ABOUT
Brands don’t operate in a vacuum. They sell through retailers, run on platforms, and answer to capital.
Wendy Salisko (Left) & Deanna Andersen (Right), Co-Founders of WADE
Retailers have to pick which brands to back and still hit their numbers. Platforms only work if operators actually use them day to day. Investors need real proof before they send the money.
Everyone’s connected. Most advisors aren’t.
WADE exists to close those gaps. We make sure everyone around the table is talking about the same thing, so the decisions made in the room still work in the real world.
We’ve been brand-side, making portfolio and channel calls with margin on the line. Retail-side, building stories that had to hold across buyers and finance. Deal-side, pressure‑testing plans for investors who needed to know what the deck wasn’t saying.
That’s not a list of credentials. It’s lived experience from operators that keeps our advice tied to what actually happens in the real world. We know what each seat is measured on, what each side needs to hear, and what they’ll tune out.
WADE sits where these worlds meet. One connected system. Every seat at the table. No silos.
Our Edge
“I looked around and was like, I've taken this as far as I can by myself. WADE is run by operators, which is why we brought them in. They pushed us to be disruptive, got us face to face with the right people, and turned ‘this is interesting’ into real enterprise adoption that changed how investors reacted to us.”
WENDY SALISKO
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Wendy is an operator at heart—calm in ambiguity, sharp on pattern, relentless about what actually works. She has spent two decades owning P&Ls, scaling brands through digital commerce transformation, leading global Amazon acceleration strategy, and managing over $1B in business with the world's largest retailers. She's sat in category reviews, negotiated joint business plans mid-quarter, and learned what breaks when the stakes are real. She is most often pulled into moments when growth, profitability, and retailer expectations are in tension. Her edge is knowing what matters: she's made the call on which SKUs stay, which bets get funded, and how to sequence a go-to-market when every function has a different priority. Wendy brings candor, courage, and challenge to every engagement—telling clients what's real, what's not working, and where to put their money and people next.
DEANNA ANdERSEN
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Deanna is an operator-advisor shaped by high-stakes decisions, where ambition is real, information is incomplete, and the cost of being wrong compounds. She built her career in the messy middle, where strategy meets execution and conviction has to survive real systems. Over two decades, she has owned P&Ls, led brand and commercial strategy in Fortune 500 environments, and advised boards and founders across the Big 4. Her edge is translation: she sees across ecosystems, pressure-tests assumptions, and turns narrative into choices that scale. She works at the moments that define trajectory, from capital allocation and inflection points to operating models under strain. Often the “third leg of the stool” between founders and capital, Deanna stabilizes the moment, separates signal from motion, and ensures movement in the right direction. She brings clarity, judgment, and certainty to what actually moves the business forward.
HOW WE’RE DIFFERENT
Most advisors add frameworks. ¡ removes noise.
what we believe
Capital accelerates
Capital can look shiny on day one. The pressure shows up right after.
Money is an accelerator, not a plan. Without advisory context, it turns every unclear decision into a deadline and makes small cracks compound fast.
Operator context stabilizes
Growth gets messy when people are trying hard but pulling in different directions.
Context is simply getting everyone clear on what matters, who decides, what happens first, and what we are not doing right now.
Founders build
Founders care more than anyone because they built this from day one.
The risk is trying to carry it the same way forever. The job is turning that instinct and standards into decisions and execution the company can repeat without the founder in every room.
Formula: Operator Depth + Market Breadth
Together, WADE brings two capabilities rarely found in the same advisory relationship. Depth from lived operating. Breadth from advising across the Big 4.
Why does this matter?
We've worked inside brands, retailers, platforms, and capital partners. We know how decisions actually play out—not just in theory, but in the room where the buyer reacts, where the pilot hits the org chart, where the new op model slows growth, where margin quietly leaks.
The result: We see what others miss. We know which moves will hold and which ones break when reality hits.
Because we’ve lived them.