Solutionaries: Sarah Harden from Hello Sunshine and Ciara Dilley from PepsiCo Changing the Narrative for Women

Founded by Reese Witherspoon, Hello Sunshine is a media brand anchored in storytelling, creating and discovering content that celebrates women. The Stacy’s Rise Project is a wonderful program dedicated to helping women grow their businesses through funding, mentorship, and community. Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden and Ciara Dilley, VP Transform Brands at PepsiCo join us to share how they are collaborating with purpose around their common cause.

Ciara Dilley

Vice President of Transform Brands Frito-Lay North America, PepsiCo

Ciara Dilley, vice president of marketing for Frito-Lay North America, leads the company’s ever-evolving portfolio of Transform Brands – including Stacy’s pita chips, SunChips, Popcorners, Off the Eaten Path veggie crisps/puffs, and the Baked/Simply portfolio of snacks. 

A seasoned veteran with more than 20 years of industry experience and most recently recognized as a 2020 MediaPost Marketing All-Star, Ciara is an industry pioneer in purpose-driven campaigns, having led several brands to make a measurable societal impact through campaigns that champion sustainability and support diversity and inclusion.

Ciara’s greatest passion is in furthering the economic empowerment of women. She is not only a mentor and a coach to several team members past and present, but also leads PepsiCo’s support of female professional development through numerous speaking engagements and by spearheading the organization’s WomanMade initiative. Ciara also works closely with several thought leaders and organizations committed to advancing female entrepreneurs, including SKU CPG, Hello Alice, and The Boss Network.

Since joining Frito-Lay in February 2019, Ciara has led the acclaimed Stacy’s Rise Project – a flagship grant and mentorship program by the female-founded Stacy’s brand – to flourish as an industry best-in-class initiative, awarding up-and-coming female entrepreneurs with hundreds of thousands of dollars in business grants and providing them with unprecedented access to PepsiCo people and resources to achieve long-term success.

Sarah Harden

CEO, Hello Sunshine

Sarah Harden is the CEO of Hello Sunshine, a media-brand anchored in storytelling, with a mission to change the narrative for women. Alongside founder Reese Witherspoon, Harden leads Hello Sunshine’s rapid growth as a premium content studio and direct-to-consumer media brand developing, scripted and unscripted television series, films, kids and animation series, short-form storytelling, audio content and more. In 2020 Hello Sunshine productions were nominated for 18 Emmys and the company was awarded #2 Most Innovative Company in Media by FastCompany. Hello Sunshine is also home to Reese’s Book Club, fast-growing in reach & influence. Harden recently spearheaded the sale of a majority of Hello Sunshine to Blackstone.

Prior to her time with Hello Sunshine, Harden was President of Otter Media, a privately held joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group where she focused on building leading direct to consumer media brands. Otter Media was sold to AT&T in 2018 with a valuation exceeding $1.5B. Prior to joining The Chernin Group she spent 10 years at News Corp/Fox, serving as Group Director at News Corp Asia, where she oversaw growth initiatives in the region, based in Hong Kong. Additionally, she served as SVP of Business Development for Fox Networks Group in Los Angeles and was co-founder of Linkscape Software based in San Francisco. Harden began her career at Boston Consulting Group in Melbourne, Australia.

Sarah serves on the Board and Compensation committee of Magnite (NASDQ: MGNI) and the US Development Board for the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where she graduated with high distinction as a Baker Scholar, and a BA (Hons) from The University of Melbourne.