Laura Curth Ellis is a passionate food and beverage marketer with over 15 years’ experience delivering insight driven products to your favorite restaurants and stores. Most recently, Laura served as Brand Manager of Early Innovation and Design for KFC US. She is a visionary leader and hands on operator that defines strategy to drive bigger and better innovations into the brand, underpinning all of it in a customer centered growth strategy. Laura leads cross-functional definition, prioritization, and development of the KFC US innovation pipeline with direct responsibility for driving brand and product innovation programs through the front-end stage gate process and for delivering big bet, leapfrog innovation into the system.
Prior to her time at KFC, Laura was part of the Center for Research Excellence at Brown Forman, a leader in premium and super premium spirits and wines. In this role, Laura led internal consumer research for some of the biggest, most well- known brands in the industry such as Jack Daniel’s, Woodford Reserve, Old Forester and many more.
Laura started her career working for the iconic brand, Chiquita Banana. In this role she had the unique opportunity to deliver game-changing innovation by capitalizing on Chiquita’s vertically integrated supply chain. In this once-in-a-lifetime role, Laura worked globally to help the biggest players in the food industry get more fruit into their products in sustainable ways that honored the land Chiquita’s products came from.
Laura is currently based in Louisville, KY with her husband and 3-year-old daughter. Her fruitful career in the food industry is rooted in her unique combination of degrees in science and business. Laura first received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Food Science and Technology and then went on to get her Masters of Business Administration.
