experience working across education, training, and sales at Lexia, which meant she knew where the answers lived inside the company. I knew marketing; she knew curriculum – we were complementary in the best possible way. I lost count of how many 5am deadlines we hit together from our respective homes during COVID. The bigger lesson: cross-functional work isn't a deck or a meeting. It's people in the trenches taking turns being the expert. The package: Everything about the submission had to meet strict criteria at every step. The box opening experience for the commitee. The way grade-band color coding let judges find what they needed at a glance. How curriculum standards mapped to Florida's specific state requirements. The story we told about why our curriculum belonged on the shortlist. We built two complete packages from the ground up: elementary and middle school. Both shipped before deadlines we'd had to renegotiate internally to even get the chance. The packages were the visible part of every cross-functional decision the team had made in the previous six months. The 50% adoption result against our 25% goal is a testament to the work ethic and skill of the team. My overarching management work is something I'm especially proud of: walking into an unfamiliar domain, mapping where the expertise lives across teams, building the partnerships you need to execute, and turning what you learn into something that performs. That's the kind of collaboration and decision making that I aim to carry with me to any project.
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Work history
May 2025 - Present · 1.5 years · Head of Events & Field Marketing
Nov 2021 - Apr 2025 · 3.5 years · Senior Engagement Manager, Field Marketing Manager
Sep 2019 - Oct 2021 · 2.2 years · Field Marketing Manager
May 2014 - Aug 2019 · 5.3 years · Director of Membership, Director of Communications
May 2012 - Aug 2017 · 5.3 years · Brand/Field Marketing Lead (Contract)
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