Creating her dream job

Amanda Rabideau (MBA ’11) is building the future of brand messaging and rewriting the rules of what a founder’s journey can look like.

Rabideau, founder and CEO of Promanda, is solving one of marketing’s most persistent challenges: creating strategic brand messaging that actually resonates. With nearly 15,000 LinkedIn followers and an AI-powered platform that’s redefining how marketers approach their craft, she’s actively fundraising, scaling her company and balancing the demands of leadership with raising two young children alongside her husband.

But her path to founder wasn’t the predictable post-MBA trajectory. Instead, Rabideau’s journey exemplifies the principle that guides both her life and her company: Find a way.

Charting an unconventional path

“I went into business school wanting to start my own business,” she says. “I explored different paths — including an internship at Goldman Sachs — but quickly realized I was built for entrepreneurship, not corporate hierarchy. I don’t like bureaucracy or authority.”

After graduation, Rabideau made bold moves: relocating to New York, taking a role at an international startup in the Netherlands and eventually resetting in Michigan to be strategic about her next chapter.

She moved to San Francisco and gained customer-facing experience in retail. “It taught me to listen to what people actually need, not what I assume they need, which became foundational to my product development approach,” she says. She then landed at a marketing consulting firm where things accelerated.

“I built my network, established myself in the city and a colleague from New York hired me at CoreLogic to build out an innovation team,” she says. “It was a significant role that proved I could operate at that level. After a while, I knew I needed to build something of my own. I negotiated an exit package and launched my agency, Arch Collective, and began building software for it, which evolved into Promanda.”

Today, Rabideau’s willingness to chart an unconventional path demonstrates the resilience that makes her a natural founder.

Building a pro-marketer platform

“I’d worked in marketing for about two and a half years when I positioned myself as a fractional CMO,” she says. “I had three marketing degrees and pattern recognition skills that let me see where the market was heading. I built my fractional CMO practice before it became a trend, and that same forward-thinking approach led me to create Promanda.”

When she started building software for her agency clients, she recognized a broader opportunity. “I realized that if I could be a fractional CMO, I could be the founder of a software company — even an AI-based one. Being a founder is about finding a way, even when there’s no clear path. Every experience — relocating to San Francisco, building my career from scratch, establishing credibility in new industries — taught me that principle. That’s what I’m doing with Promanda.”

Promanda provides a solution to a problem that has plagued marketers for years: the essential process of creating strategic messaging is undervalued and misunderstood, says Rabideau. The tool helps marketers create zero-to-one strategic messaging frameworks.

“Without strategic messaging, you risk running out of steam or getting frustrated,” she says. “We’re building a messaging resonance scoring mechanism to help marketers understand the probability that a message will land with a specific audience and channel. This makes the process more data-driven and efficient, so marketers can have more objective conversations with clients about messaging.”

Rabideau directly addresses concerns about AI’s role in marketing. “AI will not fully replace the ability to create resonant messaging anytime soon,” she says. “You always need a human component for nuance and creativity. Promanda is ‘pro marketer.’ It gives marketers the tools to make their process easier, not to replace them. It’s like putting you on an airplane instead of making you walk 500 miles. You still need to get to your destination, but the journey is much easier.”

The Carolina connection

Rabideau’s journey to UNC Kenan-Flagler began in Dallas, where she met Susan Cates (MBA ’98), who later had key leadership roles at the Business School. Cates encouraged Rabideau to apply to the Full-Time MBA Program at Carolina and became her mentor.

“I’m from Michigan, so it seemed random,” says Rabideau. “When I got in, I attended Experience Weekend. I hadn’t been to campus before and it felt magical. I could really see myself there.”

Rabideau focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, marketing and brand management. “It felt overwhelming, but now I see how valuable it was to have that breadth. I pull from those different disciplines in my work as an entrepreneur.”

She also took the Applied Investment Management (AIM) class. “Even though I didn’t go into wealth management, I use the skills I learned —  like pitching ideas with both quantitative and qualitative stories — all the time, whether I’m presenting to investors or getting buy-in at work,” she says.

The relationships Rabideau built at UNC Kenan-Flagler continue to shape her journey. Professor Randy Myer taught her in a course on venture capital investment and was her team’s faculty advisor for the STAR consulting program. Today, Myer serves on Promanda’s board.

“That ongoing relationship has been invaluable,” says Rabideau. “He reminds me of things I learned and have forgotten.”

Like many alumni, Rabideau says the community is what drew her to UNC Kenan-Flagler and continues to sustain her. Classmates Kendra (Crawford) Perlitz and Heather (Moylan) Meyerdirk (both MBA ’11), who she roomed with during her second year, are part of her family in San Francisco where she lives with her husband and children.

“Sometimes it’s the small things, like conversations in Café McColl that led to new friendships,” she says. “I was involved in the follies, which were so much fun, and my friend Kate Breen (MBA ’11) and I hosted it one year. We did a ‘Drunk History’ skit, which was ridiculous but memorable. There are so many memories: studying together, the camaraderie, having drinks at Crunkleton. The collection of memories, both big and small, stand out.”

Lessons that last

Rabideau stays connected to UNC Kenan-Flagler, including serving on the board of 100 Women. She returns to campus not just for the camaraderie, but to reflect on how the experience shaped her.

“Right after grad school, I didn’t think the MBA was life changing,” she says. “Now, with perspective, I see a thousand little ways UNC Kenan-Flagler prepared me for this moment.”

For students wondering if their path needs to be linear, Rabideau offers this: “The most valuable skill business school gave me wasn’t on any syllabus — it was learning to find a way forward when there isn’t an obvious path. That’s what entrepreneurship actually is.”