ABOUT ALEXANDRA

PAUL K. BENJAMIN, PKB VISIONS

Alexandra first got hooked on naming when Gap hired her to create cheeky names for its first line of body-care products. Soon after, she broke into the business by talking her way into branding powerhouse Landor Associates via a Match.com date. With her fresh, unconventional naming style, Alexandra soon became a go-to resource for countless branding and naming firms around the country, and Landor sent her enough business to open her own firm. Since then, she’s generated thousands of names for snacks, software, sunscreen, social networking sites, sportswear, shoes, sugar scrubs, serums, and seafood. (And that’s just the S’s!)

Alexandra is not afraid to name names, especially in her entertaining presentation “How Not to Nayme Your Startup.” She is a popular speaker and has delighted audiences at conferences including Brandstorm, Startup Grind, Endeavor, Collision, and LA Tech Week, as well as the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, where she was an Author in Residence. She especially enjoys speaking to MBA students and has been invited to lecture multiple times at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the University of Southern California, the University of San Francisco, the University of San Diego, and other fine academic institutions.

Prior to Eat My Words, Alexandra was an advertising copywriter, working at leading West Coast ad agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather, where she spent five years learning the language of Geek Speak. In the mid-nineties she jumped on the dot-com gravy train and rode it until it crashed in her San Francisco backyard. Alexandra took the money and ran, spending a year in Bali, Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. It was there that she was inspired to become a namer when she was charmed by the creative names—Cape Tribulation, Magnetic Island, and the Town of 1776—with which Captain Cook christened his discoveries.

Alexandra gets her passport stamped as often as possible. She has eaten her way through 50 countries on six continents, where she’s sunk her teeth into local delicacies including barbequed squirrel in Tanzania, ostrich carpaccio in South Africa, stewed camel meat in Libya, and lobster marinara in Cuba. Her favorite food is Jif peanut butter, which once sustained her for two days when she was on the remote island of Amantaní in Lake Titicaca, Peru. Bali is her happy place.

After running away from home 33 years ago, Alexandra returned to San Diego in 2018 and lives near the beach in her Barbie Dream House.